<p>Hello, this is my first time posting anything on-line. My son is completing his sophomore year at Goucher College in Towson, MD. He is a passionate guitar player and is majoring in Jazz Studies. He loves playing jazz/funk/improvisation, especially with small ensembles. He is doing quite well, with straight "A's" so far. But he seems to be very unhappy. He announced over the weekend that he wants to transfer to another school. He has an excellent jazz guitar teacher and a good advisor at Goucher, but he is somewhat of a "big fish" in a "small sea". I think he is afraid to speak to them about the idea of transferring. Goucher is an very good liberal arts college with a decent music department, but it is quite small. Most students participate in the music ensembles "for fun". My son wants to be a professional musician. He feels like he is sleep-walking through his classes. He wants to be challenged. He would like to go school with peers who are better than him, not only motivating him to work harder (he already practices several hours a day) but also to encourage creative collaboration. He fears that playing with musicians that are not as serious as he is is actually interfering with his development as he does not have to be on the top of his game to sound good. One complication is that he does have a girlfriend at Goucher, so he would prefer to stay within a couple hours of the school, but if he is best suited for a more distant school, he would make the move. He is also concerned that is getting late in his college career to transfer- he likely could not make the change until his senior year or at best, the spring of his junior year- are there any great schools still accepting applications/auditions for this coming fall of 2009? To start, he wants to look into Peabody (because it is close), Shenandoah, New England Conservatory. He did attend the Berklee 5 week summer program a few years ago and might consider that, also. I would be grateful for any thoughts about these schools, esp. from the perspective of a transfer student. Also, I welcome other ideas. Thanks for reading my long-winded post!</p>