As your son was interested in UT because of the music performance possibilities, I looked at some lists of best cities for live music or best cities for musicians and then cross-referenced with universities to see if your son was interested in any of these. These universities all have enrollments under 15,000, most of which have significantly fewer students. I placed a CTCL if it is considered one of the Colleges That Change Lives. Most of these are going to have smaller class sizes as well. In some places I excluded some of the most competitive universities, but they’d be easy to add back in if you were interested.
- Albuquerque: U. of New Mexico
- Austin: St. Edwards, Southwestern (metro area, CTCL)
- Boston: Emerson
- Charlotte: Davidson (metro)
- Chicago: DePaul, Lake Forest, Wheaton (45m, CTCL), Northwestern
- Cleveland: John Carroll, Case Western
- Denver: U. of Denver, Regis
- Memphis: Rhodes, a CTCL
- Miami: U. of Miami
- Milwaukee: Marquette
- Minneapolis: Macalester, Carleton & St. Olaf (both about 45m from Minneapolis, St. Olaf is a CTCL)
- Nashville: Lipscomb & Vanderbilt
- New Orleans: Tulane, Loyola
- Newark & New York City: Fordham, Seton Hall
- Omaha: Creighton
- Orlando: Rollins
- Pittsburgh: Duquesne
- Portland: Reed (CTCL)
- Rochester: U. of Rochester, Rochester Inst. of Technology, Hobart & William Smith (45m)
- Saint Louis: Saint Louis U & Washington U.
- San Antonio: Trinity
- Seattle: U. of Puget Sound (CTCL)
- Tampa: U. of Tampa
- Washington, D.C.: American, George Washington, Georgetown