<p>no, no, my D is a lowly techie! Just saying how much is possible…</p>
<p>Researching4emb, it’s great that you are doing all this careful research and I’m sure you will find some schools that are appropriate.</p>
<p>Probably your daughter should have one or two auditioned acting programs on her list. You never know! </p>
<p>Not everybody who gets into auditioned programs is ‘gifted’ and has been training since they were tiny tots. 
Some, like my son, who is now a freshman in a BFA acting program, got bitten by the theatre bug around middle school age…in his case, it was passion and hard work that did the trick.</p>
<p>Your daughter just might have that certain something that a program is looking for. Naturalness and “trainability” are often cited as even more important than a demonstration of skills.</p>
<p>If your daughter is a senior and wants to apply to any auditioned programs, she should start preparing her monologues now and work on them right up to the time of auditions (Jan - March)…and of course she should apply to the schools in question and schedule her auditions asap. </p>
<p>A lot of students find it very helpful to engage the help of a theatre professional to help them choose and prepare monologues</p>
<p>I realize you have plenty to do and this would not be your main focus, but it’s a thought…</p>
<p>My D doesn’t want remote either, which really cuts out alot of good LACs!! Doesn’t want preppy either, but a hippy contingent is a plus for her. She actually hasn’t even seen Skidmore yet; I’ve just been telling her about it, so she may end up taking that of once she goes, who knows?? Muhlenberg seems to be one of (if not the only) the few non-audition schools that has a musical theater program. Alot of schools produce musicals, but often just every other year. Many of the schools have clubs where students produce the shows.</p>
<p>KatMT gave as comprehensive a list as you are likely to find.</p>
<p>My D and I toured Wagner 16 months ago, and were very impressed by their theater program, as well as their proximity to NYC, yet still has a nice campus feel. The views of NY harbor are unbelievable. I think there was an audition for performance studies, but not for theater studies. My daughter (at the time, and as you say, these things change) was interested in arts management.</p>
<p>Wagner also offered my D the best scholarship package of any school, even though she is in no way a great student. I think they were looking for some diversity as we were coming from the Midwest.</p>
<p>Thanks, great tips. Wagner sounds well worth checking out! Academically it seems pretty easy to get into-- does anyone know if it’s intellectually stimulating enough? </p>
<p>Muhlenberg sounds like a good fit. </p>
<p>Does anyone know about the On Broadway club at BU? We’re going to a west coast BU open house-- at first she thought the school was too big, and she doesn’t want a conservatory program, but she loves Boston, and if there are great club ways to be involved with theater, that may be enough…</p>
<p>I have found a good way to get a feel for a school based on students opinions is going to students review dot com. Have to spell it out as they don’t print other websites. If you read all the student comments about a school you can usually get a consensus on the positives and negatives.</p>
<p>My son is at Boston University and I will ask him if he knows anything about the On Broadway club.</p>
<p>BU does have a Theatre minor:</p>
<p>“The Theatre Minor consists of a 26-credit sequence of theatre courses designed to provide students with a balanced and diverse theatre experience. The minor concentration follows a sequence of a 6.0 credit theatre core, a 7.0 credit dramatic literature core, and 13.0 credits of theatre electives. Students will choose a path of study depending on their own desires to explore the disciplines of performance, dramatic literature, or production/design.”</p>
<p>Researching4emb, if you search under “theatre” in the Boston University forum, you can find some posts by the CC member lostandfound5, who seems to know a lot about the theatre clubs at BU.</p>
<p>Perhaps you could PM her to learn more.</p>
<p>P.S. I’m sorry I got mixed up about what year of h.s. your daughter is in, in my post #22. Of course she is a junior. You are doing your research at exactly the right time. :-)</p>
<p>Vassar! Where she COULD be the next Meryl Streep ;-)</p>
<p>Well, all this talk of other schools is now forgotten after going to the Emerson open house in L.A. last night. She is even more in love than when we visited it last spring, and after talking to the admissions person and an alum decided that she would apply as a Theater Studies major, get involved in performance via clubs/co-curriculars, and there you have it.</p>
<p>So now she just has to get in! It shouldn’t be a reach, but I guess you never know. She will spend the next year doing whatever she can toward the effort.</p>
<p>Congratulations! It shouldn’t be a reach, and coming from the West Coast won’t hurt either…and I know a lot of kids who love Emerson…and Boston is such a great city…</p>
