Sound engineering schools

[monocle]

Are there any resources that would list the top schools...or are there such things?

[Professor]

This isn't a list of the "best", just a list of all of them.
But you could figure that a school that offers a Bachelor, Master & Doctoral degree might be better than average.

-Jeremy

[JB]

Based of interns that I've had over the past 6 years...and I've had a lot the best schools seem to be
1 - University of Miami (This is a Electrical Eng Degree in Audio Eng.) - best in the country!
2 - Full Sail
3 - Conservatory

There are lots of music programs that have recording parts and there are even recording programs at music based schools...Berkley in Boston is not bad. I personally went to Full Sail.

[Glenn]

Eh, a degree is completely unnecessary in this field and I don't think is indicitive of how good a school's audio engineering program is. That being said, the Univerisy of Miami program looks pretty compelling.

Personally, I went to The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences and feel it was quite good at laying a foundation to move out into the studio world. The Full Sail grads that we've had have been good, on the whole. LARW grads have been so so.

Berklee is a great school, but wow, can their grads throw some attitude. Huge sense of entitlement from a lot of their folks.

[cdbabel]

I've heard NYU Tish has a pretty sweet audio engineering program.

[klangtone]

I went to the University of Miami Audio Engineering program.
There are two programs there, actually.
The one in the college of engineering that gives you a full BSEE (which I did) and the one in the school of music where you can minor in EE or Computer Science (unless it's changed... it's been awhile). I'd say the music school one is more geared towards those who want to pursue a career in recording. I've known some folks that have interned for Bob Katz, Bob Clearmountain, etc.

The engineering school one is more for becoming an electrical engineer for companies that make audio gear. People from the program have gone on to work for Dolby, Cirrus Logic, Apogee, etc. I got stuck with telecom audio (Qualcomm), but... could be worse!

Roy

[Kelly]

The one near Pheonix looks pretty good. I visited the place and it struck me as more "real" than Full Sail.

That said, Full Sail from what I understand is a very comprehensive program and is VERY well equiped. The only reason I didnt go is because they ran the tour like a commercial.

One I went to REC, isnt nearly as well equiped, but the price is very good compared to most, and the instructors are A+. You will remembber the instructors for the rest of your life. If you intend to get an internship rather than open your own studio, REC provides what you need to know at a modest price. Their classes are seperated into Analog + Adat recording (They do tape once in a while too... basic tape operation is tought in each session though.), and Protools rooms. The great thing about it is the when the studios are not in use, you can grab them and load songs from their server to mix, or pull them from their DAT archives for the analog rooms. There were instances when I had whole rooms for 3+ hours to myself... a lot of the students dont take this major +, so it's not that hard to grab free time.

The Internship I have at a Studio is requiring me to go to LARW. It's a fairly major studio, I doubt they would make me do it if they didnt think it was good.

[Russian Recording]

i very, very, very highly recommend Indiana Uniiversty's Audio Program. You can get a B.S. in studio recording or classical recording or an A.S. degree. You get hundreds upon hundreds of hours of hands on experience doing live recording and PA work, in addition to weekly access to multitrack studios and very nice rooms. Awesome gear, awesome professors and instructors. It's a very selective program though, and you must go through interviews and submit portfolios to get in... but it's worth it.

http://www.music.indiana.edu/department/audio/

mike

[mpedrummer]

Berklee is a great school, but wow, can their grads throw some attitude. Huge sense of entitlement from a lot of their folks.

I'm a Berklee grad, and you're not wrong. I do want to point out something, from my own experience, because this is NOT true of all Berklee grads, just a few bad eggs that seem to be good at giving the rest of us a bad name.

Berklee was generally full of two types of people - musicians, and people with rich parents paying for them to go to "rock star" school. Because it is a full College, offering a real degree, I found that a lot of rich kids wind up going there because they're too spoiled for their parents to point out that they suck, but the parents figure that since it's a real degree, they aren't just wasting their money.

The ones with the attitude are also usually the ones with the connections high enough up to get them in someplace where being a dickhead gives a bad enough impression to screw guys like me out of a chance in the first place.

MPEDrummer

[Glenn]

Berklee is a great school, but wow, can their grads throw some attitude. Huge sense of entitlement from a lot of their folks.

...The ones with the attitude are also usually the ones with the connections high enough up to get them in someplace where being a dickhead gives a bad enough impression to screw guys like me out of a chance in the first place.

True enough. I should point out that we have had some Berklee grads with no attitude problems at all. Very cool, as well as very knowledgable, people. Unfortunately, they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

[monocle]

Wow. These are all overwhelmingly helpful replies! Thank you much.

I only have experience recording in my home, and a handful of studios with engineers when I played in some bands. I am very much into the baby steps of looking into this, but I feel it's the right decision for me. So far I've looked into Columbia College in Chicago and their Audio Arts and Acoustics bachelors degree. I feel like I want to maybe go in the acoustics engineering direction based on what I've researched, but obviously recording is important to me too. Does anyone know anything about their program? Admittedly, my love of Chicago is a big part of it. Thanks again for all of your helpful replies!

Salut,

Jon