My daughter is a writer/storyteller who has acted professionally (regionally) for the past 4 years and started a production company about a year ago. She loves acting and will be working with a coach and taking classes her entire life so for college she wants to get hands on film production and directing experience. She wants to get her undergrad with little to no debt because long term she feels she won’t be able to take risks, take smaller projects, and fund her own work if she is saddled with debt. She hasn’t been able to take the SAT or ACT yet (thanks Covid, we just keep registering) but she left traditional high school a year ago and tested into college so she’s getting her high school equivalency and earning college credit concurrently. She has a 4.0 in college and a 3.8 (ish) unweighted cumulative high school average. She’s won some accolades in film festivals and one of her films just was accepted into the All American High School Film Festival which she was super excited about. Because of price (we are a moderate income family) and her desire to not have debt her college list is VERY short with just a few SUNY/CUNY schools (she would be an Excelsior kid if they continue the scholarship program). NYU, UCLA, and the traditional “top film schools” that make the traditional lists are out of her reach but she truly loves the few schools she is applying to. Does anyone have suggestions? I want to make sure she’s not missing out on a program that she figures is out of reach financially. I went to Pratt and got a full ride but they are 5X more expensive than they were in the 90’s and we know full rides are rarer than a mystical unicorn these days so sadly even my alma mater didn’t make the college list cut.
Fortunately Purchase College offers excellent programs in film.
Yes we are incredibly thankful to be in NY state.
Perhaps she can apply for a scholarship to Vassar, Wesleyan and Oberlin which all have excellent film and theatre programs