<p>Wow, that's amazing since NYU is to pre-professional theatre what MIT is to engineering.</p>
<p>While I realize that this is a bit out of the territory, Tulane in New Orleans might be an interesting choice to look at. While not nearly as highly regarded in theatre to my knowledge as the above stated school, there is a pretty good linguistics department. My time spent with the department as a Linguistics major has been great and also rather educational.</p>
<p>Soozievt, Columbia and Barnard are colleges with "majors" -- unlike Brown (for example), the terem "concentration" is not used interchangeably with "major." Rather, a "concentration" is something that can be tacked on to another major, kind of like a minor. If you would read the article I linked to, you would see that the current program at Columbia doesn't offer the coursework that might be considered essential to the major elsewhere. An example cited in the article is that they do not have a course in phonology. As Marite pointed out, "linguistics" is NOT the same as study of languages.</p>
<p>From the Columbia web site: "The special concentration in linguistics is not as of itself sufficient for graduation. It must be taken in conjunction with a major or a full concentration in another discipline." <a href="http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/depts/ling.php?tab=ugrad%5B/url%5D">http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/depts/ling.php?tab=ugrad</a></p>
<p>It is <em>possible</em> to study linguistics at Columbia... in fact, my d. took the intro to linguistics class her first semester -- but it is not the "excellent linguistics major" that Mythmom referenced. There was a time that Columbia's linguistics department was considered one of the finest in the world -- and that probably is the source of Mythmom's impression --but basically things fell apart during the 80's and currently it is difficult to get the equivalent of a <em>true</em> linguistics major at Columbia because they simply don't have the faculty or coursework to support it. </p>
<p>I don't mean to make this into an issue, but the reason I am fairly well informed on this issue is that my daughter thought she wanted to study linguistics -- in fact,that was one of 3 or 4 areas she deemed essential in narrowing down her college list. I made the mistake of assuming that a major university like Columbia would have a linguistics department, so I didn't bother to check it out in advance. M d. went off to Barnard thinking she could major in linguistics there -- in fact, she had written about her desire to study linguistics in the "why Barnard" part of her application. It was only after we made the deposit when it was time to select courses-- and we started to seriously look at the course catalog -- that we realized there was no such major and very few linguistics courses.</p>
<p>In the end, it doesn't matter for my daughter -- because after taking one course in linguistics, she doesn't want another -- she really had a mistaken concept of what she would be studying. So "Introduction to Linguistics" was the first and probably the last course she will ever take on the subject. </p>
<p>Your post really illustrates another issue -- college web pages can be misleading -- so it is a good idea for anyone seriously interested in a major to dig deeper, such as looking to see which classes are actually offered during the semester (in the case of Linguistics, there are only 2 courses offered for the fall, the intro course and a single advanced course). I also have found it useful to count up the number of tenured faculty in departments of interest as well. In the case of Columbia, you will see that the linguistics "faculty" are actually all associated with different departments, as there is no linguistics department.</p>
<p>Avoid University of Toledo for Theatre. Other majors okay though.</p>
<p>And they do have a kicka** film school. Just not great in theatre.</p>
<p>Northwestern has linguistics and great theater program; it's in Chicago, however.</p>
<p>
[quote]
What is the difference between the BS and the BA degrees?</p>
<p>Students in the School of Communication have a choice of graduating with either a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts (except Communication Sciences & Disorders students). The requirements for the two degrees are identical with the exception that to qualify for the BA, the student must fulfill the WCAS language requirement. Which degree is better is a matter of personal choice.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can I double-major? </p>
<p>Yes, but Theatre must be the primary major. A student must complete all the degree requirements for the primary major, including the distributions, the requirements for the major, and the electives. A student also completes the major requirements for the second major. Both majors are entered on a student’s academic record, but only one degree and one diploma are awarded. Majors may be completed in two different departments of a school, or in two schools of the University; however, Theatre majors cannot double-major with Radio/TV/Film, Medill, or the School of Music.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>They also have drama (in arts and sciences school) and performance studies (communication school) majors. <a href="http://www.drama.northwestern.edu/about/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.drama.northwestern.edu/about/index.html</a> tells the differences:</p>
