Being admitted into a graduate program for music composition is extremely competitive. More and more young people are getting into classical composition these days, especially since institutions of higher learning no longer require students to check their popular music influences at the door. But the application process, especially for graduate programs, is still quite arduous and it’s always helpful to get some sage advice from someone who knows the ins and outs of what it takes to be admitted. So as a public service, we here at SLN have compiled some useful tweets for aspiring composition students from University of California at Berkeley Professor Ken Ueno. Ken was kind enough to share with the world the following tips on how not to apply for a graduate composition program.

First, if you’re applying to a graduate program in composition, chances are that you spent a good amount of time being a composer during your four years as an undergraduate. And during those four years, you were probably around lots of performance majors, or at the very least, a few decent music ed majors, whom you could have befriended and had record your music. A little effort on the social front would likely make Ken’s first piece of advice unnecessary:

Because even though you may consider MIDI a “real” instrument, the players in your Second Life Orchestra aren’t real people.

Gone are the days when students can simply pour themselves into one academic pursuit and hope to land a teaching gig as a professor of that pursuit. Nowadays it’s important for aspiring academics to be well-rounded individuals so they are more marketable, and that usually means supplementing your primary area of emphasis with a secondary discipline. It’s nice if they compliment each other—say, music composition and music theory—but not exactly necessary. However, make sure that when you’re applying for a graduate program in your primary area of emphasis that you gauge the proportions of your application essay to reflect that:

It’s imperative that students these days embrace technology. From notation, recording, and performance software to fluency with web design and various types of new and social media, we’re in the midst of a zeitgeist in our musical culture that may render “traditional” content delivery systems completely obsolete. The good news for composers is that because of all this technology, they can save bundles of money on printing and copying costs—money that they can use to purchase the latest software updates and buy beer and weed. Just email your scores and parts to the musicians and make them print out their own freakin’ parts. Yeah! But if you do this, make sure you follow certain protocols:

It’s also helpful to have a dictionary on hand so you can understand all those big words they use at graduate school. And though you’re likely a computer whiz, please don’t skip Chapter One of your PDFs for Dummies book:

Finally, be careful not to inadvertently insult the faculty at the institute you are applying to:

For more how-to tidbits, SLN urges you to follow Ken on Twitter.