<p>I suppose another way to look at this would be to extend this kind of analysis, and what you would do with the data, to another field entirely. Let’s say you want to be a biologist (since my undergraduate degree is in biology, I’ll pick that). You could go on whatever site and pick great undergraduate schools for biology, and you can find similar data on placement, etc as our friend here has done for MT. So you’d want to probably pick a Yale, or a Harvard, etc because they have the best record of getting folks into good Ph.D programs.</p>
<p>But what if you don’t have the grades to get into a “top” undergraduate biology program? The equivalent being your S or D does not audition into the Michigans or CCMs of the world. Does that consign the biology student to a worse career? Should they abandon their dream of becoming a scientist because they didn’t get into the “best” school? No. It does not. I went to your basic state school for both undergraduate and graduate studies, and made out OK. I suspect many here did the same. I envision the same for kids going into music theater. Will they make Broadway? Pretty likely they won’t. Will they use their degrees in performing, or teaching, or somehow using the degree in a productive, meaningful fashion? Pretty likely.</p>
<p>What our friend I fear has done here is a common issue with research studies. He may have defined what he wants to see as the endpoint (i.e. Broadway lead roles as the primary indicator of success with a BFA MT), and then interpreted data to make it agree with his already formed conclusion.</p>
<p>MTPragmatist - thank you so much for putting this information together. I think it is extremely interesting. Even though there are many other factors we should consider when choosing a school, this is one tool we can use to help us in our evaluations if we wish. I have a feeling that most of the students entering this field would find it interesting even if it does not factor into their final school decision. So thanks again, MTPragmatist for all of the time and effort you took to put this together. It is much appreciated!</p>
<p>I’m just not so sure how many of these 18 year olds are outcome-oriented in their thinking for this sort of data to mean anything to them. You could put a list like this in front of my daughter and no matter what it said, she’d still have wanted to go to Tisch (and a couple of others on the list were high up there as well) but no amount of data would have made her want to go to CCM or CMU. (No offense to either exceptional program and I’m sure many of you are thinking “back at you” for their kids not wanting to go to Tisch and I get that too). My daughter was more concerned with what was right in front of her which meant attending a program that she thought would provide the training she desired in an environment that she saw herself in. And then other factors came into play like not wanting a program that was really small etc. I’d be very curious to hear what your daughter thinks of the data MTPragmatist and how she uses it if you care to share once you get around to actually making a decision. Again, the chutzpah is admirable.</p>
<p>Amen halflokum! Neither of my kids looked at these kinds of stats when choosing their schools. I do respect the hard work that was put into the stats though.</p>
<p>Very interesting. My son is very concerned about the statistics so I’m sure this will be important reading for him. He will be especially interested in the role/ensemble data as he is not much of a dancer and more of a lead/character actor. Thank you for this tremendous effort.</p>
<p>Actors Equity Association annually releases data on the number of union work weeks per all their different contracts. I think this is more realistic than just Broadway in determining who is a successful working actor.</p>
<p>This is just fabulous info. I read all of your caveats and get it. This is not the end al be all to picking a school, but it is interesting nonetheless. What really strikes me are the schools that seem almost unheard of - and yet they produce working actors. We all know the “big” ones and the numbers are no surprise there - but for those who got into lesser known schools, I would think this would bolster their confidence.</p>
<p>halflokum, my kid also would not have considered this information in choosing a school, but it’s fine if others do. My daughter didn’t even apply to CCM because she did not want to go there. </p>
<p>My daughter also would define the peers who have been successful as those who are working in the field, and not just on Broadway, though quite a number of her classmates and friends have gone to Broadway.</p>
<p>Wow, nothing much to disagree with so far on the posts, thanks for all of the comments. </p>
<p>I think the comments about “my kid and/or I would never look at these posts” is probably because those people already had a feeling for what schools were successful or not. I think someone is in denial, and illogical, if they say the “success” metric is totally off the table, it might be a secondary or tertiary concern, but irrelevant? However, I totally get the gist of those emails: my first choice, and one of my daughters favorites was UCLA, even though it is not even in the Top 25 in the young/fresh actor data (which is the most relevant data in my opinion). Alas, we found out Friday she was not in. We would have chosen it over almost every school on the list, but it may have been tough deciding between Top 5 success (based on the data) school and UCLA; not sure which way we would have gone on that - it would have depended on more campus visits.</p>
<p>There are also huge program differences. CCM is a great school obviously but I wanted an acting based program and not so much a conservatory although if I happened to get into Julliard I would go happily. Didn’t apply there, just making the point. UCLA is much more academic while at some schools you just sing, act, dance and attend fluff classes. Others are more balanced. Some schools have good reputations outside of the theater world, other programs have people looking at you like you’re talking about going to school on the moon. There are singer schools, actor schools, dancers schools. It’s just not so easy as top of the list or bottom…but I do agree that top is probably better. But it’s complicated.</p>
