<p>I find it unfortunate that this informative post will get lost in the mass amount of new threads…</p>
<p>Some of us who are going through the process this year should bump this thread next year for the newer folks. I agree that while it is not the end all answer to picking a school - it is quite informative.</p>
<p>This info is certainly interesting and informative to a point but I think the rankings are more a reflection of which schools have historically been “best” at attracting talent rather than which might offer the “best” training. If there were stats available showing which schools had the highest offer acceptance rate, the list would probably look similar to the Broadway stats.</p>
<p>“Best” rankings are always just hyperbole. The lists shown in the OP’s are rankings of body counts of Broadway performers based on data available from some web sources, nothing more, nothing less. As noted, the data is not comprehensive because its not possible to find data on every performer. I cannot tell from the OP’s if all bodies counted were verified to have been an MT major, so it possible that not all performers were MT majors. This would skew the data a little (or possibly a lot in the case of schools with low counts). No statistical significance tests were reported, so “rank” cannot actually be determined per se throughout the lists, although the large differences in body counts between the schools at the top of the lists can probably safely assumed to be significant, bearing in mind the problems with the data to begin with.</p>
<p>Also, as noted in previous posts, the “nature vs. nuture” question arises: “is it the school or the students?” As has been said in other threads, “if you are good enough to make it on Broadway, does it really matter that much where you go to school, especially considering that many make it without attending a college MT program?” Of course, broad questions and generalizations of this nature are always subject to endless debate (and countless anecdotes)!</p>
<p>Calling anything the “best” always comes with a biased frame of reference.</p>
<p>MTpragmastist. Thank you for this post. I found it very imformative and think it could help others by spreading elsewhere The other sites that seem to have similar threads are Broadway World and Yahoo Answers. Have you considered posting this anywhere else?</p>
<p>Whoa…someone had some serious time on their hands</p>
<p>EmsDad. I’m surprised that you say ‘“Best” rankings are always just hyperbole’. I don’t think that’s true at all, and if it is then you might as well remove the word best from the English language. Best rankings are hyperbole if they have no valid metric or basis, but provided a metric, then best is what scores higher on that metric. That’s why I called the post “Best MT Schools based on Broadway Alumni”; i.e. if you compare schools based on alumni on broadway this data shows which is best. I do agree with your bias comment, in that the bias is always incurred when you select a metric. Note: a school got credit if an actor graduated with any undergrad degree (which I why Harvard ended up higher than some MT schools).</p>
<p>OnWithTheShow. I did consider posting elsewhere, but the discussion on the CC board is far more informed and intelligent than the 2 you mention (of course more-intelligent does not imply always-intelligent!). You or anyone else are free to do what you want with the numbers, but if you do it would be best to provide this post as a reference so people can read all of the details/caveats. If a “serious” publication/blog is interested I could email the spreadsheet and all of the data as well.</p>
<p>One definition of best (and the one that I implied in my post) is, “of the highest quality, excellence, or standing.” I simply don’t believe that any college ranking defines this, and I certainly don’t believe a partial count of Broadway bodies defines the “best” musical theatre schools. Your bias is that this metric implies quality of program, which I do not believe is a justifiable assertion. As I noted in my post, the fundamental complication is “nature vs. nuture” - since the programs at the top of the list tend to attract a disproportionate number of applicants who are very well qualified for Broadway before they even begin the programs, it is very disputable that they are “better” at producing Broadway performers. I think that you could actually effectively argue the opposite, that they produce far fewer Broadway performers than one might expect given the level of talent that they attract.</p>
<p>Even if one agrees with your assertion of Broadway bodies as a metric to judge program quality, I find a really big problem with your numbers. You should have noted the percentage of performers for whom you were able to find data on vs. the number of performers included in your survey, from what I can tell you found schools for something around 30%-40% of the performers currently on Broadway. This is problematic because even an additional 10% would potentially change the “rankings” fairly dramatically. While I have no doubt that the top 5-6 are always going to be at or near the top, the rest of the data is subject to quite of bit of fluctuation season vs. season and over the population of performers for which you were not able to find data. I believe this greatly weakens any assertions about the validity of data like this in using it to make assertions about program quality, and I have made these counts myself.</p>
<p>On more thing, if I read your posts correctly you did not include National Tours which I think is important and further weakens your assertion of any kind of a “best” ranking.</p>
<p>Finally, to touch on my view of any college rankings (including football, by the way), they are all based on some collection of weighted metrics that have been judged soley by the source as representing program quality in some kind of objective manner. When I dig into what goes into these metrics, I find that I disagree that they represent some kind of definitive assessment of comparitive program quality, especially when you consider that no statistical significance is ever reported, so there is no objective way to tell if there is any real difference discernable between #3 and #23. Not to mention the continuing reports of colleges fudging and gaming numbers to raise rankings. Hence, I believe all these “best” college rankings are just hyperbole to sell publications and ad space.</p>
