I know nothing about Theater or how easy it is to explore at different schools, but I would second the idea of at least checking out Union, Lafayette, and Bucknell if she’s reconsidering the idea of a LAC and wants to keep Engineering as an option. I’m pretty sure none of them have EA, so she hasn’t missed out on that. And all of them have an RD deadline of Jan 15th, not Jan 1st, like most of the other schools. So that gives you a little more time.
@NLEPeeps, has she visited any of these schools? All three are really nice.
Theater as an actual major with either CE or CS will NOT likely be managable. CS can be incredibly time consuming even with a lower number of classes required. Theater is incredibly time consuming.
My daughter started as a theater major at a BFA program (non-audition). The first year her schedule was basically given to her with I think 5 theater courses and 2 other courses to complete core requirements. Any student at the school could have taken one or two of the beginning theater courses IF they could get a spot (the department held them all through orientation/registration for the theater majors and I think all but 2-3 spots were filled by the majors). The other disadvantage would have been that the 30 or so freshmen were all moving through those beginner classes as a group. We found many schools said non-majors could try out for productions, but few non-majors actually got parts. The dance/music/theater departments can form a tight group and make it hard for someone who just wants to take one or two courses to break in.
My daughter decided not to continue with the major. She doesn’t regret it, but there were a lot of basic courses that don’t really count for anything toward her new major. She has plenty of lower level humanities courses to fill her core requirements, but a BFA requires about 65 credits in theater, so a student is taking a lot of courses in one discipline and that might not be good if switching majors.
Looking at your overall picture, here are my thoughts:
Your daughter should plan to go to a state school (UMD?) that doesn’t cost $60K/yr. You have 3 kids to put through college full-pay and there is a high probability that number 1 will be >4 years.
She should look at what she wants to do after college before choosing the major. Of course she isn’t going to be able to define this exactly, but she can start asking questions and becoming informed about what’s involved in different careers and industries. Maybe she’s thinking that she enjoys being around creative expressive people, rather than nerds? Perhaps she could get into video game design, computer animation, etc, probably with a CS major rather than a CE. A programmer can interact with all sorts of people and work on all sorts of different kinds of problems.
I would encourage her to at least try the CS or CE major–go to college, talk to advisers, talk to professors, talk to students in the major. Give it a real chance. If it doesn’t work out, she can easily change out to a less selective major.
The arts are typically a lot more fun if you don’t have to depend on them for your paycheck.
A BA in CS is time consuming but will be less prescriptive and less intense than a BS in CSE/CE because a minor is built-in. That minor can be theater or music or anything she wishes as long as the university has a NON BFA program.
Again, I do not think major has to exactly match some imagined career track for all students. I know plenty of kids who majored in the arts, music, performing arts, what have you, some who are doing well in the arts field or pursuing grad/doctorate degrees, and some who are thriving in some other field entirely. The mayor of Chicago majored in dance and our local doctor majored in music. Undergrad years do not have to be entirely focused on a vocational path unless the student really wants engineering, nursing, accounting and so on.
Not sure why you think I would make her feel guilty about it. I love her and am proud of her regardless of what she chooses to do as a career. Simply supporting her in exploring options.
@WalknOnEggShells Out of that list, we did visit Bucknell. She really disliked it. The campus community felt very homogeneous and it felt like a “rich kid” school. Diversity is really important to us.
Thank you! It is really helpful to know that if she turns down the Engineering at UMD, she can get back in fairly easily. I worry that if she starts in Engineering or Comp Sci at UMD, she will be tightly tracked and won’t have enough room in her schedule to explore - I don’t want her to start off college miserable!
@NASA2014 You’re kidding right? You can learn coding yourself, but can you really learn to code efficiently? Can you teach yourself to work within a team to meet specifications by a deadline? Can you access the resources necessary to advance your coding skills? Can you hold yourself to be accountable for proper and accurate documentation of your work so that others can understand what you’ve done?
Final college decision is months away, and your D may still change her mind several times. This is normal and you will be the supportive parent you are as you listen to her.
Recognize that your D is coming off an emotional high from a new experience, and theater is all she can think of now. You don’t have to force her to pick a major or even a college. Just need to see if she wants to add any other college applications over winter break.
