With so many wonderful New York music colleges to choose from it’s hard to know where to begin. Our Best New York music schools list is the logical place, since we’ve done the research for you! While not every New York music school made our list (there are about 100 total), here are the schools with the strongest reputations for their college music programs.

That doesn’t mean that the schools not included on our list aren’t any good. In fact, the only thing that really matters is that a school is the right fit for YOU and can help you achieve your own educational and career goals in music. But you can consider this article a good starting point for your investigations.

Let’s get right down to it:

First up is the Julliard School of Music.

Julliard is perhaps the first name which comes to mind when thinking about a classical music conservatory. Julliard, Near Lincoln Center in the heart of New York City, is unquestionably one of the most recognized and respected music schools in the world, with faculty and alumni from the top echelons of the music field.

Julliard also has jazz, dance, and acting programs. Their many illustrious alumni include Phillip Glass, Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma, Van Cliburn, Itzhak Perlman, Chick Corea, and countless other successful and influential composers and performers. Living in New York City means students are exposed to and mentored by the leading musical artists alive today. Attending Julliard means learning from the best and is nearly guaranteed to open the way to an impactful music career.

Next up is another bastion of New York City’s musical heritage, the Manhattan School of Music.

The Julliard School

Nestled on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) has made a name for itself as one of the world’s premier conservatories for classical music, jazz, and musical theater. Infused with the creative vibe of New York City, students attend and perform in world-class concerts, and network with some of the world’s top musicians and entertainers. MSM’s alumni pursue active careers as performers, composers, educators, arts administrators, and industry leaders all around the world.

MSM alumni include many of the top names in jazz: Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Harry Connick Jr., Donald Byrd, Jason Moran, Steve Gadd, Chris Potter, and Max Roach, to name a few. MSM has summer programs, pre-college, and a plethora of diploma and degree options, including at the graduate level.

Now, we turn to one of the most storied musical institutions in New York history, the Mannes School of Music.

Manhattan School of Music

Located in Greenwich Village, Mannes provides an innovative cross-disciplinary approach to teaching music, focusing on whole-person citizen education in addition to gaining mastery of the technical aspects of music, all while training artists to engage with the world around them through their art. They’ve been around since 1916, when they were founded by David Mannes, concertmaster of the New York Symphony Orchestra, and his wife Clara Damrosch. Famous alumni include songwriter Burt Bacharach, jazz piano legend Bill Evans, pianist Yekwon Sunwoo, conductor Semyon Bychkov, and soprano Nadine Sierra.

Students at the New School benefit from partnerships with leading cultural organizations and institutions, such as the New York Choral Society, The Buffalo and Montclair Orchestras, the Alsop Family Foundation, The Frick Museum, and the Martha Graham Dance Company, and participate in concerts and events at NYC legendary venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Mannes School offers majors in instrumental and vocal performance, composition, conducting, collaborative piano, and music theory, plus minors and a bachelor’s-master’s dual degree program.

Mannes School of Music

NYU has two schools for music. The Steinhardt School offers traditional and contemporary conservatory-style training, while the Tisch School of the Arts houses the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, focusing more on the entrepreneurial side of the recorded music industry (see below). Both schools offer the opportunity for interdisciplinary studies in musical arts and music business.

Steinhardt’s wide-ranging college music programs include Performance, Composition, Music Technology, Arts Education and Therapy, and Music Business and Arts Administration. NYU is a prestigious name in music education and connects to just about every facet of the global music industry with its international presence in New York City. NYU also has campuses in Shanghai, China, and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, with study-abroad options.

New York University Steinhardt School

As part of NYU and newly located in Brooklyn, the Clive Davis Institute is the only program of its kind which offers professional business, technical, and artistic training leading to a Bachelor of Fine Art (B.F.A.) in Recorded Music. For students who will become the future entrepreneurial leaders of the music industry, there’s no better place to be. The program is highly competitive, typically accepting about 10% of total applicants into its program.

The Clive Davis Institute

The Department of Music at Ivy League Columbia University in the City of New York is one of the nation’s most prestigious and oldest music departments and has one of the oldest continuously operating orchestras in America. A liberal arts program, rather than a conservatory, their approach stresses academics, integrating studies in the humanities, education, technology, and business together with music in a major concentration. Columbia University also offers non-music majors an immersive musical studies environment through minors and required core courses in “music humanities.”

Academic concentrations in music includes Composition, Ethnomusicology, Historical Musicology, and Music Theory, and opportunities to perform include the orchestra, ensembles, the Louis Armstrong Jazz Program, and world music ensembles. There are research centers for Ethnomusicology, Jazz Studies, and Computer Music, and graduate programs also on offer, including a Master of Fine Art (M.F.A.) in Sound Art. Situated in upper Manhattan, Columbia University is ideal for the music student who is looking for academic rigor and a degree from a highly reputable research-oriented university in New York City.

Columbia University

Berklee’s NYC campus houses the legendary Power Station recording studio, newly renovated to support audio, video, and VR immersive technology. For now, they offer a highly competitive Master’s in Creative Technology degree with three main areas of focus: Songwriting and Production, Writing and Design for Musical Theater, and Live Music Production and Design. Their programs are cutting edge and prepare students for the rigors of the music industry. (For Berklee College of Music’s leading undergraduate degree programs, see our “Best Music Colleges in the US” article.)

Not every New York music school is in New York City. We also find many notable schools upstate and on Long Island, as well as in the Tri-State Area (includes northern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut).

Perhaps one of the best-known is the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, on the southern shores of Lake Erie.

