@bisouu thank you for your answer – it’s an interesting perspective. My D graduated from NYU in May. I don’t know whether or not she was marketable before going to college, but she felt she needed more training and her agent told her he thought it would serve her well to go to NYU. She is now trying to make it professionally and thanks to NYU has a voiceover agent and has worked in some independent films and pilot projects. But she (and I!) also have a lot of debt. She loved every minute of her training and absolutely thinks it was worthwhile, but after reading this board and the articles that have been posted I wonder if the debt will be worth it or if she would have made it anyway. I guess only time will tell! Thank you for your input!
@actingdreams One of my twins is most likely to be attending a great program in a city close to us, we’re in a great commuter suburb (the highway curves thru town with so many exits, a train line splits here into two lines so there are 5-7 stops available with 2 of them about 1 mile from our house), and the drive is pretty quick (quicker than subway rides from an offcampus apartment might be). So, it’s totally cramping my plans to redo the bedroom situation in our house after their first summer home! (That college doesn’t guarantee housing to srs, not sure about jrs.)
I went to college in the same city while my parents lived here and did wind up commuting for a semester my jr year before a room opened up in a best friend’s apartment where I’d often crash on weekends.
The big challenge will be keeping my parents from randomly showing up at her dorm room door! During my sr year my father was taking a night course near my campus and would show up unannounced with specialty groceries from where my old apartment had been! (I loved being able to take the train home to borrow one of my parents’ cars on some weekends, especially during years when I had a boyfriend across the state, but mostly to spend time with groups of friends from all over the east coast.)
There’s still a chance that she’ll be at a further distance but affordably accessible by amtrak or but lines… or across country… And her twin is either going to be 2.5-6.5 hrs away by car in the northeast or across the country… that’s the twin that’s feeling homesick already!
From another thread it looks like you have a boy and a girl heading off this year… how far off do you expect your other teen?
@actingdreams thank you so much!!!
I read that Jennifer Lawrence dropped out of school at 14 and went right into acting!
@TwinGMom no other teens here. My daughter is older and was ok staying local for school. My Artist Kid would go to school in Europe if I allowed it lol. My daughter is very independent and can make decisions quickly. My son is all over the place. I hope we will have a decision soon. If he stays, I wouldn’t be able to visit him often as I’m trying to create a new life (maybe travel more if cost allows and I could always jet set out of here from NYC if NYC is where he chooses 
Universities are so much more expensive than when I was in school. For the price of 1 year, I was able to get my undergrad and graduate degree. Something happened between those prices and what the cost is now :)) geesh
To all… this is torture. Period. @actorparent1 I completely agree. It is hard to quantify connections and in this industry that is a fact. Our family is struggling with rest of you. Narrowed it down to 4 schools. A couple great schools with great scholarships in less desirable locations. And, a couple of premier schools in the best locations with debt that may bankrupt our family and last well into our S’s lifetime. I keep coming back to connections. I think the showcases are a great thing, but am doubtful that many kids get signed from most programs. And, again, I find myself back at the connection piece. I feel like we are stuck on a merry-go-round. I think I am losing it!
The comfort and support of CC has been so instrumental in this experience!! CC family, you are all amazing!
@bisouu, @frontrowmama and others (sorry a lot of posting on this subject above)…some schools (not many) will actually tell you the percentage of kids picked up at showcase. My D’s school does tell prospective students this info (they were the only ones who did so our year auditioning out of the schools my D applied to). The majority at her school are signed before they graduate. However, the faculty are the first to say that is no guarantee. Sometimes it is the student that wasn’t signed who does the best b/c he/she gets up and works every day to get those auditions, etc. Or they move to a regional market and work instantly vs being with an agent and going on lots of auditions but not necessarily getting cast in LA/NYC (although many are cast there, too).
For me it is a comfort to know that alumni from my D’s school generally work and have long careers in the arts. However, I don’t think it is a guarantee and I also know that tons of people from many backgrounds (no college, other majors, BFAs from unknown schools) also work and are successful. There are also kids we know from my D’s college and other big name schools including Juilliard (young adults we personally know) that are working at survival jobs and struggling to be cast. The school doesn’t make you. It provides a foundation - but it is not a golden ticket (as I have been guilty of thinking it was in the past).
