Help! I’m a high school senior looking for colleges with great musical theatre programs that also allow you to minor in communications or public relations. So far, UMich and NYU are my top two, but I’m looking for more options.
Wagner college is a BA in theatre that has some musical theatre training in the curriculum. You can double major in whatever you like there. I believe that Ohio Northern (BFA) allows you to double major as well. I know there are several other schools that allow it. You will get far more flexibility if you are willing to branch out from just BFA’s, so I would recommend researching a variety of degrees and programs.
You can minor in Communications or Public Relations at Western Michigan, and the MT program under former Broadway actor and noted regional director Jay Berkow is excellent. The curriculum includes lots of dance in the same classes as the BFA dance majors and acting classes are taught by former professional actors like Ben Reigel and Dwandra Lampkin (*Law and Order, Third Watch, Wonderland *).
Completing a minor within the BFA MT program will require extra hours, so it really helps if you have some incoming credits via AP or dual credit courses and/or you attend a summer session. You can get in-state tuition by attending both summer sessions one year and meeting some other criteria. WMU does offer some online summer courses so you can complete classes over the internet with no requirement to actually be on campus.
You can minor in Communications with a PR focus at James Madison University in VA, and it is possible to do this with the Musical Theatre major. This is actually one of the more common minors among students in the major.
We know a student who is studying stage management (BFA) at UMich and minoring in Communications. She had a lot of AP credits from HS which gave her some wiggle room, and she has been taking summer classes.
I would look at Emerson College in Boston. They refer to themselves as the “nation’s premier institution in higher education devoted to communication and the arts in a liberal arts context.” They have a BFA in MT but there are 56 credits outside of the BFA track that can be used for creating a minor. Good luck.
My daughter is essentially doing that at USC, even though the major is technically drama not MT. But there are a lot of courses in the USC drama school that would fit into a MT major anywhere else. She is pursuing a minor in PR and is getting PR experience by handling the PR for one of the student run theatre groups and her residence hall.
I second @halflokum! My S was admitted to BFA MT @ Emerson 3 years ago and seriously considered it - one of the strong draws was the ability potentially to create a minor in communications.