And love the ideas mentioned about job shadowing. Add some reality to her dreams.
@NLEPeeps You could purposefully sit down and plan a 5 year program with more time to explore for either CE or CS. Or plan in a summer or two or winter term. Does she have AP credit? Why don’t you just speak with an academic advisor when she gets accepted. It would be so easy. They have seen it all.
The problem with theater isn’t the class time. It is the productions. The nightly rehearsals, the weekend rehearsals. If she is given parts as a theater minor, IF, the show prep will eat into so much time. To do either well, Computers or theater, you need to focus. Unless she would be happy with just some theater classes and is not performing in shows, then I guess it could work.
While those with the highest level of ability and motivation in the subject can self-educate effectively (and more easily than in subjects where needed equipment like labs are less accessible), most people who want to learn CS would benefit from actual schooling with the aid of instructors and a well designed curriculum to learn the foundational knowledge that they will use in future self-education in their careers.
This is not too different from many other subjects, where self-education is possible, but most people would benefit from the aid of instructors and a well designed curriculum to learn the subject’s foundational knowledge.
I have a kid that is considering music and/or theater as options. He’s only a junior right now. However, he has been taking music since preschool years and has been doing theater since he is about 8-9. He started voice lessons at 12. He started guitar at 14. Anyway - point being we’re in a major metro with a really strong arts and music and theater scene and we know a lot of people working in that industry.
The question I really posed to my kid when he first started thinking about this route was is he willing to do things other than JUST perform to work in the arts. Is he willing to market himself, maintain websites, have business skills to help run a non profit, teach, direct, write, compose, work odd hours, etc. We know a large number of people living comfortable middle class lives working in the arts. They just tend to be highly motivated and jacks of many trades. I really don’t think it’s either you make it HUGE or you don’t make it at all. There are many people quietly making a living wage in that industry.
My other thought for my own kid is I am discouraging him away from a BFA in musical theater. That is almost like choosing to train to be a professional athlete. It’s a lot of physical training in many programs. I know programs can vary. My kid is also a very academic kid and dances in musical theater well enough to land some competitive roles. But he really has no interest in doing intense dance. I think he would be better served by pursuing a BA degree, possibly a BM in music and I’d love to see him at a competitive LAC but he likes the buzz of a larger campus in a large city so we’ll see. I also want him somewhere it would be easy enough to change majors. I can definitely see him changing his mind.
I work in IT. Anyone we hire new out of college will have to have a computing major. We do hire people with experience in lieu of education + a degree in some other discipline (like me, my major was medieval history long enough ago that I joke it was current events). But by and large, we don’t hire kids who are self-taught.
Self-taught programmers have an extra hurdle to jump getting into the business. Many jobs are gotten through nepotism, of course, so if you’re self-taught and you have friends in the business maybe you can still make it as a programmer.
Also in my experience self-taught programmers often have terrible habits when it comes to collaboration, documentation, and code review.
I just noticed that OP has been talking about their D going into CE and CS interchangeably. CS and CE are very different. There is lots of room in a CS major to explore. Not so much in a CE program.
She still has many months to make a decision. She can apply broadly and her decision will (hopefully) become more clear with time. Has she ever taken any drama classes? The experience is much different than doing a show.
My kid that is now leaning toward music/theater was actually leaning toward comp sci and doing a lot of independent programming his first 2 years of high school. Unity game engine was of particular interest. Now he has ZERO interest in that even though he definitely has the aptitude. Both my husband and I have computer science degrees and have worked in software engineering. I have a BS math and BS comp sci. He has a BA comp sci and a MS Software Engineering. All from the same competitive tech program. I have regrets actually about going the BS route. I think I would have been better served with a BA and actually probably would have ended up with a different degree if I would have gone that way. I did work in software engineering for a while and have taught programming to kids, but am not working in that area now.
I will say in general having done hiring of comp sci majors (and my husband still hires), those with a BS from a competitive tech program are much stronger candidates for actually in the trenches deep tech work than those with a BA. But often those with a BA have better communication skills and are more well rounded. It just depends on the job of interest. Honestly, I don’t know anyone doing anything more than very low level tech work that doesn’t have a degree.