Hey guys! I’ve recently been accepted to these schools for the screenwriting major. Which one should I attend? Pros and cons of both? I know Chapman’s film school is ranked higher but I am worried about when I go looking for jobs/internships since Orange County to LA can take up to 2 hours with traffic.
Any insight would be extremely helpful!
Congrats, two great choices. We toured both and my D chose LMU, but acting major. I agree that Chapman’s film school is higher ranked, not that LMUs is shabby, but Chapmans is well known. My D is doing a screenwiring minor at LMU and she loves loves loves it, great professors, great classes. You are right though, the trade off is that access to the city is harder.
Since an internship is maybe only 1/8 of your college time, I think you should weight that in your decision. You won’t really be working in LA otherwise during school. When it comes time to job search, I think you can manage it. I’m sure that all Chapman students end up interning and working in LA, so this won’t be a unique issue.
You’re thinking about the right things and have two great choices, maybe try to dig deeper into the classes and course selection for each, and did you lean towards on or the other on your visit?
My daughter is at Dodge as a creative producing major and does the commute for internships…she has been able to work her schedule so she has Mondays and Fridays off since Spring of Sophomore year and has done internships that way. The commute is something you get used to in Southern California! She carpools a lot of the time and on Fridays she often stays overnight with a sorority sister who is a recent grad so she doesn’t commute during rush hour. She’s also had internships that were a bit flexible about time so she started at 11am and went till 7 so she avoided rush hour.
As for pros and cons–I would be a bit concerned about LMU’s recent expansion at their satellite campus for Grad students taking away from the resources for undergrads. I also heard that the film production kids have to film MOS/non sync sound until senior year so I don’t know where that leaves the screenwriters!