Transfer student Alissa Kronson ’07 (left) used to study oboe at the prestigious Hart School of Music at the University of Harford, but after years of agonizing over her future, decided to become an accountant instead. She transferred to McDaniel the summer before her senior year.

“I’m a pretty logical person. Accounting makes sense. It just seems so logical how cash comes in, cash comes out,” Kronson says.

Music Professor Margaret Boudreaux isn’t surprised a music student would also be talented in mathematics. She says scientists have long debated a connection.

“There is something in the brain that deals with pattern recognition,” Boudreaux says, citing the book “The Math Gene” by Keith Devlin.  “The thing that sets humans apart from other animals is the ability and compulsion to see patterns, and there is pattern recognition in music around the world, but especially in the Western Classical tradition.”

 “Certainly the idea of math and meter in music and timing plays an important role,” adds Psychology Lecturer Paul Mazeroff.

One needs look no further for evidence than Albert Einstein, a great fan of Mozart and Brahms, who once told a newspaper, “If I hadn’t been a physicist, I would have been a musician. I often think in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

Kronson’s hazel eyes sparkle as she talks about her love of accounting and economics. Helping a single mother of three do her taxes through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program made quite an impression on the Business Administration and Economics major.

“It’s nice when something you know how to do helps someone else,” Kronson says. “I like helping people.”

Growing up in Montgomery County, Kronson dreamed of concert performances and critical acclaim. But once in college, visions of the spotlight faded and she started looking for another path.

“Once I started taking it for grades, I wasn’t there. It just didn’t feel right,” she says.

Kronson, who took calculus in high school and always considered herself good in math, decided to study Economics and chose McDaniel, in part, because it is closer to her home.

“She heard our program was good in business and wanted to come here and be an Economics major,” Milstein said. “It’s kind of like magic the way she took to it.”

Milstein helped Kronson land an internship at Bond Beebe, a prestigious accounting firm in Bethesda, where she’ll work this summer. Although she has put away her oboe for now, Kronson says she will always love music and isn’t giving it up forever.

“I want music to be fun and not a grade,” she says. “I’m sure after I graduate I’ll go back to playing some oboe.”