@NeensMom My D who is a Junior this year looked at both LIU and CAP21 also. She really liked Dave and thought his acting class was very good. But she felt for MT, CAP21 had more history and she was very impressed with the classes that she observed at CAP21. All the questions that she planned to ask the day she visited CAP21 were answered before she could even ask them. It made he feel like they knew exactly what she wanted in a program. She hasn’t had an issue missing shows as the work very hard on their projects. And as @EastchesterMom mentioned, they have the opportunity to audition for the Madison Theater starting sophomore year and get the experience of working with a professional theater along side Broadway professionals. As for logistics, she felt LIU with the campus being very small and not much around it she would feel isolated. With CAP21, she loved the idea that she would get to go into the city 2-3 days a week and still have the small homey campus to come back to. The commuting back and forth was not a big deal at all. They take the shuttle from campus to the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) and then the subway into the city. By the first time we visited, she had the public transportation system down.
Thank you all so much for your great feedback! How do the kids feel about the living quarters and food options on campus? Also can they take a non-performance related minor? Psychology specifically.
A minor is going to be tough… These kids put in 40 hrs a week between travel and rehearsals… It can be done… but not easily. The major problem is the college doesn’t offer a variety of courses each semester. They are either in the spring or the fall, not both. Or the courses they need for minors always seem to on CAP days. But most of them are training to be performers… and that’s 100% of their focus. There have been a lot of improvements in the housing and food options in the past 4 years. They are trying to not just be a commuter college, which is basically what they are, but with CAP they are drawing kids from all over now, so need to catch up. We have had a very positive experience, seen our D grow so much not only in the arts, but just growing up having to feed herself, transport herself, manage her own time…etc… That may be a bigger education than anything else.
@NeensMom - my D is doing a communications minor. If you have a least a few AP classes that fulfill gen ed classes (I think my D had 3) it is much more doable. There are a couple of elective Theater classes she won’t be able to take, like the directing class. I’m not sure about Psychology specifically.
@NeensMom - my D tried the psychology minor, but had to give it up in the 4th semester… between the CAP workload, the Madison shows, working at the Madison (a great work-study option) and Molloy distribution requirements, she wasn’t able to get enough psych credits.
@EastchesterMom That’s helpful to know. Thank you!
My D loves CAP21 as well. She was ‘called back’ at a festival audition by Rebecca, and then auditioned for her again at Chicago Unified’s. I’ve seen Rebecca twice, and she’s incredibly nice, but the poor lady is always exhausted. Seems like most schools have 2-3 people (if not more) who rotate and help each other out. At Cap21, I think she runs it solo, which I suppose is to be expected at a smaller college. I work pretty hard at my job, but I’m convinced I don’t work as hard as she does. LOL. 
@NeensMom My DS is a sophomore. He is minoring in psychology though we’ll have to see if it works out for sure or not when he gets closer to graduation. Having a few APs helps.
In terms of cost, we found that LIU and Molloy were pretty comparable. Molloy did give more in scholarships.
When it came down to it, we were deciding between LIU and Molloy. On paper, they both looked like great options for my son. A visit cleared that up very quickly. Obviously, he chose Molloy (and couldn’t be happier). Frankly, we did not have a good visit at LIU and he knew it was not his place after being on campus for an hour. I can’t stress enough the importance of visiting when you get to the point of decision making
One more question! It seems from my research that transportation costs between the LIRR and MetroCard expenses per semester fall at around 800.00 per semester. Does that sound right?
A parent of a current student will have to answer that one, @NeensMom … but see earlier posts on this thread about having your freshman pair up with a sophomore to split the cost of the LIRR ticket.
@NeensMom Starting this semester they are offering a 25% reimbursement on LIRR tickets. I believe it will be reimbursed at the end of each semester. And some freshman and sophomores split a monthly so that can help.
My daughter would tell you the two downsides in her opinion are the food on campus (although she loves the food at the Manhattan Center) and the distance from town. There are shuttles but on the weekend they are sporadic. But they now have zipcars on campus you can rent to help with that. She also was a little frustrated trying to schedule gen eds as the classes she wanted were all on CAP days but hopefully she can fit them in in the future when she switches days.
As the others have said the training is top notch. My daughter grew leaps and bounds in her first semester. As a parent I have been impressed with how supportive staff and instructors have been as well. But I can’t compare to LIU. My daughter got excellent academic financial aid. But there is a l
conservatory fee each semester. Best of luck in decisions. Visits definitely help!
First year for my kid at Cap21/Molloy almost done and here are my main thoughts in no particular order:
• Program seems strong and good in terms of training
• People are extremely nice - like, the culture of the school is incredibly friendly
• Molloy is generous with academic merit scholarships - not sure about other forms of scholarship
• The commute overall doesn’t seem to be a problem, but sometimes the last group to leave Cap end up getting into Rockville rather late and then have to wait a significant amount of time for the shuttle to come get them from the train station - they are tired and hungry and sometimes cold. Oh, and of course the commute is quite expensive - happy to hear that they are going to get a discount now.
• Highly recommend overall despite any nitpicking I’ll share here - no school is going to be perfect and I think that Molloy Cap21 is overall particularly wonderful.
• Only real complaint about Cap 21 is that they accidentally took far more students into the program last year than they said they would - there are already very few performance opportunities and so we’ll be watching closely to see if they add more to offset how having so many students will impact the chance to perform and build a resume and gain stage experience.
