Thanks @SpartanDrew and @astute12 for the feedback!
New School is definitely on her radar. She’s had it recommended to her as a place where great things are happening, with a strong jazz drum faculty in particular. Her current drum teacher at MSM Precollege recommended it, as did Nikki Glaspie, one of her drumming heroes. It’s an easy visit for us too since she’s in NYC every Saturday for Pre-college. I was a little thrown off by that open letter blog post by Sasha Berliner, but I suspect that’s just the reality of being a female jazz instrumentalist in a lot of places.
I’m not surprised by the $$ discrepancy between the programs. The handful of popular music programs are new enough and novel enough (there are so few of them) that I doubt they have to provide any additional inducements to joining for the kids who want that track. On the other hand there are loads of great jazz programs out there, so even the top schools feel they have to sweeten the deal to fight a bit harder for the kids they want. Or that’s just my gut POV as a marketing guy who spends a lot of time on segmentation and demand/supply problems.
Sounds like EA at UM isn’t really helpful for us. Only reason she was interested was getting an audition done early (like you can with Berklee). She’s a solid student, but not so extraordinary she’ll be eligible for the top academic awards.
On USC, @astute12 do you mean he’s in both programs at school currently? If so, I’d give my right arm to be able to put my daughter in touch with him. She met with the Deans of both programs when we visited in the Spring. And while they were both encouraging about the ability to cross-pollinate between the programs, they were light on details and logistics of how that works or how one would apply for that scenario.