I should have just saved my money and moved to NYC in 82. It wasn't REALLY a waste of time, I met some nice cats there and got to do some playing. But I could have met some nice cats and done some playing in New York, too.
On that note, how is it that Berklee is the only school you mention by name? Do you not know of any other schools that have jazz majors in music performance? There are a lot, just here in the NYC area are - Manhattan School of Music, Mannes, the New School, Columbia, CUNY, SUNY Purchase, Queens College, Hartt School of Music, Juilliard, William Patterson. And there's lots more out there - New England Conservatory in Boston, North Texas State in Denton, U of Miami, the Mancini Institute. Both DownBeat and JazzTimes publish a yearly issue of Jazz Education, I'm sure that the IAJE website has links to schools. Hell, you could do a google search and turn stuff up.
Almost without exception schools that offer jazz performance also require you to play upright. So that's a consideration.
But if you're for real about wanting a "career" on jazz, you better get real serious real quick. 16 or 17 isn't a bad time to start but if the only exposure you've had to playing this music is high school jazz band, the real world is a vastly different place. There are a BUNCH of musicians here in NYC that are in their early to mid 20's that are killin' and that's who you are going to be competing for gigs with. Most of these cats end up in NYC because wherever they were from out there in the world, they were pretty much the cat in town and were looking for more challenges and more opportunities. And they get here and suddenly they are surrounded by others who were the cat in town, everybody sounds great and has something going on. It can spur growth, it can mess with your head. But if you don't have some things straight before you get here, life can be very disappointing, very quickly.
BUSHYGROOVE pointed out that Berklee's acceptance rate (I still giggle) is 80% of applications. My buddy Dan (who you can hear playing tenor if you go to the DB side of the board and look in the RECORDINGS section for a link to the TB/DB sampler - he's on the cut SOME OTHER TIME) is the Director of Administration for the Jazz Studies Program at the New School and he says that they have plenty of room fro qualified applicants in that program.
Link Removed a link, if you want to check it out.
