<p>Just for fun I went through 1,216 online bios for current adult actors cast in 48 Broadway, Off-Broadway and National Tour musicals and tabulated what schools they attended (this is a large majority of the musicals and tours listed on Broadway.com that are currently running and the shows are listed at the bottom of this post). A total of 466 actors listed their schools. The list is shown below, after a bunch of caveats.</p>
<p>Some up-front caveats:</p>
<p>(1) These sorts of lists are by nature very temporal - roles come and go, actors rotate in and out of productions, and with such small numbers (5 or less for most schools) position in the list (beyond the top 10 or so) could change radically with only small changes in employment.</p>
<p>(2) The list is clearly biased in that it consists of only those actors who list their school in their online bio. Hence, some schools may just be better at getting their grads to list their alma mater. </p>
<p>(3) Obviously, schools with large class sizes would potentially have an advantage over schools with much smaller class sizes in accumulating large counts of working actors. </p>
<p>(4) Not all graduates of the various schools majored in musical theatre or theatre - some majored in dance, vocal music, non-fine arts, etc.</p>
<p>(5) There are many specialized, non-traditional types of roles in musicals (ballet dancers, opera singers, acrobats, etc.) that could potentially skew the data and this quick-and-dirty survey did not account for any of that differentiation.</p>
<p>(6) Of course, EVERY school has more working graduates than the numbers on the list – the survey ONLY COVERS CURRENT, ONLINE BIOS. Some actors who are in rehearsals for new shows are currently “offline” and not included in the survey (see caveats 1 and 2).</p>
<p>(7) I may have made some errors; you tend to get cross-eyed looking at 1,216 bios.</p>
<p>There are, of course, many other potential points of contention with regard to this data. On the other hand, the data does include a pretty significant number of actors (466) in terms of Broadway employment (it is a really small industry). </p>
<p>Personally, I would not put a whole lot of stock in evaluating schools according to the data in this list. However, many schools make mention of Broadway actors on their web pages, hence, grads with Broadway employment must have some significance. Looking at the data, it does seem pretty obvious to me that some schools are clearly at the top in terms of producing Broadway and National Tour actors, and the schools at the very top are the “usual suspects” in terms of reputation. This, of course, begs the chicken-and-egg question, “how much credit can be attributed to training at top schools since they get their pick of the most talented kids to begin with?”</p>
<p>All-in-all, it is kind of fun to look at. I was surprised by some of the results:</p>
<p>NYU 40
Michigan 25
Boco 23
CCM 19
CMU 18
Florida State 16
AMDA 13
Northwestern 13
OCU 13
Julliard 11
Penn State 10
Syracuse 10
U Arts 9
Ailey (see note 1) 8
Elon 8
UC Irvine 8
Yale 8
Point Park 7
Hartt 6
Northern Colorado (see note 2) 6
Oklahoma 6
USC 6
Catholic University 5
Fordham (see note 1) 5
Shenandoah 5
SUNY Buffalo 5
SUNY Purchase 5
UNCSA 5
Baldwin-Wallace 4
CSU Fullerton 4
Emerson 4
Marymount Manhattan 4
New School 4
Wagner 4
BYU 3
Harvard 3
Ithaca 3
James Madison 3
New World School of the Arts 3
Northern Kentucky 3
NYU Steinhardt 3
Otterbein 3
Webster 3
Wright State 3
Abilene Christian 2
Ball State 2
Boston U 2
Brandeis 2
Chapman 2
Clark Atlanta 2
Hofstra 2
Illinois Wesleyan 2
LSU 2
Michigan State 2
Muhlenburg 2
Oberlin 2
Pace 2
Roosevelt 2
Rutgers 2
Sheridan (CA) 2
SUNY Fredonia 2
Temple 2
Texas State 2
Wichita State 2
Arizona 1
Austin College 1
Belmont 1
Bird 1
Brooklyn College 1
Cal Arts 1
CAP 21 1
Catawba 1
Central Michigan 1
Circle in the Square 1
Columbia College 1
CSU ? 1
CSU Long Beach 1
Duke 1
East Carolina 1
Evansville 1
Five Towns 1
Hampton 1
Illinois 1
Indiana 1
Kent State 1
Lawrence 1
Long Island University 1
Los Angeles Theatre Academy 1
Miami 1
Miami Ohio 1
Mississippi 1
Morehouse 1
Mount Holyoke 1
MSU 1
Northern Illinois 1
Notre Dame de Namur 1
Ohio State 1
Princeton 1
Rice 1
Rider 1
Rollins 1
Sam Houston 1
San Jose State 1
Seattle Pacific 1
Smith 1
Spellman 1
Stanford 1
Stephens 1
SUNY Courtland 1
U Denver 1
U Houston 1
U Maine 1
U Maryland 1
U Wisconsin Eau-Claire 1
UCF 1
UCLA 1
UNC Chapel Hill 1
University of New Orleans 1
USF 1
Vanderbilt 1
Western Kentucky 1
Western Michigan 1
Wilberforce 1</p>
<p>Note 1: Ailey/Fordham grads are counted as “Ailey”</p>
<p>Note 2: The two actors who listed “UNC” as their school were counted as Northern Colorado, but they could have meant other schools (U of North Carolina, etc.).</p>
<p>Note 3: Child actors were excluded from the overall count</p>
<p>Note 4: European schools were excluded from the list (there was only a handful listed in the bios).</p>
<p>Note 5: If an actor listed more than one school, all schools were counted in the list</p>
<p>Broadway and Off-Broadway Shows reviewed: Anything Goes, Jersey Boys, Book of Mormon, Memphis, Wicked, Chicago, Lion King, Sister Act, Mary Poppins, Rock of Ages, Priscilla, On a Clear Day, Phantom, How to Succeed, Mamma Mia, Porgy and Bess, Rent, Million Dollar Quartet, Follies, Avenue Q, Silence, Sistas, Fantasticks, Berenstein Bears, Newsical [25 total].</p>
<p>National Tours Reviewed: Addams Family, American Idiot, Beauty and the Beast, Billy Elliott, Fela, Fiddler on the Roof, Hair, In the Heights, Jersey Boys 1, Jersey Boys 2, La Cage Aux Folles, Les Mis, Lion King, Mamma Mia, Mary Poppins, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, Spamalot, Peter Pan, Shrek, South Pacific, West Side Story, Young Frankenstein [23 total].</p>
<p>Some shows were omitted due to difficulty obtaining online bios (for example, click-through bios would not work for Spiderman in my browser and Voca People has tongue-in-cheek bios). Some shows were omitted because they are dance-only or highly specialized shows (Riverdance, Stomp, etc.).</p>