Congrats!!! I agree Purchase is a great school. And I am glad my post was helpful. My son had his senior recital this past Sunday. The past four years have flown by. He landed exactly where he should land and they have been four very happy years. I hope your son’s next years are the same!! And maybe some day he will meet my son. One thing I love about Bass players is that they are ridiculously nice to each other. As a group I think they win the award for being the nicest instrumentalists in the music industry.
So happy to read this too! Your son sounds like a great kid with a great attitude. His maturity and flexibility will serve him well over the next 4 years. Enjoy the college ride!
I am so glad you shared the detailed story. It is a very good story. S and I will keep it in mind as S follows his own path next year for jazz bass.
Great thread @indeestudios and congratulations to your son on having choices, great ones at that. My D and I have been through a similar journey and I can understand your perspective. While not a bass player, my D is a Contemporary Vocalist and has only been studying seriously for the past 2 years. I think we’re in the same boat financially too but my situation was divorce related and the custody battle to get my D to live with me so she could study music wiped out all the college savings I had initially hoped to have for her.
We’re Westchester/CT folks and she looked at some of the same schools as your S and she applied and was accepted to The New School and received some modest financial aid. She would have loved to go there but it was her second most expensive school. Her first choice is Berklee and she was honored to be accepted there as well but received absolutely no aid. While I’d still love to see her go there, its not feasible financially. She got 1/3 to 1/2 merit offers from The College of St. Rose, and the University of the Arts earlier in the year and we were trying to figure out how to make those work with we had to but she didn’t love St. Rose and U Arts was still a big financial stretch.
She was very fortunate to get a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Memphis and while she loved the program, teachers, and performance opportunities she didn’t like the city itself that much. She also received a 2/3 offer from Loyola University in New Orleans and absolutely loved the program which was similar if not a little better than Memphis but with the big plus that she absolutely loved the city.
Loyola costs a lot more than Memphis which made the out of pocket costs more challenging but she and I were wrestling with whether it made sense to take on the costs including loans and the potential of having to go to court to get help from her mother who didn’t support her studying music at all.
This week she made the smart choice and has decided to attend Memphis and feels it makes sense to go the financially prudent route. She’ll also have more performance opportunities there as she’s already been invited to perform with a student band. I like Memphis for her because I think she’ll have an opportunity to be a big fish in a smaller pond, compared to places like Berklee or The New School, which I know a few others have mentioned. She will be far from home which is a factor but hoping she’ll do well and create a good support and social network.
Again, Purchase, William Paterson, New School and NEC are all great choices but going into debt especially for music makes it tough starting out financially. I’m sure you both will make a smart decision and your S will end up right where he’s supposed to be!
Congrats on a full-tuition scholarship at Memphis, along with all your wonderful choices! (I’d love to hear her…she must be terrific!) For a female vocalist, I would think having more opportunity to shine, earlier, would definitely be an advantage, so it sounds like a great choice for her.
This whole process is so intense, and in some ways feels like a kind of culmination of our efforts as parents. It is hard to not get swept up in the emotion of it . But really, it is just the beginning for them. If they can get the educational foundation they need to make a go at music and a great school with a great price tag, and we as parents aren’t too financially wiped out to help them embark on their career once that is done, that is definitely a win-win. 
I want to say thanks to all those who have shared their stories about their final selection here. As we head into the college application process, it is really helpful to read about the choices made among programs based on cost as well as many other factors. To form our initial list we have mostly focused on the professor/studio but are now also looking much deeper into programs in order to help narrow our list in a more targeted way based on curriculum and financial factors. These threads also give me some nice anecdotal examples to share with DS in our conversations about financing college. Congrats to all Class of 2016 kids and parents!
@indeestudios, I thought of you this evening because I went to see a show at Jazz at Lincoln Center with my son, and when I got there, they had a “pre-show” in the atrium with a very talented young trio. My son knew all of them - they were Purchase students whom my son had played with. They really sounded great! I have no doubt that your son is going to have a wonderful time at Purchase. And maybe I’ll see him someday performing at JALC.
Thanks @jazzpianodad ! I hope so! I love hearing that, and will pass it along to S! He’s thrilled about his choice, now that it is made, and is so excited to get started next fall. 
In case anyone considering the SUNY Purchase jazz program runs across this thread in the future, there is a nice bit about the school in this interview with Kenny Washington in the February NYC Jazz Record: