<p>My daughter is a dancer, mostly ballet, dances 15-ish hours a week, has been involved seriously since she was in fourth grade.</p>
<p>She has no aspirations to dance professionally, but would like to minor in dance.</p>
<p>As I have researched schools, I find that there are few that offer significant dance classes. Even those offering a major often have classes that meet only twice a week for 70 minutes.</p>
<p>Since my daughter wants to apply to medium-small size schools in warmer, urban areas, it is possible that she might even end up at a school with no dance program at all.</p>
<p>For those of you with dancers, how have they fared with the adjustments to life without as much, or any, dance?</p>
<p>If dance isn't available, has your student found a replacement physical activity?</p>
<p>My daughter is very fit and I can't imagine her without some kind of scheduled physical activity.</p>
<p>You might want to post this question on either the arts or music theater forums. There are posters there with significant experience and school specific knowledge that may be able to offer insights or suggestions.</p>
<p>if she is an a city school, most likely she can take dance out of school</p>
<p>and maybe she will discover something else at college, many do</p>
<p>does she need a ballet class, or could she do exercise classes-hip hop, tap, or kick boxing to stay in shape</p>
<p>there are so many other ways to exercise and it might be good to find something that can last a longer time</p>
<p>look at the none class programs at school</p>
<p>my Ds friends are really getting into yoga, another does a jazz exercise class, some do the tread mills, it doesn't have to be a "dance program" to get dancing and exercise in</p>
<p>go to the schools websties and student life and the gym, and see what exercise classes they offer</p>
<p>There are so many schools with a dance minor that I can't begin to imagine your D giving up dance when she has danced her entire life. She may not dance 15 hours per week, but surely could be dancing a bunch. She could take dance classes in a minor and also be in a dance repertory group. She should look for colleges where both are very possible. There are so many factors to picking a college and I have no clue your D's qualifications. I don't know how essential a warm climate is to her either. </p>
<p>I don't have the time to look up the details of each college's dance minor or extracurricular dance troupes.... but off the top of my head...</p>
<p>(some are not in warm climes....and the sizes vary a bit):</p>
<p>Barnard
Smith
Skidmore
Muhlenberg
Chapman
University of Arizona
University of Oklahoma
Conn College
Goucher College
George Washington University
Oklahoma City University
Mt. Holyoke
Princeton
Sarah Lawrence
UC Santa Barbara
American University
Bard College
Duke
Hofstra
University of Miami
Marymount Manhattan
Wesleyan
George Mason
UC-Irvine
Washington Univ, St. Louis
Point Park
Amherst
Case Western
Florida State
Fordham
Franklin and Marshall
Southern Methodist University</p>
<p>Also, some schools located in cities give you access to dance studios off campus...including ballet schools.</p>
<p>You may wish to visit the Arts Majors Forum as well.</p>
<p>2-3 classes of dance per week for a non-Dance major is about what a college student can fit into her schedule. My D was similar to yours, dancing 18-20 hours a week by the time 11th and 12th grade rolled around.</p>
<p>Some colleges have good Dance classes, others offer good Dance as EC's, and others you have to find the off-campus Dance alternative.</p>
<p>The womens colleges, like Barnard (best Dance D found) and Smith (where D attends), tend to offer some of the best Dance classes. Skidmore was one of the few LAC's to offer a dedicated pointe class in addition to technique. U/Utah and U/Indiana are supposed to have very good ballet classes but D didn't give them a look because the academics weren't what she wanted.</p>
<p>Neither George Washington and Georgetown offered much in the way of ballet (GW, two classes; G'town none) but Washington Ballet was a fairly short bus ride up Wisconsin Avenue; D eventually decided that even that short bus ride was too much of a time penalty and she was focusing in on LAC's as her process went by.</p>
<p>Stanford has an excellent EC ballet company that has performed some first-rate productions over the years. Yale had what seemed to be a decent pre-pro or semi-pro company/studio right across the street.</p>
<p>One of the things to look for is where the dance classes are stashed: if they're under a Dance or Theater department, they're probably okay; if they're under the physical education departtment (e.g., Wellesley), run away.</p>
<p>Good ballet is the hardest thing to find among the colleges; modern and jazz are all over the place.</p>
