My daughter is coming down to the wire on selecting a college. She wants to study musical theater and has a few options. She is in the BFA program and got a free ride from Southeast Missouri State. She also got into the BFA program at Carthage and the BA at Butler (it’s not a BFA but does require an audition). At Oklahoma City, I believe she was accepted for the BA in music, but not the BM in musical theater. She is also looking at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Purdue, and Loyola Chicago. I would appreciate any feedback or advice any of you can give me about any of these schools. Thanks.
How easy is it for your family to cover the costs at the not-free-ride institutions? Would she need any student loans? Would she need to hold down summer and/or school-year jobs that aren’t theater or music related?
How many productions is she likely to be able to be in at SMSU and the others? Where do the professors at SMSU have contacts? Will they be able to help her pick up paid gigs such as a summer dinner theater program somewhere?
Graduating with a degree in the arts, with a lot of production experience and no debt is a huge gift.
My daughter is a BFA MT at SEMO. PM me if you have questions.
I’m new to this forum. How do I PM you?
I think they do about 6 main stages with a lot of other student produced productions. That is less than some other schools, but they encourage kids to create their own productions and support them in getting rights, etc. Affording some of the others will be a big stretch with a fair amount of loans. They do have connections, mostly regional, a little in New York and Chicago. That’s not necessarily a bad thing since the odds for a first job may be better regionally. They do take graduating seniors to showcases in New York and I think LA.
@ajmomma I sent you a PM. You click on the little mailbox above and it should be there. Regarding the senior showcase you mentioned, not all seniors get to go…only select ones. And, they told the students last year that if they were selected to go to one of the showcases, they had to commit to moving to NY or LA within six months. I don’t know if they’ve told them that again this year, and I have no idea how they “enforce” that, but it’s what they told the students. 
They told us that as well when we visited, but I figure you can always say you plan to move to New York and then change your mind if things don’t work out that way. Not sure why they do that since I think there are agents/theaters/companies from outside New York and LA that go to those. How do they select the seniors to go? We were told it was based on whether or not you planned to move there, not on an audition.
My daughter says they have to audition AND say they plan to move there. (and they have to participate in the fundraising activities as undergrads.)
That requirement that the student commit to moving is very strange. I have never heard of a school doing that and it would be interesting to know what the reason is for this, and has been said, how on earth do they ever hope to enforce this?
I thought it was odd too. I got the impression it was because it is a fairly new program and they really haven’t worked out a good system to fundraise for it. The professor we spoke to on our visit also really emphasized graduates who were finding jobs regionally, so it may also be that they don’t have the national connections and are less successful in getting kids noticed in NY or LA.
From what my daughter has told me, I don’t think many of the students who went to the showcases actually moved to NY or LA. In fact, I only know of one who moved to LA and none to New York. One went to DC, I think. Another is working in regional theatres, fairly regularly. They are taking a small cast of students to New York this summer to perform a new musical in the New York Musical Festival. My daughter is very excited about being in the cast and having this opportunity. Although, they’ve told the students it’s an off-Broadway credit, I don’t really think it qualifies as such. Anyway, it’s an amazing opportunity for undergrads in a fairly unknown program.