Each family has to choose what works for them in terms of costs, name, curriculum, etc.
All of our kids are pretty driven to have made it through this process. They will be fine. Their paths may be different and they may even change paths, but they will succeed in whatever they do as that is part of who they are (you don’t get through all this without a lot of drive and tenacity).
Best of luck to everyone. You are in the home stretch and it will all work out!
@bfahopeful Wow had no idea that so many were signed. The showcase world is not one I am familiar with. The few friends I have whose kids’ school offer showcases were not signed, so I assumed (which I shouldn’t have) that most don’t get signed. What school did your daughter attend? I am sure a lot of people will be flocking to a school that signs most of the students before graduation. That is phenomenal and makes it easier to begin this journey with an agent in your pocket. Thanks for the info <3
@actingdreams you are singing to the chorus, haha! My husband and I each got pretty sweet merit deals, he did screw it up a bit by bouncing from college to college in NYC every 1-1.5 years but supplemented with ROTC. I stayed at one, the one I had always wanted most, but added on a 3rd major so it took an extra semester. Outside of my bonus semester each of us only cost ourselves & our parents $5k per year or less total… I was supposed to be paying $5k a year of the cost and did pay my rent and commuting fees when I lived off campus but when the final semester came and would cost $5k while I interned in NYC I proposed that I just take a loan for that amount since I earned all but $5k each of the other years thru merit scholarships and my parents said ok. Can you even imagine $5k per year including room and board now? Without far extenuating circumstances?
Technically both of my girls can say that my husband attended NYU in their applications to NYU, but not sure if it hurt that he stayed 2-3 semesters and bounced off to another school (he was not from the US but had lived there since around middle school and still had no clue what the normal college path was supposed to be).
If I hadn’t dropped out of the workforce for health issues, we’d probably be in a FA donut hole, but somehow it seems that colleges so far agree that we can’t foot it out of pocket! Thank goodness, because we can’t!
@bisouu I messaged you.
@bfahopeful Thanks! <3
Most of the kids over the past 5 years have gotten signed following showcase out of BW. The more interesting to me would be 1. did the agents find them work and 2. what are they doing 5 years later?
@artskids - great post!
@TwinGMom no other teens here. My daughter is older and was ok staying local for school. My Artist Kid would go to school across the world if I allowed it lol. My daughter is very independent and can make decisions quickly. My son is all over the place. I hope we will have a decision soon. If he stays, I wouldn’t be able to visit him often as I’m trying to create a new life (maybe travel more if cost allows). Next week will be the final countdown and it can’t get here fast enough
@bfahopeful wrote: “Sometimes it is the student that wasn’t signed who does the best b/c he/she gets up and works every day to get those auditions”
This, this, and this. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this business is a numbers game, and the only way to play is to audition, get rejected, shed a tear, then get back up again the next morning and do it all again, rinse and repeat ad nauseam. When I cast a role (and again, I’m film/tv, not theatre, so I can’t speak to that side of the industry) I will see, between tapes and in-person, multiple hundreds of actors for a main part – and that’s just a fraction of the number that the casting directors have already seen and passed onto me.
So we talk about training and the schools and the showcases and agents and all of that – and yes, for those kids who have innate talent (and that’s a separate question), training and “polishing the silver” as someone astutely put it a few posts back is incredibly helpful to get them to that next level where their abilities can shine –
But at the end of the day it’s resiliency, it’s nonstop belief, it’s knowing that somewhere out there is the part that IS meant for you that’ll get the job done. It’s the one thing I’ve tried to instill in my own daughter, and I can only help she’s taken it to heart. Obviously there are certain shining stars and bright lights who can walk into a room and you just know they’ve got something – but those are rare, generational talents (and often, I’ve found, the least interesting people to talk to one-on-one, as they live so well through the lives of others instead of their own).
