Dance BFA - modern

College Majors Dance Major
1

My daughter will be a Junior this fall and currently attends the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
She first did a year at LIU Post in N.Y. in their dance BA program.
In her senior year, she only auditioned for three school : NYU, Pointe Park and Rutgers Mason Gross. She was not accepted into any of these programs. I found late auditions for LIU and she was accepted with a very good scholarship. We knew their dance program was very weak. Your first year you are all in the BA program, the second year they determine if you can enter the BFA program. She did not find any of the dance classes challenging although the African dance class was a lot of fun. They have an honors college and a dorm honors college floor which was lovely.

I wanted to share some insights into what to consider when looking into BFA programs, especially if you want to be a professional dancer.

  1. Do your research. As dance is very competitive, plan to audition for 6 to 10 schools. They are really no safeties where auditions are involved
  2. College applications and visits can get expensive. Plan accordingly as we had several overnight stays. I highly recommend seeing the dance show as most schools plan them to coincide with the dance visits/auditions especially on the early audition dates.
  3. Explore what type of campus life best suits you. DD realized that she thrives in an urban setting.
  4. If you are weak in an area, consider private classes prior to auditioning. DD is great in modern dance, having attended a performing arts school in NYC and also completed several dance intensive thru Martha Graham Young Artist Program but was weak in Ballet. We found a fabulous dance instructor thru The Philadelphia Dance Academy. DD also attended group classes at Broadway dance center, NYC and Koresh in Philly after taking a semester off to re-taudition.
  5. Look at some of the smaller schools. I really liked Towson BFA program, my daughter was accepted but housing could not be guaranteed as a sophomore. So that did not work out.
  6. Consider how much debt you/your family is willing to take on as a full ride is unlikely and some of the big name schools are very expensive.
  7. If you want a professional dance career, find out where do their graduates end up. My daughter loved the program at Shenandoah but I was not impressed to hear their graduates ended up working on cruise ships instead of professional dance companies. Yes, I know the dance world is very competitive.
  8. Check out the professors bios, do have connections to the professional dance world. Does the school bring in guess choreographers?
  9. Are you going to be happy in that college environment and overall community for the next 4 years? Do not be afraid to re-audition if you ended up in a school that turned out to not be a great fit. It will be challenging but can also be very rewarding. Just revamp your list of school you will be auditioning for with the new information you have. My daughter switched schools in January and all her credits transferred.

Check out list of top modern dance programs:
The Top 10 BFA Dance Programs in the Country for 2017-18 — OnStage Blog
http://www.onstageblog.com/columns/2017/8/30/the-top-10-bfa-dance-programs-in-the-country-for-2017-18

Also check out other post on various school for ideas on which school should make your list.

Audition early! Takes the stress off knowing you got at least 1 or more acceptances.

2

I think that these are all really good suggestions. I’d say we followed all of them. My daughter is a rising freshman at Rutgers/Mason-Gross. As an aside, we are in Philly and UArts is a great program. My daughter also trained for a year at the Philadelphia Dance Academy in between 9 years at the Rock School and finishing up at Koresh in their Youth Ensemble. So glad to hear your daughter landed in a good place. I love that she recognized that her first choice did not work and formed a plan to transfer:)