<p>At many of these schools, like Yale, the quality of the ensembles depends on the particular mix of students that year -- they are not recruited to be performers, as are students in a conservatory. There are many very talented musicians who go to Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Brown (a top drummer from my kid's high school, conservatory material, chose Brown and is enjoying it but goes to NEC for lessons; Brown also has a very good undergraduate musicology program) -- but as discussed above, most have decided that they will not be performers and do not spend their summers at festivals, etc., so their time commitments will be far less. The orchestra at Stanford, by the way, is mediocre; the Cal orchestra is quite good by comparison. But neither can match the quality of the SFS Youth Orchestra, which will accept students from both schools until they are 21. Stanford has a resident string quartet (St. Lawrence); so does Chicago (8th Blackbird), so the coaching would be good for ensembles. Both also have terrific musicology programs. Stanford has music history and theory but no ethnomusicology and no performance major (they used to have one, but eliminated it several years ago on the basis that it wasn't good enough to continue offering it); Chicago has very good ethnomusicology and theory, as well as historical musicology. The tenured music faculties at these schools don't involve themselves in the performance options. Unfortunately many musicologists don't think highly of performers as colleagues...and vice versa.</p>