Five Towns College

Anyone have any information about this school’s MT program? Would love to hear from current/recent students or parents of current/recent students

I’ve also been trying to get more information about their MT program as well. Would love to know some kind of insight.

They were recommended to us by someone who has a lot of industry knowledge and really good understanding of schools. I think that their MT program has maybe gone through some kind of overhaul or is new? Apparently has good people heading it up. But there is no chatter about them here on CC.

I know nothing about Five Towns College except where it is. And the only reason I know where it is is because of the following exchange, which occurred at SUNY Binghamton (now Binghamton University) in 1984 between me (a boy from Brooklyn — aka The Center of the Universe) and my soon to be friend Kenny (from Dix Hills)

Me: Where ya from?
Kenny: Five Towns
Me: Blank stare (internal monolgue, “upstater?”)
Kenny: Dix Hills, Woodmere…
Me: Blanker stare
Kenny: Nassau County?
Me: Oh, you’re from Long Island. Yeah, just say Long Island.

And while we are on the subject, since there are so many programs in New York State, I offer the following as a public service since those of you from elsehwere in tne country may find yourself at a place like NYU — which is in “The City” (see below) and find yourself needing directions from a New Yorker (someone from New York City) to get to Wagner, or LIU Post, or Syracuse, etc.

New York Consists of the following:

—Brooklyn
—The City (AKA Manhattan)
—The Bronx
—The Island (including Queens and all points east until you hit Montauk).
—Kennedy and LaGuardia (for those of you from far enough away that you took an airplane)
—New Jersey (all points west of Brooklyn and The City that require going across a bridge or taking a ferry to get to, including Staten Island, until you hit Pennsylvania)
—Upstate (all points north and west of The Bronx until you hit Canada or Ohio)

@PhilipM~ I had the same conversation with a girl on my floor freshman year at FIT. She said Five Towns like EVERYONE knows the Five Towns! We became fast friends too!

I live near Five Towns College. I don’t know the program, other than talking to a professor last summer who had worked there for many years and was leaving to work in the business world. It’s small. Like, it’s housed in a former middle school. It was a big middle school but for a college, that’s small. Population is around 600 students. They’ve recently built dorms that look nice from the outside. Maybe 20% of students live there? It’s right on a highway service road, so it’s easy to travel to/from, and smack in the middle of a nice middle class suburb. I don’t think you could walk anywhere from campus (like to food, shopping). My family has performed in their theater because our local acting studio used to rent the space. A friend saw their production of Spring Awakening last summer and said it was terrific!

I posted this in the other thread, but I’ll copy it here: I went with my S to Five Towns College for Open House and we got there late, and ended up having an entire info session with the Head of the Program and the Technical Director to ourselves. I was a BA - Acting major in college (at SUNY - New Paltz) so I grilled them on everything from acting method to showcases, performance opportunities and exposure to the industry. He was very helpful and willing to talk to me at length about the program, and we left feeling really good about it. My S did not end up auditioning, because he didn’t really feel the campus. He prefers more of an urban setting, and an easier way to get home on mass transit to NJ - but I think the program is really solid

@PhilipM that may be the most New York thing I’ve ever heard… and I lived in New Jersey for 3 years.

We live in Sufffolk County Long Island, so knew about Five Towns. Not familiar with the program or department at all. We didn’t consider it on S list of schools — at best it would have fit into an audition (?) safety. While it’s not a community college that’s the notion we have of it. The other challenge for us is the number of programs on Long Island: Molloy/CAP21, LIU Post, Hofstra, (now) LIU Brooklyn, and (proximity) Wagner. There were only so many, practically local programs S would apply to!

For folks looking for opportunity, I would continue to research. Given the proximity to NYC, the program has every chance of blooming.

@PhilipM @TexasMTDad @lojosmo Just some tweeks on NYC geography and Five Towns College history from a lifetime NYC/ Long Island resident.

