Its enrollment is purposely kept very limited, with just enough students to complete a full orchestra and an opera department, plus a small number of students of keyboard instruments, composition and conducting. The length of a student's stay is open-ended and can be anywhere from two years to 10 or even 11 or 12.
Students graduate when their teachers decide they are ready.
In most cases this is between three and five years. The Institute's 82-member faculty is composed primarily of performing musicians whose income is not primarily derived from teaching. Students are thus accepted on merit alone and not in order to fulfill contractual obligations to teachers. All keyboard, conducting and composition students are lent Steinway grand pianos for use throughout their studies at Curtis.