International Visiting Students

Q - How do I apply for Music courses?

1. You need first to contact UCC’s International Education Office, which handles your application to UCC as a visiting student, your registration and other formal matters. Ask there about “pre-registering” for Music courses in advance.

2. Having done that, you may liaise directly with the Department of Music concerning the Music courses you would like to take, though you do need always to keep the International Education Office informed of your course-choices once they are definite choices.

3. Near the beginning of each “teaching period”, when courses are about to start or have just started, visiting students who have been approved for study at UCC will find it convenient to use our online course database—particularly in August and September or just before the second semester starts in January. In this way you will be able not only to browse information on the various courses open to visiting students, but also to define online, and then rearrange as necessary, your own selection of courses. For details, see How may I use the Music course database? 

Q - When do we start?

Music courses in the first teaching period (rather like a semester) begin in mid-September: in 2016 classes begin from the morning of Monday 16 September. Courses in the second teaching period, or Spring semester, begin near the beginning of January, usually around January 4.

Q -  Where do I find timetable details?

Information on class-times and venues is given with course details.

Q - Am I guaranteed a place on courses for which I am applying?

In most cases no: not in advance. Applications for most Music courses are at first approved on a provisional basis, pending your arrival in Cork and the beginning of those courses. Ultimately the Department’s acceptance of you for the courses you choose depends on whether you have the musical skills and experience to cope with those courses. If it proves necessary (and this happens only rarely) we will withdraw a student from a course if it appears that he or she is struggling with it.

The only exceptions to this are our courses with codes beginning with the code “Mu1V..”, which are offered exclusively for visiting students with little or no experience of studying music at university. Places on these courses are guaranteed, subject only to a quota of places in the class (so early booking is advised). Click here to display details of current courses in this category.

Please be aware that competition for places on our courses is these days intense, and that applications are sometimes refused. There are, of course, various reasons for refusal. For instance: the class for a particular course may already be full and closed to further enrolment; you may have insufficient musical experience at university level to cope with the demands of the course; your GPA is not sufficiently high (our normal expectation is 3.0 or higher); you apply too late after the course has begun; etc.

Q - Do I need to understand and use music notation?

Not necessarily.

For many courses it is only to be expected, at university level, that you will need to be able to read scores fluently for study purposes and to read notation fluently when performing various types of music.

There are, however, various courses where use of music notation is not required—where, for instance, the musical tradition being studied is an oral one, or where Western music notation is simply not relevant (for the music of Java, for example). And we have certain performance options (for instance, in step dancing and set dancing) where students will not need to read notation.

If you are not sure whether your ability with notation is sufficient, the best thing to do is initially to go ahead and apply for the courses of your choice and then, after you arrive, consult the tutors for those courses. You will of course be able to withdraw from particular courses if it becomes apparent that you are struggling to meet the technical demands of their classes.

Note, too, that we offer a few courses exclusively for visiting students who have not previously studied music at university, where use of notation is not a requirement. Click here to display details of current courses in this category