<p>Interesting to read Fred Gwynne went to Harvard. Given his TV role, I can hear his mom thinking, "For THIS he went to Harvard?" But he could have been laughing all the way to the bank. ;)</p>
<p>Thanks Calmom for the further explanation. I did read about Linguistics on the Columbia site after seeing your first post on that subject and posted an excerpt here and so I did see that it was a concentration but not a major and had to be combined with another major. There were five linguistics courses and then the other requirements that fell under the concentration. So, I do understand the situation. However, the OP talked about her D majoring in one subject and minoring in another and her two interests are theater and linguistics. At Columbia, a student could major in theater and have a concentration in linguisitics, and so that is why I kept the school on the list of schools in East Coast cities meeting the little bit of criteria she provided. </p>
<p>After your first post about this, I did read the article you linked to.</p>
<p>By the way, my sister-in-law, who has been a Linguistic Professor for many years, did her undergraduate degree in Physics at Williams. Obviously the OP's D wants to study linguistics as an undergraduate which is possible to do at some schools, but she should know that you can go to graduate school in that field after majoring in something else.</p>
<p>Actually, there are only 3 linguistics courses at Columbia: W3101, 4108 (not offered in 2007-2008), and W4204. On the web page at <a href="http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/depts/ling.php?tab=courses%5B/url%5D">http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/depts/ling.php?tab=courses</a> it looks like W4204 has two parts, W4204x and W4204y - but if you click on the links for those courses, you see that they are the same sections offered at the same time. It's possible that there are indeed 2 semesters, but the classes are combined because of insufficient enrollment to support separate sections -- but that still leaves a student interested in serious study of linguistics with a rather minimal set of choices. There are also 2 sections offered of W4204, with different profs -- but again, those are offered at the same time and definitely the students can only choose on or the other. So it looks like there are 3, possibly 4 linguistics classes in all. Compare this to the more than 25 classes offered at Berkeley - <a href="http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/cand/desc.html%5B/url%5D">http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/cand/desc.html</a> -- or the ~16 courses at NYU - <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/lingu/courses/ugradcurrent.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/lingu/courses/ugradcurrent.html</a> -- and you will see why I don't think that Columbia's program could be accurately described as "excellent". ("Barebones" would be more accurate). (In my own defense, I did tell my d. before she made a college deposit that if she seriously was interested in pursuing linguistics, she should accept her spot at Berkeley -- I may not have done my research into Columbia, but I knew Berkeley's reputation in that area very well).</p>
<p>I don't mean to put down Columbia -- the quality of instruction there is excellent, and my d's Intro to Linguistics course may well be more comprehensive than the equivalent course she might have gotten at, say, UC Santa Barbara, where she was admitted as a linguistics major.</p>
<p>I'm just trying to clarify the characterization of the program as "excellent" -- the little details I spotted about W4204x and W4204y being the same class at the same time are the sort of thing that you only become aware of when you actually try to enroll in a class. But in the field of "linguistics", I chalk this under the category of "things we wish we knew before accepting" -- so for a parent who has specifically asked about colleges, I want to share it. A student who truly understood what the study of linguistics entails and who wanted to study it in depth might be seriously disappointed at the lack of options -- I mean, at Columbia a student could easily exhaust all options by the end of their sophomore year, taking only one linguistics course in any given semester. </p>
<p>When I was asking about Russian programs 2 years ago - I would get the same sort of potentially misleading info -- someone would tell me that so-and-so college had a great Russian program, and then I would go to the web site and see that they only had 1 tenured Russian professor and only offered 2 or 3 years of language study, and know that it wouldn't meet my daughter's needs. So I think it does help to dig a little deeper when evaluating any specialized program. </p>
<p>That being said, I would wonder whether a student who wants to double major in theater and linguistics really wants the mathy, detail oriented study of linguistics. When I talked to my daughter about what she wanted, she really was more interested in what I would consider sociolinguistics-- another reason I told her Berkeley was best for her needs, and gave her my copy of one of George Lakoff's books. So I would also advise a student who thinks they want to study linguistics to learn more about the field and get a sense of where they want to focus, as different colleges do have different strengths. Even in its heyday, Columbia's linguistics department had a distinct "flavor" which probably would have been frustrating for my Noam Chomsky-loving daughter. Wikipedia has a good article going over the various types of linguistics study here:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics</a></p>
<p>I would agree that Columbia's Linguistics' offerings would not fit under the characterization of "excellent" or comprehensive. For someone majoring in another field who wants SOME linguistics classes (or minor) and a college in a major East Coast city, it might fit that criteria. For someone wanting to MAJOR in linguistics, they likely should pick another school. </p>
<p>By the way, my sister-in-law got her doctorate in Linguistics at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Since you brought up NYU......the OP's D could not major in linguistics and minor in theater at NYU. She could major in theater but it would be in a BFA which is VERY different than a BA degree, and could minor in Linguistics....possibly double major though that is quite difficult with a BFA. The OP's D would have to decide if she wants a BA or BFA in theater and so that is a major difference between Columbia and NYU already.</p>
<p>My bad. Didn't realize I was passing on erroneous info.</p>
<p>How interesting. I haven't been on here in months, came on looking for some answers to help my daughter, and see a conversation (guess it's a bit of a digression from the original post) that relates to her dilemma. She just finished her first year at Columbia where she must have been in the same Intro to Linguistics class as Calmom's daughter! However, she LOVED it and wound up changing direction enough so that she's considering transferring to a school with a strong Linguistics major since she will exhaust the offerings by next year. She's also disillusioned with Columbia for other reasons, but Dr. Timberlake (lingusitics head) sounds like a top scholar and teacher (and good friend of Noam Chomsky's). However it is definitely a limited department there. She's exploring the Wellesley/MIT joint program. </p>
<p>She is mathematically gifted which corroborates others' observations here about the nature of the subject. However, she's also a singer and actress who did a lot of performing until college, but couldn't crack into Columbia/Barnard's vocal and drama groups. I think she found those communities to be very clique-y, focused on those majoring in performing arts, and almost completely incompatible with her academic and working schedule. The student in question in this thread, trying to combine performing with another concentration or major, might run up against the same problems. Based on our family's experience, she should cross Barnard/Columbia off the list if she is deeply interested in linguistics.</p>
<p>Mythmom, we might be neighbors.</p>
<p>How funny -- if your d. took the course last fall, the girls were indeed in the same class. I don't think you can really call Dr. Timberlake the "linguistics head" at Columbia, though he does regularly teach the intro course -- he is on the faculty at UC Berkeley and routinely "commutes" to Columbia from the west coast as a visiting prof, but that illustrates the problems with linguistics at Columbia. I think that Dr. Gasparov (slavic languages) is the person who is the anchor for the Columbia linguistics concentration. </p>
<p>It's too bad that you aren't from California -- if my daughter were in the same situation, I'd be telling her to come home and transfer to Berkeley, which I think is awesome for linguistics -- but of course you would be faced with out-of-state tuition. </p>
<p>Your d. might want to look into Univ. of Chicago as well.</p>
<p>What about Carnegie Mellon?</p>
<p>CMU's theater program is a BFA. This makes it harder to have a minor or double major. It is imperative for the student to first decide if she wants a BFA or BA in theater. Also, CMU, is one of the top conservatories in the country for drama and accepts 2%. They have 1200 audition for 10 slots for musical theater and 18 for drama. It would be uncommon for someone applying to CMU for the BFA in Drama to have their sights set on studying two things. The BFA itself there is a huge focused commitment. I believe the OP's D would be best in a BA that allows a major/minor or double major with theater and linguistics. It may be possible at NYU to do the BFA in Drama with a minor in Linguistics but in general, this girl is likely better off with the BA progams in theater and linguistics.</p>
<p>Calmom - yup, it was the same class. I call Timberlake "head" because he sounds like the unofficial soul of the neglected department, which tells you something since he commutes from Berkeley. He's helping start a movement to revive the major, my daughter's involved in organizing it, but she's pessimistic about its success which is why she's looking at transferring. She's fond of him, though, and I think would follow him to Berkeley in a heartbeat if we could afford it. She got in there last year OOS with some surprising scholarships but nothing to match Columbia's offer. </p>