• In regards to the LIU question all I’ll say now is that my kid got into both and there wasn’t really any difficulty deciding.
• I have some complaints about Molloy, all of which are centered on one primary issue: They are not used to being a campus that students live on, they are used to being a commuter school. There have been numerous problems having to do with this. Nothing to make us regret choosing Molloy, but they have a lot of learning to do around housing kids who come from far away. No safety issues or anything like that, but lots of practicality issues, each small unto itself, but combined causing some frustration.
• On the whole it’s a very sweet school with what seems to be a solid musical theater program.
@tatteredandfriendly, and other interested readers:
“Only real complaint about Cap 21 is that they accidentally took far more students into the program last year than they said they would.”
All MT programs have in mind the number of students they want. To get that number, they have to accept many more applicants than the number they want; obviously, not every applicant is going to accept an offer of admission. The number of acceptances to offer has been complicated in recent years by students applying to 15 or more programs. What happened to Molloy this year, and what has happened before, is that more accepted MT students chose to enroll than Molloy/CAP21 expected - to me, this is an indication of the popularity of the program. In past years, such as the Class of 2019, Molloy split the class into 2 cohorts. As to performance opportunities, it is true that it’s getting more competitive. This is the case at many, many programs. I have a friend whose daughter attended a well-known program that i will not name. The daughter was not cast in a single show the whole 4 years she was there. This young woman has been working steadily since graduation - really good jobs. She was just cast as the lead in a show for a highly respected theatre company. The lack of performance opportunities really has little to do with outcomes in the post-grad audition room. The booking people know that these kids have to start somewhere. It’s talent and training that will get you noticed and booked…and our Cappie kids have both, to spare!
Yes, totally understood why it happened, and I don’t blame Cap 21, but I think it will be important to see how they handle it. I do think that performance opportunities are important - after all, they are training for performing, so they need experience doing it. Not all of the kids arrive at college already having been in tons of stage productions, and it’s something that most kids factor when looking at and choosing colleges. My suspicion is that Cap 21 will make whatever changes are necessary to adjust for the increased student population.
Molloy can take 48 students I. Their BFA program. This year’s freshman class is 47, not a mistake, but they have concluded it is too big. They will have a smaller class of 2024. Additionally, they had approx 600 applicants last year…and 1200 this year!
1200 applicants this year! WOW!! It is gaining popularity so fast! Growing pains are definitely to be expected. This wait has been agonizing and I’m so glad we will have an answer a week from today! I’m especially anxious because my D felt so confident about her audition and had such an encouraging chat with Rebecca afterward that she really thinks she is going to get in. I think she definitely underestimated how many applicants there were though, so I’ll need to set the record straight with her to temper her expectations. I have a few more questions for you all based on your recent comments:
- What is the conservatory fee per semester?
- Does your tuition go up every year or do you have a fixed rate for all 4 years?
- Do most Freshman live in Fitzgerald hall? How do they like it?
- What are the kids complaints about food?
- Were you all notified on March 1st as well? Email? Phone call? It's a Sunday this year so I'm wondering what time of day to expect?
Thank you all so much. I think I’ll be just as devastated and my D will be if she doesn’t get in! If the faculty and kids are as warm and welcoming as this group is, I know she will be in great hands next year! Fingers crossed!!
Also @speezagmom thank you so much for your direction to the Instagram page the LIU students post all the broken things on campus too. Pretty shocking!
@NeensMom - my D graduated 2 years ago, so some of my info may be old. The conservatory fee is $3000 per semester. Tuition is not fixed…unless you pay it all in advance, lol! There are 3 dorms; my D lived in Fitz for 2 years and loved it… she had a suite sophomore year. I can’t give an updated review of the food… it was meh when D was living on campus. Re notification… it was very late 2 years ago, but I think right on time last year.
6000.00 per year…OUCH!!
We were hoping to stick to a budget of under 30k per year. Is anyone willing to speak to whether that is in the ballpark after academic scholarships are applied? (Most schools seem to be offering her 10-15k per year in academic scholarships).
Initially, we wanted to stay under 100k total but that doesn’t seem very realistic unless she takes the early admission she received at Rockford University (which she really doesn’t want to do). They offered her 20k per year and that actually put her total at 80K for the MT BFA! That early offer really skewed our perception of what we could expect financially. Nothing else has come close since then. :-/
Freshman are spread across all the dorms. They have more choice in the matter going into sophomore year I think.
Food complaints that I have heard - it’s quite expensive, kids who are veg have more trouble finding stuff to eat than they might at more progressive schools, and a lot of the dining options shut down at times when they might still want to be able to eat. The school isn’t really close to outside eating options, so if they are there over say a short holiday when the school is shut down and there aren’t shuttles into Rockville eating becomes a bit harder. Also, they are incredibly stringent about what’s allowed in the dorm rooms - so there isn’t a way to cook for yourself other than heating things in a microwave. Other schools we saw had kitchens that dorm kids could cook in, and allowed stuff like instapots, electric kettles etc. Not Molloy. But let me stress, all of this is manageable, it’s just not easy, but it’s certainly not a deal breaker. The good far outweighs the frustrating.
On the pro side, they are incredibly responsive to individual students needs. If a student has allergies or other food restrictions (ethics/religion etc) they will do everything they can to help, including preparing individual meals for them - it’s just that with the Cap schedule it’s not always easy to make that work.
Our kid hasn’t been there long enough for me to be able to answer about changing fees, but so far the conservatory fee is still $3,000