Students seeking admission to the DMA program in Composition must submit a representative portfolio of compositions. Prospective students should hold a Master's degree from an accredited institution.
Portfolios for the DMA should consist of scores and recordings (MIDI or other electronic realizations of pieces should not be sent unless they are of exceptionally high quality) which show original creative work of high quality and technical merit and demonstrate that a student is capable of independent work.

All students applying for the DMA are required to complete either an on-campus interview or video-chat interview with the composition faculty as part of the admissions process. These interviews, whether live or via video-chat, will be scheduled on the designated Departments of Music audition days.

Please email the head of composition, Dr. Gorbos (Gorbos@cua.edu), to schedule interviews on audition days. A prospective student's portfolio should be uploaded at least one week in advance of any scheduled video interview.
Audition on an instrument (or voice) is not required for the DMA in Composition, although a student wishing to pursue applied study must pass an audition in the requisite applied area. All applicants with performing experience are encouraged to schedule an audition, nevertheless, in order to be eligible for a music scholarship. The area where prospective composition students have been most successful in this regard is orchestral instruments.

Minimally accepted TOEFL scores, when applying for graduate programs, are 550-paper, 213-computer, and 80 Internet. Students taking the TOEFL should have at least 20 out of 30 in each of the TOEFL subcategories. The minimally accepted graduate IELTS score is 6.5. Individual IELTS test module scores are also reviewed in addition to the overall IELTS score.