<p>I wonder if she should think about taking on loans for two years at Berkeley. Care to offer your opinion? Chicago also admitted her last year but with no financial aid at all, otherwise she would be reconsidering that as well.</p>
<p>I agree that the OP's daughter explore schools with a track record of enabling the combined disciplines in some form and NYU does not have that from what I know. But caution - a lot can change in a year. My daughter started her first year expecting to major in theoretical physics... dropped it after two weeks. I believe she replaced the class, in fact, with that Intro to Linguistics class... the rest is history.</p>
<p>While it may be difficult to do a Tisch Drama BFA / CAS Linguistics BA at NYU, the CAS has a department called "Dramatic Literature, Theater and Cinema Studies" or something like that, which seems to be a hook for CAS students to take theater courses at Tisch. About half of the department's offerings seem to be Tisch courses, and include non-literature topics like production, direction, stage design, etc.; the other half are English courses. The department seems to have no actual faculty, just one advisor and a liason with the Tisch department. But at least there is a clear BA Theater path at NYU, and an accepted way for students outside of Tisch to study theater.</p>
<p>NYU, of course, also has Gallatin College, which allows for individual program design. One of my daughter's friends is actually doing a linguistics-related program in Gallatin (having transferred from CAS, for reasons I don't understand).</p>
<p>JHS has identified the pathway to study theater at NYU outside of the BFA. This would be to study about theater in coursework. It could be great for someone who loves theater, wants to be a drama critic, or regards reading and seeing plays as the great lens for understanding Life, just as English majors treasure novels, or Art History majors like myself refer to historical paintings or architecture to help remember everything else I learn about world history or literature. It's also a great way to gain a liberal arts education. A theater major opens up many avenues for thought.</p>
<p>A question that goes begging, then, is whether a student at NYU taking that B.A. program has any chance of being cast for stagetime in the theater productions at Tisch. Does your D envision herself performing onstage in support or lead roles, or would she be as happy with small parts to be part of the production? Does she even want to perform onstage? Not all theater majors act or direct; there is also stagecraft, playwriting and production.
My S was firmly dedicated to getting a BA, not BFA, in acting because he wanted a rock-solid foundation in liberal arts education. He was accepted to NYU - Honors, but declined them, believing (correctly or not, I don't know) that he'd have a hard time getting cast for any stage performance time other than very minor roles, when he's standing next to a BFA Tisch acting candidate! So he went to Amherst College and double majored in Theatre/Dance (it's one department there) and Music. While there, he was cast in support, then lead/support roles repeatedly throughout college, and wrote a senior thesis for his major. There he had the choice between an academic piece on theater or to write or act. Since he'd had enough acting, he wrote an original musical drama, since he had that music major, too. He's now acting off-Broadway in NYC and says the reason to get a B.F.A. is to get an early start into the world of acting. There's even a gender difference on that topic! For girls, many parts are written for ingenues, ages 17-25, so it's worth getting to NYC sooner. For boys, more roles are written for men ages 25-35, so they have more of a chance to get some solid education before too many options disappear. Naturally, the luminous ones such as Meryl Streep (Vassar, then Yale..) defy all of these statistics. These numbers are just for the more everyday actor types to consider. Either way, my S felt strongly that his best approach as an actor was to get a solid academic foundation through the liberal arts, move to NYC and work on a subsistence level as a stage actor, then evaluate after a few years if he wanted an M.F.A. He says that the network and training that the BFA kids have helps them early on. The real question is for the long-haul. Also, "to thine own self be true!" and he's a very brainy, academic guy so had to satisfy that part of his persona with a B.A. He loved so many of his courses in every department, and is well educated (for a B.A., that is!). That's a different kind of kid than one who is burning to use his tap shoes as much as possible when he's 19 years old :) </p>
<p>So this gets back to SoozieVT's excellent, essential point: the big decision is whether this student wants to study theater as a BFA or BA candidate. As a BFA, she'd get more pre-professional training in stage technique courses. It's a conservatory approach, really, with a degree approximately 25 years old now. A BFA is well-known within arts industries but less so outside in Business.
It's also a question of "opportunity costs." With all the courses requirements to satisfy a B.F.A., there's much less time to take courses in every other academic arena. Core academic requirements are often present for BFA programs but perhaps it's hard to get time to go above the l0l level in such departments as History or Sociology. In other words, by the time you get your academic distribution credits as a BFA, you're down in the introductory courses and then, "time's up!" before you might get a lot of juicy electives, such as "History of Caribbean Pirates" - an upper level history course that actually served my S well preparing some stage roles, as you can imagine! ;)</p>
<p>So, I strongly echo SoozieVt's advice: focus in on researching the differenc between the BFA in Acting, versus the BA in Theater within a liberal arts
framework.</p>
<p>That will include or exclude some school choices and save you much confusion.</p>
<p>Or, it will help you even if you keep both on your list. My younger S wanted playwriting or screenwriting. Knowing how hard the BFA's were to get into, he used BA programs as his "safeties." Ironically, he got into some BFA and some BA programs, and rejected from some of each, too. </p>
<p>It will be MUCH harder to gain entree into most BFA programs if they are by audition for acting, than to get accepted to schools that offer Theater as one of many academic majors, not by audition (even that is to be checked out; UCLA, for example, only lets people audition into a Theater B.A. major, while at other schools you just "declare" it because you're that interested, as any other major.</p>
<p>I know a fair number of people who have had careers in theater or film, most of them off-stage / behind the camera, some on-. None of them had a BFA in anything. They were all liberal arts majors (and not always in Theater Studies or the equivalent), although some got MFAs after college. </p>
<p>That's not to denigrate BFA programs, especially amazing ones like NYU's. It's just to remind people that with something like theater, there isn't only one tried-and-true path to success. It's hard, and you need luck, no matter what you do, but a mere BA is no disqualification for anything. And if you are talking about something other than acting or technical fields like lighting or cinematography, a BA (or the rounded education it reflects) may actually have more value.</p>
<p>Amatricia, I can't advise you on the issue of loans for Berkeley-- the finances really are a matter for you and your daughter to figure out. I don't know what linguistics majors <em>do</em> with their lives other than go on to grad school -- so I don't know how much debt is reasonable for that sort of major. </p>
<p>But I do think that an upper division student in a strong but not overpopulated major would be very happy with the quality of education at Berkeley. The negatives of a large state U. (huge introductory classes, etc.) are going to disappear when the student is focused on their major, as their academic world will revolve around their department, and they will tend to have the same students in several of their coursed. I mean, no one is taking advanced linguistics courses other than other linguistics majors -- Berkeley graduates about 30-40 linguistics majors a year, so you are looking at a relatively small number of students coming through - see <a href="http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool/screen.aspx?screenId=50%5B/url%5D">http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool/screen.aspx?screenId=50</a></p>
<p>In other words, while I think in general it does not make sense to pay out of state tuition for a public education, I think the balance shifts once the student is at the level of doing advanced studies in a specific major.</p>
<p>I personally think that Berkeley has one of the top linguistics departments in the country. So financially, it make sense to opt for that as compared to spending the same amount of money elsewhere -- the problem is simply one of whether you can afford it. But it is hard to transfer into Berkeley coming from out-of-state, so the discussion might be moot in any case -- most available transfer spots are reserved for California students coming out of the community colleges. On the other hand, if your d. is likely to want to continue her studies toward getting an advanced degree, Berkeley should definitely be on her list for grad school.</p>