<p>Have your D look at Smith...it's in the warmer part of New England. :)</p>
<p>Thought I'd share my D's experience with you.</p>
<p>She has danced since age 5 - tap and ballet. Her real love and focus the last few years has been tap. A friend of hers sounds much like your D - ballet, several hours a week, thru high school. The friend is planning a minor in dance, mostly because she loves it so much, but needs to major in something more likely to land a job...!</p>
<p>They are at the same school - a small private school in Ohio with many performing opportunities. My D could have tried out for the school's major holiday show - it would have meant MANY hours a week, no excuses, of committment. She has chosen to opt out for this semester - first freshman semester - and is instead attending a couple of fun dance exercise classes - she is staying in shape and is having lots of FUN without the time committment.</p>
<p>Her friend chose to try out for the fall ballet production. She enjoys it, but the committment is several nights a week, mandatory. It is tough physically and mentally. She is looking forward to the production, but also to a break. That is pretty much her only EC - she doesn't have time for more. </p>
<p>My D is hoping to try out for a Dance Company production to occur in the spring with practices starting in January. The committment will be less, but she will still be dancing and she will have time for other EC's. </p>
<p>Talk to someone in the dance dept. at the school (s) she is considering to see what levels of participation are available. While she loves dance and it is major in her life now, she may want to add some new interests when she starts college, a totally new situation.</p>
<p>soozievt, do you know anything more about dance at Chapman? This is a school I'd like my daughter to consider, but haven't found anything online about the nature of the dance department -- although my sense is that it is not focused on classical ballet.</p>
<p>Barnard, Duke, Smith, Princeton, etc. are out of her reach academically -- also don't see this kind of school as the right fit for her. </p>
<p>University of Miami is a reach for her, but what I think of as a good fit in terms of location, size, availability of internships, career exploration emphasis, etc. -- they do have dance, but it is considered an Elective, may be in the Phys Ed department.</p>
<p>Not clear that she will have the 3.3 GPA required to apply to UCs from out of state.</p>
<p>She'd prefer to stick to the East coast, Texas, Arizona, Okhlahoma, Iowa, etc. are out.</p>
<p>I think an urban location will trump dance programs at Conn College and such.</p>
<p>TheDad, has your daughter augmented her dance with other types of phys ed type classes, or has she found the 2-3 classes of dance sufficient? Has she branched out much from ballet?</p>
<p>Would it be satisfying at all for her to teach dance at a private dance school? My daughter's dance school has several college aged teachers. The guy who choreographed her school drill team officer's dance last year was a college student.</p>
<p>I don't know enough about your daughter's qualifications and so it is very hard to narrow down the suggestions. </p>
<p>Another one is William and Mary.</p>
<p>If your D prefers the East Coast....Chapman is in LA. However, I have a client who has been dancing her entire life, as well as does theater, and Chapman was her first choice and she just entered. </p>
<p>Many college dance programs are not as focused on ballet and tend to be more modern focused. However, look for programs that offer ballet classes and schools that have extracurricular dance groups, including ballet. As well, if in a city, there may be a ballet studio nearby. I would think taking modern would at least trump not dancing at all.</p>
<p>Did you look at Elon, Muhlenberg, Sarah Lawrence, Skidmore? </p>
<p>If your D is willing to go to CA, I certainly would encourage her to look into Chapman.</p>
<p>She should truly consider Goucher too.....Baltimore, not so cold, urban, not as selective as some that were suggested, though I do not have a clue your D's qualifications. Girls from our dance studio here have gone onto dance at Goucher. Take a good look....may fit your D's criteria for a BA school strong in dance and has ballet. They offer several levels of ballet technique. I believe your D could even double major and take ballet five days per week there. They even offer Pointe, which is not as common in a lot of BA dance programs.</p>
<p>Without much more information about your D, it is hard to say which schools would fit.</p>
<p>If your D investigates Smith, as suggested above, perhaps she can also see about the other courses in Dance offered by the other 4 colleges in the Five College Consortium, namely: Amherst College (has a Theater/Dance major), Mt.Holyoke (quite a good dance department), Hampshire College and University of Massachusetts at Amherst.</p>
<p>These all connect by a free shuttle bus, with open enrollment although there might be some limitation if registered at UMass. Scheduling the classes on all the different campuses is always the challenge, but normally students at these colleges take one course per semester on a different campus, whether it's academic or performance related. </p>
<p>Chapman is currently reorganizing and improving its Performing Arts department, so be sure to get the most recent information. My S attends there in the film school and so far (freshman) enjoys it very much. Academically it's not as uber-competitive as some of the places mentioned on this site, although it's respectable. But if there's an audition requirement at Chapman for the dance major, it's likely to add stiff competition back into the mix. So while it might be easier to enter Chapman U with normative academics, watch out for those audition, portfolio, etc. requirements in each department. Sounds like she's ready for the challenge. It's certainly warm there! </p>
<p>Originally I wasn't eager to send my kid across the country, but was helped by researching the costs of flights on expedia.com or kayak.com. With advance notice, and on certain days, I could afford to fly him there as inexpensively as to drive roundtrip to an East Coast school 8 hours away when gasoline costs $3.00/gallon. The hardest part is spending all that time in the airports, but mostly the student and not you is doing all of that. We can only bring him home for Winter Break, and not all the other vacations. If they want to go enough, they'll accept that tradeoff, but discuss it first thoroughly as a logical consequence of THEIR decision to attend a school 3,000 miles away. My personal feeling was that I'd only do it because film can best be learned close to that industry in Los Angeles. If you don't want to send her to California I think you have a good case to make that dance is offered equally well around the nation.</p>
<p>While Smith would be great, the OP said that Smith was out of reach for her D. I don't have all the many factors in her D's background to assess the appropriate schools. She alluded to not having as high of a GPA as 3.3 and if that is the case, Smith likely would be out of reach. Goucher, I feel, based on the very little information I have, would be worth a good look.</p>
<p>With a 3.3, perhaps the way into the classes at a place like Smith, Mt.Holyoke or Amherst is to apply to Hampshire College. I'd also say, "apply to UMass at Amherst" but I seem to recall some enrollment limitation, and don't know if that applied to performance or academic classes on the other 4 campuses. Most importantly, have her write to people now attending Smith, MoHo and Amherst to find out on a practical level whether these popular classes fill up impossibly...</p>
<p>I also echo the advice to read the Arts Major section of College Confidential.</p>
<p>This might also be a good time to consider whether she wants to continue dancing the same numbers of hours as she did in h.s. Others have referred to their kids reducing the performing time (in dance, violin, theater) when they move from h.s. to college. That's an interesting thread to consider. Sometimes the performance is the child's future and the core of their being. Other times, it's just the best thing around during the h.s. years, and with other new opportunities, they reduce -- without giving up -- their performance instrument once they hit college. I'm not suggesting she'd do this, but it's worth some deep thought at this juncture.</p>
<p>UMass Amherst's program concentrates in modern; not a whole lot of ballet.</p>
<p>Goucher requires majors to reach advanced levels of both ballet and modern, and minors to reach intermediate levels of both ballet and modern. Since my d doesn't like modern, that dropped Goucher off the list.</p>
<p>I also would suggest Muhlenberg; there's a lot of dance there. And anyone can take dance classes with auditions for placement only, even if they're not majoring or minoring in dance.</p>
<p>Muhlenberg also has a dance studio for the community on its campus; dance majors can also be trained to teach there, and as juniors or seniors become full teachers for pay.</p>
<p>University of Richmond also has a dance minor in which one could concentrate in ballet, or just take classes without minoring. And it's a tad warmer than Allentown, PA.</p>
<p>Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA has a dance department and the student either take classes at The Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet or with the faculty on campus; I don't remember how it works. My daughter looked at it years ago, but didn't care for the school, unrelated to the dance program.</p>