<p>EmsDad, you make some very valid points in your post above.</p>
<p>Well Emsdad, I agree with all of your points.</p>
<p>But MTPragmatist qualified his list using one metric, stated it from the beginning, and it is even in his title. We can all agree that it is a flawed or at the very most, a single faceted look at musical theatre training and how success might be measured, but he was very clear from the get go about his approach.</p>
<p>When our son began his search for a school, he said he wanted training for film and TV acting as well as musical theatre. So early on, we (at least for our purposes,) identified Carnegie and Texas State for their industry wide multi-purpose acting approach. I am not saying other schools don’t offer it too, but IMHO, those two addressed it to our satisfaction the best.</p>
<p>My son may never go to New York. Maybe. Maybe not. But he knew he wanted musical theatre training so he could have the options of Christian Borle, Hugh Jackman, Patick Wilson, etc. to do both Broadway and film/TV.</p>
<p>However, getting to Broadway is a time honored, brass ring for those in the musical theatre world. I thought MTPragmatist’s work was informative and illuminating even IF not for everyone.</p>
<p>A lot of great point and counterpoint discussion has been had in this thread. Here is my two cents:
Penny One) It is true when folks attempt such things, the fact that so few Broadway performers list their schooling is a ponderous weight on the validity of the results. However, I do like the listing that is the normalized list (because normalizing is the fairer stat for equivalent comparisons) of graduates in the last five years. The reason this is a far better list is that these “fresh” Broadway performers have less to list in their bio and consequently the information regarding their training program is made available with considerably far greater reliability. The “fresh performers” list also reflects what I have previously referred to as schools that were currently “hot” with producers and casting agents. BW vastly improved their product when they added a key dance person about 3 years ago; Elon did the same with key faculty added about 7 years ago. UM &CCM are, have, and will likely remain “hot” for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Penny Two) Stats are an attempt to take a static photograph of what is a dynamic situation. Who is on Broadway in May can be dramatically different than who is there in June. Of course others have mentioned the question: Is Broadway the touchstone for measuring success. Personally, I think not, I think carving a satisfying life in the performing arts is the real measure – that can happen in Seattle or St. Louis, Buffalo or Baltimore, almost anywhere) In the end, all else pales in comparison to three things: 1) Can you get admitted, 2) Can you afford the tuition, and 3) Is the program’s style, mentorship, size, location, etc fitted for your individual greatest advantage (the “fit”).</p>
<p>Again, and as always, I wish all the students and parents great success on their journey.</p>
<p>Thank you. That was easily downloaded into Excel. Now to analyze it.</p>
<p>Awesome! This is exactly the kind of info I was hoping for in my post on the “number of students accepted” thread. College Confidential is amazing! Actually, all of you that post are amazing - thank you!! My only concern is how long it will take me to get through everything on this site.</p>
<p>This is great, thank you so much for pulling all this data together! I didn’t read through the rest of the posts yet but the beginning statistics are the type of information I was looking for.</p>
<p>I love the amount of work you did on this, however, not all of us are familiar with the abbreviations used. I wish you had written out the names of the colleges. Some colleges have the same abbreviations as other ones.</p>
<p>Here are some abbreviations:
CCM- Cincinnati Conservatory of Music
CMU - Carnegie Mellon University
BOCO- Boston Conservatory
UNCSA- North Carolina School for the Arts
OCU- Oklahoma City University</p>
<p>Tisch = NYU Tisch
CCM = College Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati
UM = University of Michigan
CMU = Carnegie Mellon University
BoCo = Boston Conservatory
AMDA = American Musical and Dramatic Academy
FSU = Florida State University
UNCSA = University of North Carolina School of the Arts
OCU = Oklahoma City University
BW = Baldwin Wallace University
PSU = Pen State University
MMC = Marymount Manhattan College
UCLA = University of California, Los Angeles
Nwestern = Northwestern
NColorado = University of Northern Colorado
Steinhardt = NYU Steinhardt
USC = University of Southern California
BYU = Brigham Young University
BostonU = Boston University
UArts = University of the Arts
OU = University of Oklahoma
JMU = James Madison University
WrightSt = Wright State University
StevensPt = University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
Webster = Webster University
Sheridan = Sheridan College
UCF = University of Central FLorida
Columbia-Chi = Columbia College Chicago
Hartt = Hartt School, University of Hartford
OhioSt = Ohio State
EMich = Eastern Michigan University
TrinityWest = Trinity Western University
WMich = Western Michigan University
Berklee = Berklee College of Music
CoastalCar = Coastal Carolina University
TexasSt = Texas State University
UCSB = University of California, Santa Barbara
UNCG = University of North Carolina at Greensboro
AADA = American Academy of Dramatic Arts
ASU = Arizona State University
BallSt = Ball State University
UMass = University of Massachusetts
IllSt = Illinois State University
LIU = Long Island University
Montclair = Montclair State University
NorthCentral = North Central College
PacificLuth = Pacific Lutheran University
SMU = Southern Methodist University</p>
<p>The rest should be self explanatory.</p>
<p>mtpragmatist – Any chance of an update sometime this fall or winter?</p>
<p>Rita68. Possibly, but unlikely. I’m currently engrossed in another stats project: determining the relative increase of standardized test scores for elementary school chess players, while attempting to remove the chicken-and-egg aspect (i.e., chess players clearly have better test scores, but is that because chess increases their brainpower or simply because the smart kids enjoy/play chess).</p>