DJ Mandy Is Going Even Harder After Graduating College

The night before her graduation from UC Berkeley in May, Amanda Schultz was in a whole different city. She was prepping to play a set at Las Vegas’ iconic EDM festival Electric Daisy Carnival as her alter ego, DJ Mandy. “On top of that, I was also packing to move. So it was just everything happening at once,” the 22-year-old says. The next morning, she hopped on a flight to make it back to her commencement ceremony. “I was exhausted at graduation; I didn’t think I’d survive.”

For the past three years, Schultz has been living this Hannah Montana-style double life — a college student studying society and environment by day, and a traveling rave queen by night. Postgrad, she’s excited to dive into her music career full-time. “I’m manifesting more shows, more original music, and to just be able to continue doing this,” she says.

One of her first major performances as a college graduate will be Breakaway Festival in New York City on July 17. It’s a somewhat familiar environment, as Mandy has previously played Breakaway in Dallas, Grand Rapids, and Tampa, but this marks the first time the EDM event will be in the Big Apple. “I’m always honored to be part of Breakaway, and I’m really excited it’s expanding to New York. It’s going to be a great vibe,” Mandy says.

Ever since she blew up on TikTok in 2023 by posting purposely ridiculous DJ sets, Mandy has been building up her résumé with country-spanning tours, inventive collabs, and her own original music releases.

It took some calculated risk-taking to get here. In her early era of internet virality, where she’d expressionlessly share the most hilariously cacophonous mixes she could dream up, Mandy worried people might misinterpret her sarcastic content as a dig at the art form itself. “I could laugh off the people who obviously didn’t get that I was doing it intentionally, but part of me also felt slightly bad because I didn’t want to be mocking DJing,” Mandy says. “So I got where some comments were coming from, but I was never trying to make fun of DJing in any way.”

Not everyone got what DJ Mandy was doing, but the ones who got it, really got it. That included early praise from Olivia Rodrigo, Charli xcx, and John Summit. “I was in awe because these are people that I’ve been inspired by and have looked up to for years. It felt unreal seeing those comments,” Mandy says. She was especially struck by Summit recognizing her work. “There were a lot of celebrities noticing me, but he was an inspiration for me in the DJ world, not just a pop artist. It was memorable because he represented the path I wanted to go in.”

As DJ Mandy cuts to her next beat — she envisions releasing her own album “hopefully down the line” — she’s tackling postgrad life the same way she approaches a festival set: by taking it as it comes. “I would say that it’s good to make plans, but it’s more important to read the energy of the crowd,” Mandy says. “At first I was planning every single thing because I was nervous. But once I got more comfortable, I realized it’s best to just go with the flow and see what happens.”