Is BOCO worth the $$$?? Feedback from alumni or current students??

College Majors Musical Theater Major
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My daughter is a freshman MT. She had 9 BFA MT acceptances. All she ever talked about through HS was NOT wanting a conservatory and instead wanting a campus and football and lots of kids studying lots of different things… the full college experience. We went right up to May 1st before she picked. Her final two choices came down to University of Miami, which has everything on her original list, and BoCo. To our surprise she picked The Boston Conservatory.
To be completely honest, at first she had buyers remorse. The first semester she was feeling overwhelmed by the work (these kids bust their butts!!!) and she felt like she was missing out of all of those things she didn’t have that her high school friends were posting on snapchat… football, parties, campus, free time, etc.
But then, when she went back after the Holidays everything just fell into place. From what I understand from other freshman parents, this adjustment period is common for many kids of all kinds of majors at every single kind of campus. For the first time in their lives these kids are making choices for themselves, failing, succeeding, learning… all on their own. It’s an emotional roller coaster for the vast majority of college freshmen, regardless of the type of school they go to. No matter where they go they will have a different experience than if they went to any of the other schools on their list. BoCo is unique for sure, and for everything that the kids give up in choosing BoCo they gain so much more in having a very special experience than no one else will get to have.

For my daughter BoCo is PERFECT.

It’s true that it’s small, that all of the other students are artists, that there isn’t a traditional campus, and that there isn’t a football team.

But this is also true…

The program is INCREDIBLE. Truly incredible. Arguably the best in the country.

There is dance every single day, and the dance is leveled so whether dance is a weakness or a strength, the classes will be a match for your student’s level… AND these levels are different based on type of dance too! You might be a 2 for tap and a 3 for ballet, etc. This was important for my daughter who considers dance to be her biggest weakness.

The large freshman MT class may seem like a con to some, but we think it’s a pro. Not only are they inspired by the many talents of their peers, they area also pushed by those talents. Competition for roles, in our view, is a good thing, considering that these kids are training to go into a profession where they will be competing against hundreds/thousands of talented people every single day. At BoCo they learn how to audition! The large class also gives them a chance to meet classmates that they like, don’t like, and something in the middle… imagine being stuck with the same 10 kids for 4 years, every day, every class, every show. They are a family, and they can find THEIR people.

Because of the large number of kids in MT at BoCo the number of MT teachers is also much larger than at other programs. So rather than just getting input from one acting teacher, one dance teacher, and one voice teacher like some programs… at BoCo the kids gain wisdom from MANY professors during their time there.

The dorms that another mom knocked are adorable historically protected Brownstones that look like something from Harry Potter. They are different, and cool. As for sharing a bathroom, our daughter shares 1 bathroom with her 4 roommates and an RA. Sharing a bathroom with 5 other people is challenging, but they figure that stuff out. They learn a lot about how to share space and take turns and how is that a bad thing?!! It’s 9 months out of their lives for goodness sake.

As for living in Boston. It’s a BEAUTIFUL city. And it’s LOADED with students! It’s like a city in the middle of a massive college campus. There are always kids everywhere. BoCo is near Harvard, MIT, NorthEastern, and Berklee… and those are just the schools you can throw a rock at. Are there some homeless people on some street corners?.. sure. But our daughter plans to go from BoCo to NYC after graduation. Boston is a perfect training ground for later living in NY. It’s smaller, and safer, and I would hate to have her go from some super protected environment to NY with no chance to learn street smarts.

BoCo teachers and students are extremely supportive! She absolutely loves her teachers. She feels appreciated. She is challenged. She is growing and becoming a better actress, dancer, singer. and when she has a bad day, she has a lot of peers that adore her that can help pick her back up. The students at BoCo are open minded and kind.

The connections they make and the reputation of the school are undeniable…My daughter worked with Christopher Jackson once when she was younger and when she saw him at the stage door after Hamilton and he heard she was at BoCo he flipped out… picked her up and hugged her and told her how proud he was and what a great school it is. He didn’t go to BoCo, but he knew a ton about the school, many of his friends are alums, and he had nothing but overwhelmingly positive things to say. That was a pretty solid endorsement.

Now that she’s almost at the end of her first year, our daughter’s “buyers remorse” has completely faded and she is in love with The Boston Conservatory and so extremely proud to be a BoCo student. She can’t imagine herself anywhere else. If you ask her what her favorite thing about it is, she will say the program. But now that she is becoming more comfortable she’s getting out and exploring Boston and the city itself is a close second.

Like the other parents, I definitely recommend that you visit. When my daughter did her accepted student visit she knew she was home. It’s like buying a house or that first date with your future spouse… when you know you just know.

:slight_smile:

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Thank you @SingerDancerMom for your post. My daughter is 99% sure she’s going to BOCO and loved reading about your daughter’s life there. As for the posts about safety concerns, I would encourage all parents of college kids to investigate safety issues at any school under consideration. I think most if not all schools use freshman orientation to teach students where to go and what to do if they are ever in danger. Most schools have escorts they can call late at night/early morning, of course, and blue lights throughout campus. Drug deals take place at every (or nearly every) college in America, I’m pretty sure. Sexual assault is a concern on every campus, and hazing still happens on some campuses as well. We can’t be naive about dangers associated with college life, wherever it takes place. I don’t say this to dismiss concerns about the street life around BoCo, but to put it in perspective.