<p>There are lots of ways to get a read on success metric. # of grads on Broadway is only one of them and for many of us, it was not a factor. BUT… sure perhaps who do we know whose work we’ve seen on Broadway that we really admire went to school here? The fact that Idina Menzel for example went to Tisch was not lost on my daughter. Nor were the Broadway credentials of who was actually teaching in the program, all of whom also have an impressive set of creds including many Tony nominations or awards. But looking at absolute numbers of how many grads are working on Broadway? Never was a factor.</p>
<p>I’m with you about UCLA. I really liked their program too.</p>
<p>amtc: the “one and done” factor is an interesting topic. My main results simply tally actors, but I think the “number of shows” stat is slightly more relevant, an actor that had the ability to get into 2 shows or more is a positive indication. However, I felt conflicted on the fact that someone who has held a role for 2 years in a musical would be penalized for not being in more shows. I could try and modify the code to spit out “weeks on broadway”, or look at actors that were put out of work by a show closing and whether they found another broadway job, but this would be an order of magnitude more work (like a Ph.D thesis vs a Masters thesis). </p>
<p>Also, it’s hard to say how much we disagree on the importance of the data - everyone assumes that I use the numbers only, which is not true; actually, it is not even pragmatic. I knew by choosing the moniker MTpragmatist people would come to that conclusion that numbers were all that mattered to me. I actually chose the moniker because I thought it was funny – it is a true oxymoron. Nobody that was fully pragmatic would ever consider investing 4 years or time and money into this career, although I’m probably more pragmatic than most on this thread.</p>
<p>One thing about having the data at hand - it is very useful is dealing with your d when she pronounces, “I have to audition for such-and-such because old-so-and-so said it was the best school for MT.” Of course, old-so-and-so ALWAYS knows more than parents. Sadly, perhaps old-so-and-so is working from a 20 year-old knowledge base or is some random kid that read about such-and-such in a Facebook post. And when such-and-such is not exactly the right school for d to add to the list, I find it useful to be able to say, “well, let’s look at the available data and see if such-and-such is really that far out in front of the pack.” That tends to be a much more efficient argument than a more generalized discussion, despite the fact that other issues are more pertinent.</p>
<p>The list I really want is the list of schools that d could actually get into…</p>
<p>Thanks EmsDad. I’ve only gotten to know this recently, but you are the true trailblazer that made this post feasible/credible. You’ve slowly gotten people to accept that numbers can have a role in the process (especially if you have no preexisting knowledge-base to form opinions on), while always pointing out that each individual has to decide how useful the data is to them.</p>
<p>As a parent of a HS junior, this info is quite timely. After determining the best in state option last year,we moved on to out of state options, and then dared to look at those ‘top’ schools. It was reassuring to see our in state option in a respectable middle of the pack placement in your data. There are so many factors, personal and financial among them, to finding our way to the final list of where to apply, it is good to have this data as one more piece of the puzzle.
Thank you for taking the time to collect and process the numbers as well as the background info!
It would be interesting to find similar data on working MT graduates in other areas- national tours, regional theatre, cruise lines, etc to see if that data was similar or significantly different.</p>
<p>I would wager a guess (JUST a guess) that perhaps only looking at national tours, the numbers might be fairly similar, but adding in the others would shift things, perhaps significantly. SO many programs have students working outside of Broadway and tours.</p>
<p>Just looking at your username- are you from Texas? If so…you’ve got so many wonderful in-state choices! :)</p>
<p>MTPragmatist, thanks for all the hard work!</p>
<p>In the end, the school that presented the most effective path to Broadway (or top level work such as a national tour or a Chicago production) was the only factor my son considered. If he did not get into a “top school” he most likely would have picked a differnt major, took dance and voice lessons, got an acting coach, and started hitting the bricks with auditions</p>
<p>We are part of a large theatre community in our area (1.5 million in the metro) and we have friends who have a wide variety of performance degrees (dance, acting, vocal, MT, 2 or 4 year degrees.) There is regional professional theatre, some smaller equity houses, big out-door professional, lots of community theatre of all sizes. Most of our friends have a primary career and do as much theatre as they can for free or making $100-$200 a week during the run of a show. The equity houses pay the equity standard and sometimes bring in the leads. There are very few who make a steady (and adequate) living as an actor in our region.</p>
<p>My son took all this into consideration and decided to put his full effort into that “gold medal” area MTPragmatist described so effectively.</p>
<p>People are mentioning national tours and regional theater. Don’t forget Off Broadway productions. Perhaps I am thinking of these because my D is now cast in an upcoming Off Broadway musical, but she is very happy with getting into that level. Sometimes Off Broadway shows move to Broadway (ie., Once, Spring Awakening, RENT). Sometimes Broadway productions move to Off Broadway (ie., Avenue Q, Peter and the Starcatcher).</p>