The Berklee College of Music was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1945. Currently it holds the title of the largest independent college of contemporary music in the entire world. Primarily, Berklee is known as a jazz and popular-music school. This prestigious college of music offers its students college-level courses in a variety of contemporary and historic styles of music. Currently there are 4,131 students enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, representing 80 countries, including Korea, Japan, Canada, Mexico and Italy. Impressively, 192 Grammy's have been won by Berklee alumni.
Juilliard is the most prestigious performing arts school in the world. It began its history as a music conservatory in 1905, later transforming into the performing arts school that it is known to be today. Located in New York, New York, Juilliard has lived within the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts since its opening. This school is extremely selective, currently maintaining a 8 percent acceptance rate. In fact, only 800 undergraduate and graduate students are trained each year in dance, drama, and vocal music. The Juilliard currently maintains an exchange program with the prestigious Columbia University and Barnard College.
Located in the University Circle of Cleveland, Ohio, the Cleveland Institute of Music was founded in 1920 by composer Ernest Bloch serving as director. Currently, the Institute is home to over 400 conservatory students and 1700 preparatory students, ranging in ages from 3 to 93. This prestigious school operates on a 13.6 percent acceptance rate, taking in only 150 of the 1,100 people that apply. The Cleveland Institute of Music's student body is composed of 75 percent domestic and 25 percent international students alike, 15 percent of which being from the state of Ohio. Most alumni continue on to work with highly acclaimed musical organizations, in large national and international orchestras, world-renowned opera companies, as soloists or hold prominent teaching positions around the world.
The Florida State University College of Music, located in Tallahassee, Florida, was erected in 1930, and is one of the sixteen colleges that compose the Florida State University. Currently the school maintains a student body of 650 undergraduate and 350 graduate students and a faculty of 85. This school has the distinguished privilege of being named the third-largest music program in higher education as well as having two separate Grammy award winners, a Pulitzer prize-winning composer and a former concert master of the New York Philharmonic in their alumni association. Today the Florida State University College of Music is ranked twelfth in the nation out of the many schools of music and fifth among all other programs at public universities.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 with only three pianos, four studios, two blackboards and forty students in San Francisco, California. It has grown considerably to become the institute of music that it is today, with an enrollment of about 400 students. This conservatory is the only school on the west coast to offer degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition and conducting. Fall of 2006 marked a new era for the Conservatory when it began its first academic year in its beautiful new eighty-million dollar facility in the heart of San Francisco's Civic Center.
The Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music was founded in Austin, Texas, in 1914 with only a faculty of nine. Today, over 100 faculty members work diligently to keep this school of music among the top 3 percent in the United States. Each of the current 750 students that compose this entire school of music have undergone rigorous applications and audition processes. The prestigious Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music is currently located on the eastern side of The University of Texas at Austin. Areas of studies include vocal arts, chamber music, composition, conducting and ensembles, jazz studies, musicology, piano and keyboard, strings, theory, woodwind, brass, and percussion.