A great training program will help you find the best version of yourself. A school with great connections and reputation will bring in the reps who will offer to manage and agent you and get you into the rooms where you can shine. An institution where you can learn and perform and collaborate with those who see the world in the same way you do can open you up to the possibilities of your art and inspire you and keep you going day after day, and give you a place to create. That’s the benefit of these schools, as I see them.
But this is the hardest industry in the world. Millions of people come from all over the world to “make it” in LA and NYC, and for the majority of our kids it will be a constant daily battle to find their footholds and climb up that mountain. It’s why I tell anyone who asks for my advice on the business the same thing that was told to me many years ago: “If there is ANYTHING ELSE that you want to do in this world, any other job where you’ll be happy – law, architecture, science, computers, pottery making, scuba diving, whatever – then for the love of god, do that thing.” The only reason to go into entertainment is because it’s literally the only thing that will sustain you. It is expensive, it is stressful (there’s a reason the union health plans in our industry have the highest mental-health costs of any business in the world), and the odds are stacked against you from day one.
But if you love it, then it’s the only way to live and the only thing to pursue. There are many days when I want to pack up, sell everything off, and move to Thailand (no, I don’t know why Thailand, just seems like a good place to sit on the beach and care about nothing) – but there are far more days when I thank the stars that I’ve found a way to make a living doing the one thing I love, and the one thing I’m really good at.
I guess my point is this: yes, there is a reason for training. Yes, there are good reasons not to go into debt over it. Yes, there are also good reasons to go into some debt to make sure your kids have every tool at their disposal.
But when the talent pool evens out and they’re at the top of their game going up against others at the top of their game, it’s getting back up when they’ve been punched down (and they will get punched down) that’s going to win.
Find me a school that teaches that and I’ll sell my plasma, rob a bank, do whatever I have to in order to fund it.
@proudcalidad thank you for this! I’m certainly printing this off and framing it for my kid 
@proudcalidad excellent post! I love it!
@proudcalidad …getting that on a poster for my son!!!
@jbtcat, I have a lawyer friend who kept asking me throughout this process where these different schools to which my D has been applying to “rank.”
I’ve struggled to explain to her that (not only do I personally think USNWR-type rankings are BS even for non-arts programs, by and large) I think it’s almost impossible to rank arts programs in any way that’s very meaningful. Or to the extent it IS possible, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that done.
It’s awfully hard to quantify “quality of training.” And connections are nebulous & also hard to quantify.
The theater programs rankings in one major college guidebook (Princeton, I think…maybe Fiske?) uses things like student responses to “how good are the plays that are performed on your campus?” At one thus highly-ranked LAC school I toured, a woman in the admissions office, who clearly knew very little about the theater dept., upon hearing mu kid was interested in theatre, kind of laughed and actually said to me, “We get a lot of theater kids coming to visit…I think we are highly ranked in some book because of [professional theater located on campus, completely separate from the school].” (Now, I’ve seen parents on here who are VERY happy with their kids’ training at this same school, so who knows. But it was a big turnoff as we started our tour of the school and pointed out a flaw with this methodology.)
Most (all?) of the articles I’ve seen out there (Backstage etc.) seem to conduct what appear to be very random & nonscientific surveys of assorted people from the industry. Aside from the tiny number of uber-competitive standouts that appear over & over on such lists, I find most of the rankings pretty meaningless. Seems to me that connections are huge if you’re from certain California schools or Tisch or a few others.
And even there…numbers can be misleading. Tisch has lots of visible success, but it’s also a huge program. So how much greater chance of success ON AVERAGE than from some other school? No idea. Do they have more silver to polish, so they end up with a greater collection of extra-shiny silver?
Maybe someone else has crunched those numbers, but personally, I’ve never seen anything published that uses any kind of objective metrics.
And I believe it’s a lot harder to compare outcomes in this field than in some others. Unlike medicine, law, accounting, for example, you have plenty of people working in this field who a) majored in something else b) dropped out c) got training privately in a non-school setting d) got all their early work through their parents’ connections or e) any combination of the above.
@proudcalidad I think we all need to pack up and move to Thailand after this crazy rollercoaster ride!!