Berklee NYC

A true music conservatory housed in the University of Rochester in the Western Tier of New York State, Eastman is a small music school offering intensive training from top-tier faculty. Highly regarded for jazz, classical, and popular music, students at Eastman take academic courses alongside their music classes, thanks to the university affiliation. Alumni include Chuck Mangione, Maria Schneider, Steve Gadd, Lew Soloff, Ron Carter, Jeff Beal, and dozens of other music luminaries.

Eastman School of Music

Located on the northern shore of Long Island, New York, Stony Brook offers an interdisciplinary approach to teaching music in a university setting. The Bachelor of Arts in Music program provides a creative, wide-ranging education in Music History, Theory, Musicianship, Keyboard, and Performance. Since 2017 they have housed the Emerson String Quartet Institute, and access to New York City via public transport means students can take advantage of the rich cultural offerings in the Big Apple.

Stony Brook University is officially part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, and together with Buffalo State, one of two flagships public universities in New York’s university system (see more on SUNY below).

Stony Brook University

Ithaca College, located in the heart of the gorgeous Finger Lakes region of New York State, (the small city of Ithaca is also home to Cornell University) was originally founded as a music conservatory in 1892. The School of Music, Theater, and Dance at Ithaca offers a broad liberal arts education as well as conservatory-style training for college music students. Students receive personalized guidance on how to balance academic, artistic, and personal challenges as they define their career goals and learn how to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Ithaca College

The Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts has long had a strong reputation for music studies. Embedded within a major research university, the Setnor School of Music was founded in 1877 and was the first school in the US to establish a four-year degree in music and music theory. Music students at Syracuse study on their instrument or voice and can choose to focus on classical or commercial music.

Majors exist in Composition, Performance, Music Education, Sound Recording Technology, and Music Industry (Music Business), with a choice of Bachelor of Music (B.M.), a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), and a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) in Music Industry as well. There is also a slew of music master’s degrees on offer.

Syracuse University

The Music Program at Bard College is one of the largest programs on campus, with a wide range of music concentrations offered, from Classical Composition and Performance to Jazz, Electronic Music, Musicology, Ethnomusicology, and Music Theory. There is also a separate Bard College Conservatory of Music, which has a double-degree program and graduate programs. The Conservatory mainly focuses on classical music performance and composition, and many performance opportunities are open to both Conservatory and Music Program students.

Music students at Bard College can individually define their program and combine music with liberal arts, humanities, or sciences in unique ways. The Bard College campus is on the east bank of the Hudson River in Annandale-On-Hudson, about 90 miles north of New York City.

Bard College

Now let’s see what the State University of New York (SUNY) has to offer.

State University of New York (SUNY) has schools of music in New York City and in different parts of New York State. Generally well-regarded, these numerous SUNY campuses allow students to study close to home and also enroll students from around the nation and the world.

Note: There are also City University of New York (CUNY) schools which offer reputable music programs, but due to length we couldn’t include them here. While it’s possible to get a good education at either a SUNY or a CUNY school, of the two systems, SUNY has the stronger academic reputation for music.

The universe of music at SUNY deserves its own article, and maybe I will write one someday. For now, here are the ones most worthy of consideration, not in any particular order.

The Crane School of Music at Potsdam is the state university system’s only all-Steinway institution and is one of only 10 Yamaha Institution of Excellence programs in the US. They Crane School has rigorous undergraduate and graduate programs with a strong emphasis on performance and practice.

The Crane School of Music at Potsdam

SUNY Oneonta

SUNY New Paltz

SUNY Schenectady

SUNY Geneseo

SUNY Broome

SUNY Buffalo State

SUNY Purchase

SUNY Fredonia

SUNY Albany

In this final section, let’s consider schools near to New York City in the Tri-State Area, which includes northern New Jersey, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut.

Located in the Bronx, Fordham University is a medium-sized Catholic college offering a bachelor’s degree in General Music.

Fordham University

Located in Dix Hills on Long Island, Five Towns College has undergraduate programs in Audio Recording Technology, Music Teacher Education, Music Performance, Theatre Arts, Performance, Songwriting, and Music Entertainment Industries Studies. They also have master’s degrees and doctorates.

Five Towns College

Rutgers offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, and artist diplomas in music. Just 45 minutes away from New York City in Newark, New Jersey, the music faculty at Rutgers are award-winning professionals in their fields, and the school promotes cross-disciplinary research in a large university setting.

Rutgers University

Located in New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University (along with Columbia University) is one of only two Ivy League schools to be included in our best New York music schools list. Better known for its graduate programs and especially in Composition, Yale offers an undergraduate certificate in Performance plus a combined Bachelor of Arts/Master of Music program that requires simultaneous acceptance to the university undergraduate program and the music school.

Yale School of Music

The Long Island University Department of Music, in Brookeville, New York, is a conservatory-style music program within a liberal arts university setting. There are many performance opportunities on campus and around the New York area for students majoring in music, whether as performers or composers.

Long Island University

Hopefully, now you have a much better idea about the music programs on offer in and around New York City and across the state. There are other New York schools you could consider that are not on this list, but the ones included here are among the most reputable and certainly worth a good look.

With so many schools to choose from, it might feel a bit overwhelming, but remember that you only need to find ONE school that is the right fit for you. As part of the process, it’s important to strategically consider your career goals in music and understand how a college music education can support those goals.

That support comes from the skills and knowledge you will gain, plus the professional business network you will gain, needed to succeed in the highly competitive music field. A quality college music program can offer you a leg up in your career and in life, and it’s fortunate that there are so many great schools to choose from in the New York area.

Now, choose wisely.