The young man from Montclair is on the other tour (1st National/West Coast.) My son is on the 2nd National/East Coast tour (The one that started out located in Chicago.)
THis is old. Here is the new list. http://www.playbill.com/article/big-10-top-colleges-currently-represented-on-broadway
Highlights (for those not wishing to click):
- New York University
- University of Michigan
- University of Cincinnati – College Conservatory of Music
- American Musical and Dramatic Academy
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Boston Conservatory
- (tie) Yale University
- (tie) Oklahoma City University
- Point Park University
- (tie) University of North Carolina School of the Arts
- (tie) The Juilliard School
- (tie) Northwestern University
- (tie) Pace University
- (tie) Elon University
- (tie) Pennsylvania State University
- (tie) Fordham University
Honorable Mentions:
- Syracuse University
- (tie) Baldwin-Wallace University
- (tie) University of Hartford (Hartt School of Music)
- (tie) University of the Arts
- Ithaca College
So it’s actually the 21 most represented 
^^clearly not math majors :))
@soozievt I wrote the list! LOL
^^^Alas, that is the meaning behind your name, @Notmath1 LOL
Seriously looking at this list the school that drives my attention is American Musical and Dramatic Academy. I just don´t understand how people call it SCAMDA! It has the 4th place for god sake!
People should just stop calling this school in a very pejorative way.
I understand your frustration. I think it’s the accreditation issue. I have had many discussions about the school with my daughter, but she is adamant that she doesn’t want to even consider it because she has only heard of the negatives.
There are talented people at every school. I don’t think a school itself is what leads to success. It really is the person.
If you are a very talented person, it doesn’t matter if you go to school X or school Y, because it really is about you.
That said, picking a college to attend is important in terms of a good fit for you and how you want to spend those four years and where you can have a fruitful experience and thrive.
@luisen I think AMDA has always provided decent skills training. Where many people get conflicted is that until very recently, they were really a 2 year conservatory training program, not a college. They did not used to offer the chance to get a college degree. Now they do have a 4 year BFA program. But I think compared to more traditional colleges, there are still issues with the ability to get things like academic scholarships or whether credits will transfer should you leave. And questions about the strength of academics. But AMDA has consistently produced working performers, no question. They are also one of those schools that has a relatively high acceptance rate compared to some other schools mentioned frequently here. So I’ve heard concerns voiced that they accept large numbers of applicants just to get their tuition $ whether they truly feel the students will succeed in this realm or not. I think that is where the “SCAMDA” part comes in. I have no knowledge or opinion about that. Just relaying concerns I’ve heard in the past about AMDA. But kudos to them for their alumni success. It is impressive!
The number not given is the percentage of Broadway actors who didn’t go to college at all, or if these 20+ schools represent a good number of the actors on Broadway.
NYU may be #1, but if only 1% of Broadway actors attended, that might not be a statistic that’s worth much.
That certainly would put some perspective on the rankings @twoinanddone . Another aspect these rankings do not take into account is the relative size of each school’s MT enrollment.
The other thing for us to keep in mind is that we’re here because our kids want to go to an undergrad theatre program. Some of these schools represent grad programs alone (Yale) or a combo of undergrad and grad.
I would not try to dissect any of these rankings too much. In any given year, this list will fluctuate in terms of what schools are on it and what number they are ranked… Lists like these are just one more thing you can use in your research and analysis about different programs in which you are interested. One thing it does show you is that alumni at these schools are currently working on Broadway and alumni success is something I think both parents and students wish to see… You may want to pull up lists from previous years to see which schools are on it consistently, which schools’ alums seem to be on the rise and which ones may not be having as much recent success. These particular rankings are based on quantitative data -# of working alums. However, even Playbill admits, it is not necessarily comprehensive. But at least it is based on numbers. Some other lists are based on subjective opinion. Opinions are also good to have. But its important to understand when a ranking list is based on someone’s personal opinion. Really, all of these lists need to be just a small piece of your puzzle in figuring out the schools in which you are most interested. They are interesting. But not necessarily the end all, be all.
These lists are somewhat fun to look at but they really mean very little and prospective students shouldn’t place much, if any, importance on them. Where grads are working is a question that should be asked/researched but looking solely at the number performing on Broadway at one given time isn’t all that helpful. Most grads will never book a Broadway show, so to get an idea of employment for any particular school, more information is going to be necessary.
