<p>I've been accepted to CalArts in Valencia, CA and to Mills College in Oakland, CA for graduate studies in music composition. I'm interested in interdisciplinary collaboration with dance, visual arts, and creative writing. Both of these schools seem to have this element, however they differ greatly in location, cost, size, and student population (guess which one is bigger haha!). CalArts is an all arts school, where as Mills College is a liberal arts school (like Stetson, my alma mater). CalArts has amazing facilities, but with the size of the student body, there's some competition to have access to those facilities. Mills College has a total of 45 graduate music students, so they tend to get a lot of attention and lots of time in the Center for Contemporary Music. Both LA and the SF bay area seem to have a very active new music scene.</p>
<p>Any thoughts that could point me in the right direction?</p>
<p>I assume you’ve visited both, and spoken extensively with the composition staff? It’s interesting because I never think of Mills for dance and visual arts. I always think of it exclusively for music, and heavily tilted towards electro-acoustic, experimental and improvisatory. Mills has some wonderful folks working there - but it’s definitely not mainstream - which I assume you already know. (Just went to a great Robert Ashley concert there on Saturday night.)</p>
<p>I think that CalArts probably gets more attention from the media than the Mills performances - concerts are more likely to get reviewed and there is the RedCat Theater at Disney which makes it more an integral part of the LA music world. Mills concerts tend to be isolated, and, often, unfortunately, under attended.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Mills has a fabulous history and terrific graduates and professors - and is definitely tied in to the Bay Area new music world.</p>
<p>My advice is to really explore the other aspects - the dance/writing/visual arts that attract you and find out a bit more about that scene at each school. That might make the differences more striking. Or not.</p>