<p>Some programs, like the Theatre program at Syracuse, offer both a BFA and BA in Acting/Performance. I am curious. If a student is rejected for the BFA, might they then be offerred acceptance into their BA program. Or do different programs offerring both a BFA and BA do this differently? Thanks</p>
<p>brian:</p>
<p>Different programs do it differently, depending in part on the differences between the BFA and BA degrees at the institution. </p>
<p>At our place, the differences are significant, and while we do occasionally offer places in the BA program to students who've auditioned for the BFA, we do so only when the student appears to have strong interest in areas of theatre besides acting, as well as a strong interest in liberal arts. Then the test is, would the student be happy in a place where they won't have access to the BFA acting classes? Our BA is a general degree, and BA majors cannot specialize in acting.</p>
<p>At other schools, BA Performance majors may take exactly the same acting classes for a year, or even two, after which the programs diverge.</p>
<p>So the first question to ask of any school which says it has a BA Performance degree as well as a BFA, what are the differences between the programs? The second one is, how do you make decisions about offers of admission? Unfortunately, there is no general rule about how these things are done.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Thanks doctorjohn. This clarifies a lot. Comprehending the various policies of programs is not an easy task. Bless CC. So far I have identified programs that (1) accept students on a largely nonprovisional basis (of course, a student's academic performance and/or behavior may justify dismissal); (2) accept cohorts of first-year students and 'cut' a proportion of them at the end of their first year and perhaps in subsequent years based upon multiple criteria - what I call the Enron 'rank and yank' model (Enron cut 20% per year); (3) may allow students into the BA program if not accepted into the BFA program; and (4) accept students into the college/university, but not into the BFA program until the second year.
The issues that BFA programs face appear to be somewhat similar to other high-demand and costly programs; Pre-Med, Business, Nursing. My LAC has decided to thwart the large number of business majors by, at the end of the second year, ranking students by GPA and counting down the list, accepting the top seventy five students, leaving the rest (likely 25-30 students) in the position of having to find a new major; this after paying $45k per year for their education in a small LAC with a Business Department. We are not looking forward its implementation.</p>
<p>Syracuse actually offers a BFA and a BS (Bachelor of Science degree)... Basicaly the BS students at SU take the same courses as the BFA students for the first two years of training. At the end of the sophomore year students go through a sophomore evaluation that determines whether or not they will be able to enroll in upper level acting classes. I graduated from SU quite a few years ago, but when I was there you did not need to be a BFA student to take the upper level acting classes... any drama performance major who passes his or her evaluation was eligible. However, I do not know if this has changed, so it would be worth checking. These upper level classes are required of BFA students, but not BS students. The BS students take a larger liberal arts core and I believe are required to take on a minor, or complete an upper division gen ed requirement. </p>
<p>The evaluation system at SU is not a cut system... so a student is not in the position of finding another major. However, some students are not able to continue with the BFA track, because they are not passed on the upper level acting classes. Some students who do not pass the evaluation the first time around are allowed to retake the evaluation after an additional semester of sophomore scene study and may be passed on to upper level classes at that point.</p>
<p>briansteffy:</p>
<p>Oh ... my ... God! Your school is really going to do that? Has anyone given any thought to the blood on the floor and the cutthroat tactics your business faculty is about to teach the kids?</p>
<p>Did anyone give any thought to accepting kids into the business program right out of high school, and then not weeding them out? Or, for that matter, expanding the business program?</p>
<p>Wow. And I thought my institution did some ridiculous things.</p>
<p>This was what I wanted to do - Holy Cross model (via admissions and not via cutting) in managing enrollments in their Accounting program. I was on Sab. leave and stayed out of the debate. Yea, it's going to be bloody. My wife teaches Psch Nursing at a college that just did what we plan to do. Parents were driving in from all over.</p>
<p>briansteffy, wow, don't the folks at your institution understand that GPA is not the only indicator of success or potential success? I am not against high grades; believe me, I was more than a little obsessed with earning them when I was a student, and studied like a demon night and day to get that A average that I thought I <em>had</em> to have, both to get a good job out of college and to prove to myself I could do it. Hence my surprise when I went on my first job interview and no one seemed to care a whit how high my marks were. They wanted to hear what I had to say, what I had done and what I planned to do. I have been working for the past 20+ years and during that time, I have been impressed over and over again by the fact that some of the most successful and enterprising/creative/entrepreunerial people I know turn out NOT to be the ones who graduated summa cum laude. Of course, grades are the matrix colleges and universities use to evaluate students. But simply cutting at a certain points seems, well ..... Maybe better to accept fewer to begin with?</p>
<p>NotMamaRose. I second your observation. I never went to a college reunion, but, as I saw it, the purpose of my 25 year (and 35 year) HS reunion was to clarify that GPA is a pretty poor predictor of future performance.</p>
<p>LOL! I agree, Brian. Keep us posted on how it goes. More importantly, keep us posted on how your son is doing in his search for summer theater programs and college theater programs. My D, too, is a junior, so we are in the same shoes. :)</p>
<p>In addition to considering whether the BA student can gain entry to the BFA COURSES, it is a good question to ask of students whether as BA students they can get chances to perform onstage at the college when there is competition with BFA students. Are the BA students allowed to audtion everywhere within the college when a show is being staged? If so, do they rise or fall based on how they sound from the stage or is it held against them (spoken or unspoken) by casting directors (who are sometimes profs, sometimes students) that they're in the BA, not BFA program?
This issue so concerned my S (who was dedicated to taking a BA and not a BFA...holding intense training until the MFA level...) that he wouldn't apply to schools that offered both, such as NYU TIsch, at the undergrad level. He assumed, rightly or wrongly, that he'd get more on-stage time as a BA in an LAC that only offered BA and not BFA.
So, for your son who IS interested in BFA, turn that equation around.
I'd think (but don't know) that if there's both a BFA and a BA program somewhere, he'd have the advantage getting onstage time as a BFA!!</p>