No. You can keep on with the tenor. My lessons prof at college was fine with the tenor, even though I had an alto I could have used. However, to answer the first question, I don't know about the sax you've mentioned, but you may be able to find a decent vintage horn if you are extrememly lucky. I've heard that junkdude has some decent deals on saxophones. With $500 to start, you may find someone willing to loan you a bit more for a good horn.

to barisax999 Thats the thing, I'm in eighth grade and for us music is free and im using my school's horn. I already know how to play I'm just looking to buy a horn of my own so that I wont have to face "rent or buy" issues in highschool. And please elaborate (sorry if mis-spelled) on why most prof's require alto for "good reasons". As for what you said about maybe picking up a baritone in the near future and making that my instrument, well I never know. I do hope to try a baritone one day though. I aswell don't plan to limit my classical abilities as I usually play some music in our schools books that include Mozart, Beethoven and etc... I play guitar aswell so I know what path to take musically. I plan on classical first, then move to jazz if I want to.

you should start looking into true classical saxophone pieces, not just transpositions. mozart, beethoven, and those cats didnt write for saxophone because it wasnt invented yet. familiarize yourself with the stuff written for saxophone

suggestions?

check out classicsax.com there is great literature there written for saxophone. as you will notice, most of it, nearly all, is written for alto. thats why classical professors want you to play alto. i speak highly of alto because after i picked up bari in 8th grade. i didnt play alto again until my senior year. now i play alto most of the time. i consider myself to be a classical alto player. however, i still play bari and i recently purchased a pro series tenor which i play. as for what specific classical music to pick up, i cant really say, not having any idea of where your at. 2 pieces you shouldnt have problems with are both bozzas and iberts arias. they are both standard and great pieces. look into what they list as "easy." they carry music through what people will play when they are in graduate school, so dont feel degraded that you are playing "easy" music. also look into getting copies of both the ferling etudes and voxmans selected studies. they are both standard books for the saxophone. many of these exercises will appear overwhelming, just take it extremely slow.

Thank you my friend.