<p>We toured Wesleyan last weekend, and thought that the arts center was so dreary!! The campus was really not very nice (IMO), but the students seemed really great. There are definitely alot of performing opportunities (extraordinarily active student groups, putting on a show every week). I would say the plus of this schools is being connected to such an engaged, interesting, creative group of kids, but it would take some ignoring the campus itself. Again, my opinion, but D did not come away loving it.</p>
<p>I think you’re right. At this point, the nearly forty year-old Center for the Arts is regarded more as an architectural monument than a performance venue; I think there is one building specifically designed for East Asian music and theatrical pieces, but, the dance studios are located on the other side of campus; and, theater and music pieces of a more general nature are performed all over the place, including the Patricelli Center/`92 Theater, Memorial Chapel and Beckham Hall, all completely refurbished nineteenth century buildings. Last Spring, there was even a senior thesis dance concert held in the lobby of the Science Center that attracted onlookers and impromptu participants long after it was scheduled to end. So, yeah, it’s the people that make it work, not the buildings necessarily.</p>
<p>wow, they should have shown us those buildings on the performing and visual arts tour! I have to say, the tours were weird. We also went on the residence hall tour, and during the whole hour, we went in one building, saw one room and didn’t even see the lounge. Again, a dreary building, but everyone talked about how great the housing was!</p>
<p>We were fortunate to have a group of students sit down with us during lunch and had a great time talking to them, and I also really liked the tour guides, so all was not lost…</p>
<p>oh, we did not go on the full campus tour, so maybe we would have seen the better buildings then…also didn’t really luck out during the class visit; it was a new professor, so it apparently wasn’t really indicative of a class…</p>
<p>Another great BA theatre school is UNH. I’m currently a sophomore there pursuing a BA in theatre with an emphasis in Youth Drama (theatre education for kids) and Musical Theatre. It is possible to combine emphasis and also there is a general theatre emphasis where you can basically take what classes you want in the theatre department. There are 2-3 shows a semester. This semester we did Curtains, Tintypes, and Midsummer. There is no audition and no BFA program. In the shows people vary in majors, there are a lot of theatre majors in each show, but there was a russian major in Midsummer, and plenty of business majors too. I love it, and the theatre majors all are like a little family.</p>
<p>Outside Boston, College of the Holy Cross’ Theatre Department is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Theatre.
A HC Alum recently won a Tony Award for Best Direction in a Musical. Alum Peter Jankowski ’86 produces Law & Order as president of Wolf Films. Alum Ann Dowd ’78 has guest-starred in House and Law & Order and appeared in films, such as Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers.</p>
<p>Last November the department of theatre at the College of the Holy Cross was awarded the New England Theatre Conference’s (NETC) Moss Hart Award for best college play in New England, for its 2007 production of My Life with Albertine. This is the second consecutive Moss Hart win for the Holy Cross theatre department.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tips on UNH and Holy Cross. We should have visited Holy Cross when we saw Clark. I’ll have her check it out online. It sounds great in many ways, although perhaps too preppy for this L.A. girl…</p>
<p>We are in the same boat. My DS is a junior. 4.5 weighted (working on getting this raised up). IB diploma candidate. He has loved participating in his high school’s theater program, but he is far from leading role material. He sings in three choirs, but he is not a soloist. </p>
<p>Just recently he said that he wants to major in theater. Gulp!</p>
<p>I’d like to help him find a non-audition theater program at a school with a strong academic program and preferably one with a strong film program as well. My hope is that he will choose to double major.</p>
<p>Northwestern would be his 1st choice but I’m not sure he can get in. Ditto Wesleyan. What about Brandeis? He does not have a school type or geographic preference, but I’m not sure I see him in at a big sports school or one with a strong Greek emphasis. I think he would be best suited to a school where students live on campus all 4 years.</p>
<p>cbrand, 4.5 weighted seems pretty darn good. He might have a shot at Northwestern, although the drama program is audition-in and very very intense there. You should definitely check out Brandeis-- great school academically, not Greek, and strong theater but not audition in. Unfortunately my D really didn’t like the modern campus and therefore doesn’t like the whole school… ah, life with teenagers.</p>
<p>We’ve planned a trip for her spring break: good small- to mid-size liberal-arts schools within a two-hour train ride of a major east coast city with a solid but not conservatory/BFA theater program. We’ll be seeing Connecticut College, Vassar, Bard, SUNY New Paltz, Muhlenberg, Dickinson and American University. Dickinson isn’t known for theater, but we have a friend there who loves it and will be in the relative neighborhood, so we’ll give it a try. Your son should certainly explore Conn, Vassar, Bard and Muhlenberg.</p>