The main things I’m hoping for him are to find a great teacher, have access to high caliber ensembles that are satisfying to participate in, and for his environment to generally feel like a musically enriching and exciting place to be. I think he’s increasingly enthusiastic about taking a bunch of theory, aural skills, history, piano, etc., but it looks to me like one could do that in either a B.A. or a B.M. program. I think he’d like to have a meaningful option of pursuing music as a career when he’s through, and I don’t have a good sense of how important a B.M vs a B.A. is for that.
As far as options for horn, most LAC’s seem to at least have an adjunct horn prof, and most of them sound (on paper) like they’re probably pretty good. I like to be able to find videos of their orchestras and confirm that a) they sound pretty darned good, and b) they have a full horn section (it’s a definite red flag when they can only muster 2 or 3 horns from the entire student body). I wish more schools made it easy to find recordings of their orchestras – that’s been pretty hit or miss.
Personally, I’d be perfectly happy to see him in a B.A. program (and not pay for a 5th year) as long as he can say “My teacher is great and our orchestra is awesome!”. I think he’s still grappling with whether or not that’s enough for him.
One of the things that feels especially tricky about this music major business is that it’s one of the few areas of study where kids really need to commit right from the get-go. Plenty of kids go to college not being very clear what they intend to study, and, even if they think they are, plenty of them change their minds. With these B.M. vs B.A., conservatory vs non-conservatory decisions, kids have to have more clarity about their goals than we typically require of 17 year-olds. It’s tough.