What to Expect

Some jazz schools are known for producing great all-around players. Some are known for producing a high caliber of composer. But the happiest students seem to come from schools with a good atmosphere.

Matt Mealey studied jazz at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. He says one of the things he liked about his program is that everyone seemed to be friends with each other. "And that people of higher ability [had] no compunction spending time practicing with people of lower ability," he adds.

"A lot of those kinds of schools where there's a lot going on -- there can be kind of a cutthroat mentality."

Fear of encountering that cutthroat mentality was a factor in Lyle Robinson's choice of school.

"You have people who are in the playing field as well as in the teaching field. Professors work around the city doing gigs as well as teaching. So it provides the student with the opportunity to obviously learn, but to also go out there and see what they're learning," he says.

The rapport between student and teacher is an extremely important element of the educational environment, he adds.

"I think that's what I would have to say would be one of the positive factors is the one-on-one atmosphere," he says. "That you're able to go into a person's office or meet them in the hall or talk to them and they're always ready to talk. They're always ready to let you in on things far apart from the curriculum that you're studying at the time."

How to Prepare

Before you look for a school, spend some time honing your skills. The most effective ways of doing that are to take private lessons, form small groups, and practice, practice, practice.

"You do it on your own," Mealey says. "You get recordings of people and famous combos and things like that and just practice improvisation."

Mealey has ideas about what kinds of things high school students can do to improve their chances of getting into a jazz studies program. "I would say [the] number one thing [that] comes to mind is playing in whatever high school jazz ensemble they can, and then also studying small group jazz," he says.