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D and I toured a small, idyllic LAC far from any urban area. I said I loved - because it seemed so clear that NOTHING bad could happen in the center of all that isolation and Norman Rockwell-ness. D pulled up crime stats on her phone- they were higher (percentage wise) than the urban campus we had left a few hours before…

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@SingerDancerMom your post and my post are very similar – our kids are so alike in that they wanted something very different than where they landed and thank goodness they are both in love with the city, school and program! I heart Boco!!!

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@jd5mom My D is a freshman there now. Like others who have posted, I urge you to visit and soak it all in. BoCo is a very, very specific place which some kids will thrive in, and others will not. I remember when my D first toured it, during her junior year, she emerged still without a real sense of it. She wound up doing their summer program and completely falling in love with everything about it. This was further confirmed by a weekend she spent there in the fall, staying with her summer RA and sampling classes, etc.

My D has always been a city girl - we live about an hour from NYC and she spent on average two days a week there from early HS onwards, independently navigating it and loving everything about doing so. She wanted to be somewhere else, though, for the college years, since she aspires and intends to spend the rest of her live in NYC post-college. She really, really loves the non-campus aspect of attending BoCo and has stated many times to me that she loves using Boston as her campus and doesn’t miss not having a quad to walk on, etc. etc. - that she now prefers it this way, and she uses the city, ie going to Boston Common with a friend, as a way to have a break from the demands of the program and all-MT, all the time, at times. There are also so many great theaters nearby, with really cheap, sometimes free, student prices - a real bonus in terms of exposure to the art form they want to pursue - especially for kids from small towns.

What she doe miss is the influx of other academic disciplines and non-arts students. She knew this would be her issue going in, and sometimes she is still torn that she didn’t go to an academic institution with a strong theater department. But she knew she would be torn before she made her decision. She’s academically inclined and interested in many disciplines and her ideal would have been a program like UMich or NYU where she could combine it all at a top academic school. But there is plenty of rigor at BoCo across the board. They still write a lot of papers, don’t get “easy A’s” and have to juggle a great deal, while often rehearsing for hours on end at night.

The faculty’s expectations are high, the days and nights are long, and she has found plenty of performance opportunities - some in student-directed smaller shows. Also many summer stock programs audition on campus, plus others hold Boston auditions. One of her favorite things this first year was being asked to stage manage a senior-directed play. The material was intellectually challenging and the process collaborative. She’s also been involved in the literary magazine, social activism - which is important to her, has participated with a group that goes out and “dances” with people in nursing homes and yes, she has gone to some parties at Harvard, MIT, Emerson and BU. Her older brother is a junior studying in Boston, so this has helped facilitate some cross pollination, socially! In every way, she has been enjoying life as an 18-year-old freshman and getting a collegiate experience as well as great training. She also has an on-campus job and there are plenty of off-campus jobs too, to help pay for all the lattes, etc. that bump up an urban college’s cost…

Coming in as someone with pretty heavy duty vocal and dance training, what my D has been most impassioned about this year has been the drama program and the acting classes. They are challenging and supportive and have incorporated Shakespeare work, contemporary monologues and movement other than dance. Plus of course ear training, ensemble music work, theater history classes and production class - and like 10 more! There’s also a lot of dance and it’s leveled, which was important to her. She loves the core system and that she’s not with the same 10 or 12 kids every day for four years. She also has many upperclassman friends - there aren’t class year barriers with socializing in such a small place.

No issues with safety other than normal precautions. The Berklee dining hall is very, very close (and nice, with healthy eating options too) and in a very populated area. Yes, there are street people, but navigating this is part of city living. The picturesque dorms are crowded but so close to classes, etc. – it’s nice for that first year. She’s found the faculty and administration to be really, really supportive.

All this being said - it is very expensive. And there are hidden curves, financially, such as the apartment costs, which they don’t talk about initially. And (this is probably true at other schools too…?) that you only get a half hour private voice lesson included in the tuition, and have to pay (a lot) more for the one-hour deal, which almost all the kids seem to do (and some of the voice instructors basically insist on) – that was an early shock, and I would certainly have preferred for it to have been built into the tuition instead, so it would have been a known factor going in. My D did get a “good for BoCo” talent scholarship, but there’s no getting around it – when the checks are written each semester for my son’s college and my daughter’s, hers are more than twice his – and he is a top student – so a lot to consider, all around.

Feel free to message me with any specific questions.

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@jd5mom I would add one last thing - that you and your D have a really open, specific “money” talk before you decide whether to visit. Whatever your situation is, ie how much will fall on her with loans after graduation, salary she is likely to earn post-college working the kind of jobs that most aspiring actors fall into - what the loan payments will be, how they escalate, how this will impact her standard of living post-college. Only then, with a full understanding of what saying yes to an expensive institution means to you as a family and to her as a soon-to-be young adult, should you visit. In our case, we knew she was accepted for months before we knew what kind of scholarship she would receive and there were constant conversations relating to this and how we might not be able to afford it if it wasn’t above a certain level.

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@SingerDancerMom - for some reason I didn’t see your post before I wrote mine - so much of what we both wrote echoed our daughters’ experiences.

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@rampions Oh my gosh… you’re not kidding. Our daughter’s experiences are so similar! Although it sounds like yours is managing to get out to those Harvard and MIT parties… I hope my daughter starts hanging around with yours! Mine needs to broaden her social life a bit. :slight_smile: