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Focus. Discipline. Collaboration. Problem-Solving.
According to a recent Op-Ed, musical training can teach you all of those things - which is perhaps why, this writer says, you can "find musicians at the top of almost any industry."

Have you had any musical training? Do you think it has made you more successful? Why or why not?

In "Is Music the Key to Success?", Joanne Lipman writes about a possible correlation between musical training and outsize success in other fields.

Condoleezza Rice trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.

Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?

The connection isn't a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.

The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us ...

Do you play an instrument, or study music in any way? Do you know people who have? How has music helped you in other areas of your life?

Do you agree with Ms. Lipman that music sharpens important qualities, such as collaboration, creativity and discipline?

Do you think musical training can make someone more successful overall?

Is it just music that can help people achieve? What other hobbies do you think might result in the same kind of success?

If you could learn to play an instrument (or a different one than you already play), what would it be? Why?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Will Musical Training Make You More Successful?

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Focus. Discipline. Collaboration. Problem-Solving. According to a recent Op-Ed, musical training can teach you all of those things - which is perhaps why, this writer says, you can "find musicians at the top of almost any industry." Have you had any musical training? Do you think it has made you more successful?

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Contests

One of our 2017 editorial winners wrote about China's unofficial ban on Korean cultural exports, such as the boy band Exo. Credit... Starnews, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view.

Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself. When you're done, submit it using the contest form below by Thursday, April 5, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to read the rules, also below, before posting.

Our judges will then use this rubric (PDF) for selecting winners to publish on The Learning Network.

As teachers know, the persuasive essay has long been a staple of high school education, but the Common Core standards seem to have put evidence-based argumentative writing on everybody's agenda. You couldn't ask for a more real-world example of the genre than the classic newspaper editorial - and The Times publishes, on average, two of them a day.

And at a time when breaking out of one's "filter bubble" is more important than ever, we hope this contest also encourages students to broaden their news diets by using multiple sources, ideally ones that offer a range of perspectives on their chosen issue.

So what issue do you care about? Gun violence? Sexual harassment? Social media? You decide.

Good luck, and please post any questions you might have in the comments. We'll answer you there.

_________
Note: The submission form has been removed from this page. The contest is closed.
_________

Video

The New York Times's editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal provides seven tips for writing an effective editorial.

To help with this challenge, Andrew Rosenthal, in his previous role as Editorial Page editor of The Times, detailed seven pointers in the video above. And we have published related lesson plans, including " For the Sake of Argument: Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials," " I Don't Think So: Writing Effective Counterarguments" and " 10 Ways to Teach Argument-Writing With The New York Times," that offer additional teaching ideas.

We have also culled a list of 401 prompts for argumentative writing organized by category, to help inspire you - although, of course, you are not limited to those topics.

We encourage you to look at both our comments on last year's winners and the winning essays themselves. They can serve as excellent models, and they cover topics from active-shooter school lockdowns to Korean television shows in China.

In addition, you can watch our free, archived webinar, featuring the Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof and Kabby Hong, a high school English teacher.

1. Use at least one Times source. You can write your editorial about any topic, as long as you use at least one source from The Times. That should pretty much open the whole world to you, as you may be surprised how much you can find in The Times.

Be advised that nytimes.com has a digital subscription system in which readers have access to five free articles each month, but after that you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. The Times also offers K-12 digital subscription plans for schools. But all Learning Network activities for students, including our daily writing prompts, as well as Times articles linked from them, are free, so you can access them without exceeding the five-article limit.

2. Use at least one non-Times source. But make sure that the source you use is a reliable one. We encourage you to find sources that offer different perspectives on an issue.

3. Always cite your sources. Our submission form contains a required field for entering your citations. We include an example as well, though you can use M.L.A. or A.P.A. styles, or just list the website URLs. Even if you use a print source or an expert interview, you must provide a citation. Readers (and judges) should always know where you got your evidence.

4. Be concise. The editorial must not exceed 450 words. Your title and list of sources are separate, however, and do not count as part of your 450-word limit.

5. Have an opinion. Editorials are different from news articles because they try to persuade readers to share your point of view. Don't be afraid to take a stand.

6. Write your editorial by yourself or with a group. If you are working as a team, just remember to submit all of your names when you post your entry. But please submit only one editorial per student. If you're submitting as part of a team, you should not also submit as an individual.

7. Be original and use appropriate language. Write for a well-informed audience, but include enough background information to give context. Be careful not to plagiarize: Use quotation marks around lines you take verbatim from another source, or rephrase and cite your source.

8. Submissions must be from students who are 13 to 19 years old, and they may come from anywhere in the world. Unlike in previous years, students can now use their entire name if they want.

9. All entries must be submitted by April 5 at 11:59 p.m. Easternusing the contest form above. If you have questions about the contest, feel free to post them in the comments section, and we'll respond to you there.

10. Follow these instructions if you need proof that you entered this contest. Within an hour of submitting your editorial, you should receive an email from "The New York Times" with the subject heading "Thank you for your submission to our Student Editorial Contest." If you don't receive the email within an hour, even after checking your spam folder, then you can resubmit your entry. Be sure your settings allow emails from nytimes.com.

After two attempts and waiting over one full day, if you still have not received a confirmation email, you can contact us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com with the email address you used in the contest form. Use the subject heading "Please send me an email confirmation for my editorial contest submission." Be sure to include your name and editorial title (or subject) in your email. You may have to wait up to a week for a reply.

11. We will use this rubric (PDF) to judge entries, and the winning editorials will be featured on The Learning Network.

" Writing an Editorial" Unit Plan, by Lindsay Thompson

" Reader Idea | He Said, She Said, I Say: A Researched Argument Essay," by Danielle Harms

" Reader Idea | Using an Op-Doc Video to Teach Argumentative Writing," by Allison Marchetti

" Reader Idea | Using Room for Debate to Teach Argumentative Writing and Discussion Skills," by Gerard Dawson and Justin Rex

" Reader Idea | An Argument-Writing Unit: Crafting Student Editorials," by Kayleen Everitt

Good luck and have fun. We welcome your questions and comments if we have omitted details that might be useful. Let us know how we can help.

_________
The Learning Network runs contests for teenagers all year long. See our full calendar.

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Our Fifth Annual Student Editorial Contest: Write About an Issue That Matters to You (Published 2018)

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Contests The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view. Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself.

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Contests

One of this year's winners wrote about school lockdown drills. Related Article Credit... Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York Times

Update | Read the work of _________ this year's 10 winners here and this year's runners-up here.
For the past four years we've invited students to write short editorials about issues they care about, and each year thousands take up the challenge.

Students often start with thoughtful questions from their own lives: Why is my school's athletic program better funded than its music program? Why do we hide in the corner of our classroom during active shooter drills? Why don't my classmates stand during the Pledge of Allegiance? And they develop sophisticated, sincere and well researched answers in response.

Students look at the nation's and world's problems and hunt for solutions - to improve the plight of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China, for example, or to reduce recidivism rates for U.S. prisons.

We really like this contest because it asks students to look closely at their world and find something, large or small, they want to change. So, if you don't like being last in line all the time because your surname starts with "Z," then take a stand. If you want more characters in books and movies to be more like you, then write about it. If you want society to be less wasteful or more tolerant, then tell the world. Change starts with noticing, thinking critically, and starting meaningful conversations - and that's what these students have done in their editorials.

But winning this contest? It's no easy task being selected as a winner out of 7,895 entries, a record. How do you make your writing stand out from the piles of other editorials submitted to our contest - especially when you have no more than 450 words to get your point across?

Here's one way: Start strong. Grab our attention in the first few sentences, but don't take too long to state your argument.

Here's another: Pick a fresh topic, or a new angle on a popular topic, and be very clear about what you are arguing. Often when students narrow in on a specific concern, their editorial becomes more persuasive.

What else? Write with an original, confident voice and avoid formulaic language and structure. And if appropriate, acknowledge, and deftly dispatch, counterarguments.

Below, we list 10 winners, 15 runners-up and 45 honorable mentions. We also include a PDF of all the finalists, including 58 who made the cut to the third round of judging, but didn't quite reach the winner's circle.

Starting May 22, we will be publishing one of the Top 10 essays each weekday in posts that we hope you will spread on social media, hang on school bulletin boards and perhaps even use as "mentor texts" for next year's contest.

Thank you for participating - and we hope you'll take part in our Summer Reading Contest, starting June 16.

_________

Each category below lists our favorites in alphabetical order by title. Where titles were missing, we came up with our own.
Top 10 Winners
" A Psychedelic Cure?" by Reagan Briere, age 16
" In Nothing We Trust" by Francesca Kelley, age 18
" Leave the Citizens to Their TV Shows" by Yijia Hu, age 17
" Losing the Internet" by David Scharts, age 15
" Reform the Prison, Then the Prisoner" by Katherine Leonard, age 16
" Stopping Bullets With Locked Doors and Silence Is Already Pulling the Trigger" by Daina Kalnina, age 15
" The Anguish of the Rich" by Yiqi Wang, age 17
" The Asian Misnomer: What the Affirmative Action Debate Misses" by Matteo Wong, age 16
" The Collateral Damage of Defending Democracy" by Sarah Heiland, age 18
" The Missing Anthropological Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History " by Alec Farber, age 16
_________ Runners-Up
"America First" by Safa Saleh, age 17
"America? More Like Ameri-Can't Vote" by Gianni Carcagno, age 17
"Climate Literacy: A Critical Step Toward Climate Stability" by Ella Shriner, age 14 and Hannah Witscher, age 15
"Cultural Appropriation: A Measure of Empathy" by James Chang, age 16
"Discourse Is Democracy: Allowing Uncensored Speech on College Campuses" by Abigail Hogan, age 17
"Drone Warfare: The Failing Fight Against the Modern Hydra" by Michael Levinger, age 16
"Generation Code Red" by Grace Scullion, age 16
"Humane Human Zoo?" by Ella Ward, age 15
"Paper or Plastic? How About a Paper ON Plastic!" by Melody Markert, age 17
"The Future Disintegration of American Democracy Through Athletics" by Julianne Yu, age 16
"The Case for Teaching News Literacy" by Mary Hannah Grier, age 17
"The Unspoken Alphabet Problem" by Stephanie Zhang, age 14
"The 'War on Drugs' Will Never Work; Legalization Will" by Kristina Vakhman, age 18
"There Is No Happily Ever After Without Once Upon a Time" by Bridget O'Leary, age 17
"When Will This Class Be Useful?" by Casey Stark, age 15
_________ Honorable Mentions
"#WorldChanger" by Joyce Zhou, age 17
"A Case for Impassiveness" by Lea Marchl, age 16
"A Scoop in the Right Direction" by Emma S., age 18
"AP Tests Don't Leave Enough Room for the Human Side of History" by Tom Malmgren, age 16
"Are My Shoulders Distracting You?" by Mairi Alice Dun, age 17
"Autism: Educated and Extraordinary" by Isabella Zhang, age 17
"Bittersweet" by Rena Rachlin, age 15 "Child Labor in the U.S. Today" by Jasmine Campos, age 16 and Charlotte Principal, age 16
"China Needs Silver Lining" by Wangchen Zhou, age 17
"Colleges Should Abandon Race-Based Affirmative Action to Achieve True Diversity" by Eric Davis, age 18
"Embrace the Mess" by Chi Yu, age 14
"Fast Fashion Is Destroying Our World" by Melissa Wang, age 17
"Food Stamps Need a Change" by Patrick Meara, age 17
"Governor Cuomo Frees the Plastic Bagss" by Jiayan Chen, age 17
"Help Wanted: Moderate Politicians" by Ireland Degges, age 17
"High School Should Not Just Be About Sports" by Swathi Kella, age 16
"How Far Can Post-Truth Democracy Take Us?" by Jiahe Yang, age 18
"How to Revitalize the Public Education System" by Dhara Yu, age 18
"Last Man Standing" by Kathryn Porter, age 16
"Leave Me Alone" by Celia Silver, age 17
"More Than a Morning Kick" by Emma Cary, age 16
"Multiple Choice: Not Multiple Enough" by Yi-Mei Templeman, age 17
"Picking Cotton: An Immigrant's Perspective" by Allan Njomo, age 16
"Post-Democracy" by Nadav Ziv, age 17
"Should Juvenile Offenders Receive Life Sentences Without Parole on Their First Offense?" by Tayler Gavetti, age 16
"Should Obamacare Be Repealed?" by William Pharo, age 16
"Single Payer: A Cure for America's Healthcare Woes" by Akshay Manglik, age 13
"Streaky Friendship" by Yuxin Long, age 16
"Technology: A Hindrance to Learning" by Zachary Weiss, age 17
"Teens, Technology, and The Pursuit of Happiness" by Sam Jagolinzer, age 17
"The Bluest Note" by Nicholas Dasoveanu, age 18
"The College Conspiracy" by Serenity W., age 17
"The Cost of Health Care May Be in Your Genes" by Sophia Lo, age 16
"The Demoralizing of the Elizabethan Language" by Olivia Seymour, age 14
"The Disposable Nightmare" by Tianxin Guo, age 14
"The Education Gap" by Adam Traweek, age 16 "The Environment in the Age of Trump" by Elliot Tuttle, age 17
"The Growing Problem of Screen Addiction" by Kaitlin Craig, age 16
"The Picture of Education We Must Change" by Danielle Naidrich, age 17
"Tipping the Pay Scale" by Ruhee Damle, age 14
"Untitled" by Melinda Hartz, age 16
"We Should Be Teaching Rap Music in Schools" by Jack Zuckerman, age 19
"What Do You Call Someone That Only Speaks One Language? An American." by Paige Patton, age 16
"Where Are All the Rainbows?" by Storm Viridian Murray, age 17
"Where Trump's Ban Stands Legally" by Marcus Linde, age 16
_________ And All the Finalists, Including 58 More Great Editorials That Made It to Round 3 (PDF) Judges: Amanda Christy Brown, Shannon Doyne, Caroline Crosson Gilpin, Michael Gonchar, Annissa Hambouz, Thomas Houston, Shira Katz, Willow Lawson, Linda Leavitt, Sue Mermelstein, Anna North, Roxie Salamon-Abrams, Katherine Schulten, Matt Schwarzfeld, Natlie Shutler and Kate Spence-Ado

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A Call to Action: Winners From Our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest (Published 2017)

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Contests Update | Read the work of _________ this year's 10 winners here and this year's runners-up here . For the past four years we've invited students to write short editorials about issues they care about, and each year thousands take up the challenge.

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Though Democrats and Republicans are at sharp odds over the direction, funding and effectiveness of public education and school choice, schools of the arts often bridge the partisan divide.

Many of them are magnet schools, which grew out of a hard-fought battle: desegregation. The hope was that by removing geographic barriers to admission, magnet schools would attract students with a special interest, be it science and technology or the arts, from both high-performing and underperforming schools.

Most of the schools accept large numbers of minority and low-income students. Of New World's approximately 500 students, about 60 percent are Hispanic and 13 percent black, generally reflecting the makeup of Miami. Thirty-six percent are poor enough for free or reduced-price lunch.

The list of success stories is long.

Tarell Alvin McCraney grew up in one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods, Liberty City, and lost his mother to AIDS-related complications. A 1999 New World graduate, he went on to receive a MacArthur "genius" grant and share a screenwriting Oscar for "Moonlight," the best picture winner based on his semi-autobiographical play.

Robert Battle grew up in the same neighborhood. A graduate of New World in 1990 and then the Juilliard School, he is the artistic director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Alex Lacamoire, a 1992 New World graduate, is a two-time Grammy and three-time Tony winner (for orchestration for "In the Heights," "Hamilton" and "Dear Evan Hansen"). His father was partially paralyzed by an aneurysm; to pay the bills, his mother had to work odd jobs, including at a grocery store and funeral parlor. But his parents' devotion to his talent was boundless.

Other arts schools advertise their own heady roster of graduates. Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York, setting for the 1980 film "Fame," counts Jennifer Aniston, Isaac Mizrahi and Al Pacino as alumni. The Baltimore School for the Arts boasts Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur. Norah Jones and Erykah Badu went to Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas.

Graduates remember school days filled with impromptu singing in stairwells, drumming on tables and pirouetting down hallways. Looking back, they point to one crucial ingredient, beyond intensive, daily training: talent. That was the common denominator - skin tone, sexual identity and ZIP code were often beside the point. "If you are surrounded by people who are excelling and pushing themselves to be great, that is infectious," said Mr. Lacamoire, a Cuban-American.

The schools function largely as meritocracies; an admission policy based on auditions offers a nontraditional path for those whose talents lay outside chemistry, math and English, and helps even the playing field for students from low-income neighborhoods.

Evonne S. Alvarez, New World's principal, said students from this year's graduating class of 114 received multiple scholarship offers adding up to $36 million. They were admitted to numerous Ivies (two are Harvard bound), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and top-tier conservatories at Juilliard and Carnegie Mellon. About half will pursue the arts in college, be it theater, dance, music or visual arts, Ms. Alvarez said.

New World students can also slide right into its college program, administered with its partners, Miami Dade College and the University of Florida, although only a handful take this path.

*

Inside New World classes, energy and focus are infectious. In one room, juniors rehearse harmonies at the piano, again and again. A few rooms away, sophomores sit on the floor and listen to classmates taking turns doing scenes from "Romeo and Juliet." Art students paint complicated experimental self-portraits. At wood shop, students build a set for "Anon(ymous)," a play about a young refugee. And in dance, they leap and spin as they rehearse their spring recital.

"To the front," said their teacher, Peter London. "Get in the air. Stay together. Stay together." They gather in a line, tumble to the ground and rise up again.

After school lets out, students spend hours rehearsing or working backstage. They write plays. They plan for art exhibits. When they finally get home, sometimes late at night, they turn their attention once again to academics, a grueling schedule for even the most adept student.

Because grades are not a factor in admission, students from underperforming schools often arrive unprepared, Ms. Alvarez said. They must maintain a C average academically and a B average in arts. It helps that classes are small and students have close relationships with their teachers, tutors and mentors. Teachers, mindful of long rehearsals and performances, will sometimes juggle tests and papers to accommodate their schedules.

"It was so stressful," acknowledged Ms. Cameron, who woke at 5:30 a.m. to take the bus to school and, during busy rehearsal or performance weeks, sometimes stayed up until 4 a.m. doing homework. "I cried over so many assignments."

But instead of letting poor grades defeat her, Ms. Cameron pushed harder. She attended long study sessions with classmates. Losing a coveted spot at the school was not an outcome she was willing to risk.

Traditional public schools often don't tap into students' passion and motivation to succeed, whether arts or specific subjects, said Chris Ford, director of the Baltimore School for the Arts, a public school that opened in 1980. At his school, which is 47 percent African-American, 50 percent of ninth graders arrive at below grade level, he said. By the end of senior year, 97 to 100 percent graduate on time and are college bound. This year's 90 graduates were offered a total of $14 million in scholarships, and many are headed to top-tier colleges, including Juilliard, University of Chicago, Vassar, Middlebury and the Royal Academy of Music in London.

"That is not what you expect in an urban public school," he said. "Our students do that because our school connects with their future."

Linda F. Nathan, the founding headmaster of Boston Arts Academy and author of books on urban education, said something else is at play and it is important. Underprivileged students are studying, rehearsing, dancing, painting and having lunch with middle-class or wealthy ones; each group learns from the other. Boston Arts Academy, a pilot school mandated to try new and different approaches to improve learning for at-risk students, is more than two-thirds low income, and most students are black or Hispanic.

"But the fact that you have one-third of the school that is not high-needs changes everything," Ms. Nathan said. "Rising tides lift all boats."

Of this year's graduates, 92 percent are bound for a two- or four-year college - Bunker Hill Community College, University of Hartford and University of Massachusetts among them. B​ecause of insufficient financial aid offers, some won't be attending their first-choice college - one student had to pass on Berklee College of Music.

Mr. McCraney said he went to New World with the children of the Bee Gees and the Cuban-American musician Willy Chirino. That window into how others live and work was eye-opening and helped him embrace the importance of his own Liberty City narrative. "I had classmates whose parents sent drivers to pick them up," Mr. McCraney said. "I also had classmates who were sleeping at their 'drag mother's' house for protection from their biological family. I knew what it was to struggle to eat, or to worry about clothes - not designer, just whether you had any. But there were many teachers and my classmates who helped me realize that my story was as important as everyone else's. It took me a minute - but I did."

Another lesson: The arts command a tremendous amount of teamwork and discipline, skills that would serve in any profession. Students learn to accept and apply a constant stream of constructive criticism. Enter a ballet class and teachers are forever tweaking and adjusting students' bodies. In theater, students hear feedback on line delivery and character interpretation. "Try again" is everyday vocabulary, and that is one of life's most important lessons.

"Critique is the key in anything," Ms. Nathan said. "You learn how to do something very hard: You learn to take criticism."

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new world school of the arts (miami  fla)

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Where All the School's a Stage, and the List of Success Stories Is Long

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Though Democrats and Republicans are at sharp odds over the direction, funding and effectiveness of public education and school choice, schools of the arts often bridge the partisan divide. Many of them are magnet schools, which grew out of a hard-fought battle: desegregation.

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YOU'RE AN ALLSTAR