Hi, I see your name come up as an expert in all the areas I’m researching! If you have your lists already at hand, I would love to see these as well. My son is a senior strings player at LaGuardia HS in NYC, honing in on a handful of composition programs where he would not be tethered to a primary instrument (he’s ready to move on from classical cello which he’s been doing as a major in school since 6th grade! much more excited about jazz and contemporary guitar at this point) - and where he can take as much music theory/practice as his heart desires, without being limited to just classical. He doesn’t have much exposure to jazz at this point so he won’t be a great candidate for a jazz program of any kind, including a jazz comp program, but he’d love to have access to more of that in college. He has some exposure to DAWs and electroacoustic composition, but is not primarily interested in experimental sound creation. And neither do his moms want him to go to college to focus on sound engineering, which we feel he can pick up as needed as a “day job” kind of practice. He’s excited about BARD and SUNY Purchase, Oberlin less bc he doesn’t feel like either the regular Conp program or Timara are quite the right fit for him (not sure I trust his instinct here) and we have yet to learn much about Northwestern but it seems promising. He wasn’t excited about CMU - although I was! - and we’re trying to steer him clear of Berklee. I’d love to know if I’m missing some other obvious choices! (he leans towards staying in the north east, and won’t consider Miami bc of Florida politics in general…doesn’t want to go to CA for now; Penn or Columbia probably out of reach or long shots). Thanks!!
I am not @compmom who is definitely the expert, but have you thought about Loyola New Orleans? It’s not in the northeast, but I think it has a lot of the programs (and maybe/probably) the flexibility your son is seeking.
Funny, TIMARA at Oberlin was the first program that came to mind. They have this nifty link to the curriculum for each major that is buried in their website and hard to find, but it shows the courses throughout the four years. Here’s the link to the TIMARA program for your reference, in case you haven’t seen it.
I’m sure something similar can be found on most school websites if you dig deep enough.
THanks! I didn’t know about Loyola so I’ll check it out now - appreciate it!
I will PM you. Loyola may be a good addition. It helps to know your budget before making suggestions 
Does he have a portfolio? What kinds of pieces? How much jazz has he done and what stoked his interest? What does he mean by “contemporary guitar”?
Is he seeing Oberlin as either classical or experimental and feeling that he falls in the cracks? More on that later…
@elm100 I sent you a private message.
elm100 has not come back…
He should look at Composition at Peabody/Johns Hopkins. There is no instrumental audition required, but he would need to submit a portfolio.
If he is interested in Berklee Composition and willing to play cello in ensembles, he may get substantial merit (in case $$ was your objection to Berklee).
Peabody also has a new Music for New Media program. It sounds like the OP’s son does not want to do classical composition.
Boston Conservatory merged with Berklee and is another possibility for a multi-faceted kid who would also benefit from access to Berklee along with the focused, personalized experience of BoCo.The composition faculty at BoCo is excellent.
Thanks for all these responses! I lost my thread in a sea of tabs researching all these programs… I will check out Loyola and also put Brown on our list - his the mark in the northeast and i would be delighted for him to be in such an intense academic environment (my wife and i are wesleyan alum and sadly accepting that their music program is a little too limited for him) - but unless the music department at Brown has some sway over admissions, AND found his portfolio to be worth fighting for, I think that’s probably not realistic for him (95.7 WGPA/1440 superscored SAT).
Budget - we can pay for much if not all of a private tuition. But there will be not a cent left for grad school or any other support. If he went to say SUNY, we might be able to help him with, eg, grad school or give a boost as he tries to get his band off the ground or something. And, honestly, we’re not sure we are WILLING to pay for Berklee. The for profit certificate-style programs are a real turn off to us; I don’t trust that the school has the student’s best interests at heart, from what I’ve seen and read, it seems like their profit is the motivating drive.
He does have a portfolio - there is a piece writing in an MSM program in traditional composition, it’s a theme and variations in a roughly romantic style, that veers in to playful/even goofy in the variations, for piano and strings. A second piece was written in a Tanglewood summer program - an electroacoustic composition that is quite experimental to my ears – not to say he’s broken the mold but rather that it is not traditional tonal melodic music, more of a soundscape; his third piece is a sweet baroque duet he wrote and performed with his cello teacher. He’s in a new music class now, at school, but may not have finished work in time for portfolios - definitely not for any early applications - and he also has some DIY recordings of his punk band. Which we would include on a linked page of his work but not as a piece of a portfolio.
He has done only little jazz - a few remote summer courses during pandemic, and he’s in an improv ensemble now at school.
“Contemporary guitar” - it is hard for me to pin that down. He’s learning jazz but also pop/rock/blues, and he does not profess to want to do “song writing” but having also eliminated every other genre as his main focus, it is really hard for me to say. If he auditions on guitar anywhere, it will be jazz. (eg for berklee).
So you can see from this list of interests but also what he says he doesn’t want to do - doesn’t want to be just classical, doesn’t want to be just electroacoustic, doesn’t want to do songwriting, and has said in the past he doesn’t want to do jazz, though that could be a symptom of being not proficient enough to be competitive for a specialized/conservatory program where he’d be applying to ALREADY be good at it . . . this leaves us with almost nothing in our sweet spot. Which has led us to consider BA programs where he would have the flexibility to experiment but in almost every case when we look at the course offerings/major requirements for BAs he finds they don’t offer as much as he wants! Bard and SUNY Purchase look promising to him; I liked Tufts and Carnegie Mellon but he did not; Oberlin is a maybe bc he isn’t sure which program would best capture his interests, and then we have a long list of maybes . . .
I appreciate everyone’s thoughts on this, and sorry for vanishing! I’m simultaneously working on high school and middle school apps for our younger two kids, here in NYC where they don’t have zoned schools past elementary - it’s a heavy lift!!
THANKS!
Wesleyan has a good music department, and has always favored diversity, “world music” long before other schools did.
For a multi-faceted kid who is just beginning to change interests, a BA program might be best. Ideally one with a larger percentage of music classes in the major and fewer or on gen eds (Brown, Amherst, Hamilton). He could look at Bennington, where work is self-driven (and also there is a winter field work term).
He could do a BM in composition with his portfolio and try to focus on more progressive schools. Again, Boston Conservatory gives access to Berklee. Oberlin, Bard, Lawrence, Hartt, U of Denver, MSM, Mannes at the New School (which also has jazz) come to mind. Northwestern grad program is progressive.
If he wants grad school and money is an issue, he can apply in Canada, UK/Europe or apply to PhD programs that are funded with a master’s along the way. So there are ways around that financial concern.
I just saw that you got my PM so I will switch to that!