<p>Thanks very much for this additional information. I should have clarified - son is a rising sophomore in high school. He started piano young at 6, added guitar and voice, then decided to try tuba becaue it looked funny. That got to be a bit much, so he decided to focus on tuba. He plays that in his high school band, and he’s about to start a music theory class. </p>
<p>His teachers have confirmed that he has very fine pitch perception, and he has always been very curious about sound quality. He started playing with mixing software as soon as he got his hands on my iPad, and quickly moved on to mixing boards and sound machines. He’s posted original work to SoundCloud, and this summer he took courses in digital music composition and music production. </p>
<p>That said, he is still discovering his abilities and interests in other areas, including visual arts, and he’s also very interested in science. Hence our focus, for now at least, on music programs in liberal arts colleges and universities. </p>
<p>On those, if I may come back on both Dartmouth and Columbia - those are examples of schools that seemed to have a few undergraduate courses, but not the same depth of offerings for the undergraduate major as the other school I listed. Please no flaming - I have ties to one and good friends from the other, and so will be happy to stand corrected. But to be clear, the focus of my post is precisely to understand the differences between those kinds of programs, along with other schools such as Cal Arts and McGill, which another poster mentioned - for which, thanks very much, those should definitely be added to our search list! </p>