Five Towns College was founded by a couple from the Five Towns area of Long Island and was originally meant to be located in Lawrence (one of the Five Towns—the others are Woodmere, Cedarhurst, Inwood, and Hewlett.) The Five Towns are located on the western South Shore of Long Island in a wealthy area. The college ended up finding space in Merrick when it opened and then moved to Seaford and finally ended up in Dix Hills. Dix Hills is in Suffolk County, Long Island about 45 minutes to one hour east of the Five Towns. (Therefore a much longer commute into Manhattan.)

One minor correction to @PhilipM’s excellent profile of NYC. Queens is just Queens—a borough of NYC. It is NEVER referred to as The Island even though it’s part of the same island. The Island only refers to towns in Nassau or Suffolk County. And one lives ON the Island or ON Long Island, never in it. I live ON Long Island. But I used to live IN Brooklyn. I now have an apartment IN the city too. ?

@uskoofish My reference to Queens being lumped in with the Island is from the Brooklyn point of view…no one lives IN Queens…and .if ya gonna tell me you’re from Forest Hills, Jamaica, Whitestone, whateva, ya might as well be on the island.

A conversation with someone from Brooklyn

Where ya from? “Brooklyn” What neighborhood? “Flatbush” (or Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst,etc etc.)

A conversation with a person from Queens

Where ya from? “Jamaica” The island?

I rest my case

@PhilipM, I must respectfully disagree. I live in Brooklyn and my husband grew up in Queens. I’ve never considered Queens to be part of Long Island. There’s “the city” (Manhattan), “the boroughs” (Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island), and “the Island” (Long Island). JMO, maybe the community you live in sees it differently!

@PhilipM I have lived my entire 61 year old life in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Long Island. My husband the same and he works in real estate in the city his entire working life. You are 100% wrong about Queens…it is never considered Long Island from anyone’s perspective. I will say that people in Queens will use the neighborhood they are from to describe where they live more than people in Brooklyn and will even use it in their address–so someone who lives anywhere in Brooklyn will list there address as : xxx Street Name, Brooklyn, NY and someone from Queens will list their address as: xxx Street Name, Rego Park, NY (naming their neighborhood/town.) But a person form Queens will never say they live on Long Island.

@uskoofish. You are of course correct, I was joking. I was making light of Brooklyn attitudes about Queens relative to our own very high opinion of Brooklyn and its standing among the five boroughs (i.e. so high that we barely recognize Staten Island and Queens) and, frankly, its central place in the universe itself. Similarly, no one actually thinks Staten Isalnd is part of New Jersey (although if it were, who would notice?) nor that places north of the Bronx ( Westchester County, Yonkers, Dutchess County) would be considered upstate — although I had a lot of fun in college annoying people from Poughkeepsie by referring to it as upstate.

Actually, I grew up in the Bronx and we always said that anywhere above Yonkers or New Rochelle is upstate. Once my kids actually started going upstate (Plattsburgh and Fredonia) for school, I quickly realized how much upstate there actually is!

H is from Queens and always said where he was from in terms of neighborhood.

Now we live in Nassau County, which is ON Long Island. Queens is geographically part of Long Island, but it is part of the city, one of the outer boroughs, where the “Bridge and Tunnel” crowd hails from. H calls going into Manhattan “going to the city” and I call it “going downtown,” a vestige from my youth.

As for the school, Five Towns, we looked at it for my D, who originally was considered becoming a music teacher. It has dorms now from what I understand but she decided that she didn’t want to teach music and she wanted to go away. However, a friend’s son went there (he’s in his 30’s now) and is a working musician. He was very talented as a kid, as I recall. It seemed like a nice enough school, but the costs didn’t justify it over a SUNY.

LIU Brooklyn is in Brooklyn, not Long Island.

@PhilipM , I would notice if S.I. were part of NJ! My taxes would be higher! But yes, we are definitely the most “bridges and tunnels” of any of the boroughs.

So any other input on Five Towns College?