Editor’s Note 6/5/2021: SMU students are no longer able to obtain free tickets from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

A little known fact: Dallas Symphony Orchestra tickets are free for SMU students.

Thanks to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s partnership with SMU, there’s a DSO College Card program where students can pick up a “College Card” and register that card online. Once that’s done, you just bring your College Card and SMU ID to the Meyerson Symphony Center and voilá! You can claim a concert ticket for free. Any of your non-College Card guests will get 25 percent off their ticket price.

You can pick up the card in the Office of Student Experience, which is in Suite 318 on the third floor of HTSC. (For the non-first year students who are confused, Student Affairs restructured last summer. We now have the Office of Student Experience.)

SMU students can also pick up college cards from the Meadows Box Office (near Greer Garson Theater, facing Hillcrest Avenue.) The box office is open noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Let’s recap: you can pick up a college card in either HTSC Suite 318 or the Meadows Box Office.

Because of SMU’s relationship with the Dallas Museum of Art, we have DMA perks as well:

–free admission to all ticketed exhibitions for all employees and students with your SMU ID (translation: DMA is free)
-DMA Family Day on SMU Family Weekend, which allows access for SMU students, faculty, and staff as well as up to five guests
-Special exhibition admission for SMU Meadows alumni plus one guest with proof of SMU Homecoming Barbecue registration when it’s Homecoming
-free or member discounts to Late Nights as well as Arts and Letters Live. The latter brings amazing authors to Dallas.

SMU Meadows Dean Holland spearheaded this College Card program and the DMA sponsorship. The College Card program allows Dallas area university students from UNT, UTA, Paul Quinn College, and SMU to attend the Symphony. Over 21,000 cards were distributed, and there are thousands that have yet to be redeemed.

The College Card program is a result of a six-month “pretty intense dialogue with the leadership of the DSO,” Dean Holland said.

“We’re still figuring it out, by the way, how to make every student at SMU aware of this. And not everybody will take it, but it’s really meant for everybody, not just music students,” Holland said. I hope it will lead to date night for Greeks, or for Cox’s School of Business students, and that they’ll go and have a great experience at the symphony.”