I wish they took the top 10 theatre cities in the county and then gave us a list…there are a lot of people that prefer to live a lifestyle out of New York, for a variety of reasons. Also, look at the top 20 national tours. The list could potentially look very different.
I am a data geek and TBH I think people “protest too much” that these lists are meaningless. They aren’t the final word on a good MT program but they’re about the only hard data we have about who is getting work in live Theater. The Hollywood Reporter does something similar for Film and TV Actors and again - you shouldn’t choose your school based on these lists but it’s about the only hard data there is on training for work in film, so it’s important to consider them as data. Many of the same schools do appear year after year so they aren’t exactly random. If you go way back to the brilliant analytical CC postings of MTPragmatist in 2013 and subsequent similar lists you will see certain patterns. I found the lists interesting and helpful.
In terms of the “top 10 theatre cities in the US” - well, the problem is there is no such thing. Acting jobs are heavily concentrated in New York and L.A. The rest are relatively small markets. Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics site on Acting work (includes MT) for 2017.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes272011.htm
The regional market numbers look like this:
Metropolitan area Employment (1) Pct of National Employment
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA Metropolitan Division 10,020 23%
New York-Jersey City-White Plains, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division 5,960 14%
Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights, IL Metropolitan Division 1,860 4%
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA 720 2%
Salt Lake City, UT 680 2%
Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD 630 1%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Division 630 1%
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ 630 1%
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA 550 1%
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 490 1%
As you can see there’s LA, New York… and everyone else. Chicago would be the 3rd biggest market and it’s less than 1/3 of NY. Pretty much all other markets are small. That doesn’t mean there aren’t jobs in those markets - 60% of all acting work is done OUTSIDE of LA and New York - but trying to do statistics on live entertainment in those areas by school would be impossible, the sample sizes are too small for the resulting numbers to be meaningful. The NY and LA “best of” lists will be regionally biased and that’s something to consider strongly when looking at them. If a school in Texas / Florida / NC / CA gets on the top 10 on Broadway, to me that is pretty impressive… just as a strong showing by a NY school in the L.A. list is impressive. It still doesn’t mean all graduates from that school magically get jobs!
In terms of the original list and the question of what percentage of Broadway goes to which school - the closest estimate I have found in terms of numbers of actors on Broadway in any given year is about 600-700. The “top 10” (there were 18, lol!) list from last year showed over 300 total actors. So approx half the actors showing up on Playbills for Broadway shows went to one of the schools highlighted in the “top schools” article. And I would assume the other half went elsewhere… or didn’t go to school at all! Lots of roads, all of them requiring hard work, talent and a bunch of good luck.
Also, @CaMom13 regarding your last paragraph (and since you’re also a data geek)–the playbill list lumps all students of a school together, while we’re on this discussion forum to talk about our kids’ undergrad journeys. So, if a school like Yale School of Drama shows up on a list, that’s a MFA program, and wouldn’t apply to our kids who are looking for undergrad drama programs. Also, when the list mentions NYU (definitely impressive and a lot of kids), it doesn’t delineate whether the kids went to undergrad Tisch vs. Steinhardt vs. MFA vs.PhD. For example, Gelsey Bell from Great Comet, has been listed as an NYU grad, but she went to Lehigh for a BA, then got an MA and PhD in performance studies from NYU. All very impressive and great to have in a network of alumni, but not representative of what many of the college confidential readers think of when they want their kids to reap the successes of Tisch’s undergrad program.
Just food for thought when considering ‘the list.’
Hey @lovetoact ! I love people who love precision. 
When I analyzed the 2017 list I took out the MFAs and other grad degrees. TBH, it didn’t make much of a difference. I also tried to separate NYU alums by school since it does have several, including Gallatin, with alums on this list. From what I saw with one year’s data (I am NOT doing this each year) the schools who had the most grads on B’way also had the most undergrads - Tisch had the most grad students (6) but also the most undergrads (27). I also broke down the list by leads and ensemble, by groupings of graduation year (young/new/all) and normalized by class size. Yes, I am insane. I’m not publishing any of that because I do think it’s truly unfair to make judgements based upon a snapshot of a single year’s data. Also, I don’t need the grief that would be heaped on my head if I did! 
What I can say with some certainty is that any program that shows up on this list is doing something right in terms of getting their BFAs Broadway ready. And I do think that’s meaningful data for folks looking for MT programs.