Hi there! I was wondering if there were any summer drama programs for high schools students that would offer financial aid. I’m from Europe and don’t know if I would be able to pay full cost of the program (depending on how expensive it is, obviously) and would really love a short summer program before going to study acting after I’m done with high school.
Check out Pace Summer Scholars Institute in NYC. My daughter attended the Musical Theatre program there (and ended up in BFA Acting there when all was said and done), and I know that there were some international students. You can get the scoop on costs and financial aid here:
http://www.pace.edu/summer-scholars/program-dates-costs-financial-aid
In the case of Pace SSI, the finantial aid could be $300 against the $2850 cost, or a bit over 10%.
This is typical. You need to be aware that most programs don’t really have anything close to full scholarships. As good as they are (and many are extremely valuable in terms of both training and figuring out what you really want to do in college), my view of summer programs is that they are primarily a way for the colleges to bring in some money utilizing the facilities that might otherwise be sitting idle during the summer. For example, another highly regarded program is the Boston University Summer Theatre Institute:
https://www.bu.edu/cfa/busti/tuition/financial-aid-scholarships/
and they say;
“Please be aware that BUSTI most frequently awards financial assistance amounting to 10% of the overall tuition, or approximately $500. In select cases, BUSTI may award up to 20% of the overall tuition, or approximately $1000.”
The difference in cost ($6300 for BU, $2850 for Pace) reflects a difference in program length more than anything (Pace is 2 weeks, BU is 5 weeks long). The main point is that the scholarships will help a bit, but these programs aren’t cheap.
One last note: many of these programs offer either college credit or other considerations. For example, my child went to Pace SSI and now is a bachelor’s candidate in BFA acting. Because they attended SSI, we get a $3000 merit scholarship EVERY YEAR for undergrad. In other words, it has already paid for itself twice over. That’s not something you can count on – attending SSI does not bring any special consideration for admissions to undergraduate, and fewer than one person per year makes it into the performing arts programs after having done SSI. But in our case it worked out very well.