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Comment by jpwagner | Hacker News Reader

I have plenty of respect for Berklee, have been friends with, worked with (musically and not) many of their students or affiliates. But just so there's no misconceptions of elitism, their acceptance rate is roughly 50%. It is joked among musicians that you can go if you can pay. But maybe money is the initial barrier you intended to allude to.

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According to their site, they had a 15% acceptance rate for this school year.

http://www.berklee.edu/bt/233/leadsheet.html

(Though yes, tuition is a major barrier at > 18k/year.)

> (Though yes, tuition is a major barrier at > 18k/year.)

I don't know where you're getting that. Hardly any 4-year college is that inexpensive nowadays. Granted, nearly all who need it are able to acquire a significant amount of financial aid.

This source: http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl... lists cost of attendance for Berklee to be $57,229.

It's a little off-topic, but your chances of getting out from under $100k of debt as a musician are not that good. That's a big barrier for a lot of people.

For a private conservatory, that may be standard. But among all educational institutions, that exorbitant.

Most people do not go to private, liberal arts colleges. They go to state schools or community college.

Tuition is 36k, and their estimated cost of attendance is 63k, on par with, if not higher than, the estimated cost of attendance at Harvard University and most other top private universities. Ouch.

http://www.berklee.edu/financial-aid/cost-of-attendance.html http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/cost...

Don't know much about music schools, but I'd think Juilliard to be much more elite than Berklee, and closer to the "Harvard of music" that OP mentioned.

You're right about that. And same for Curtis Institute of Music and probably a dozen other conservatories as well. But those are more focused on "art music" / classical music.

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