<p>We all know the very competitive "Ivry" schools for Musical Theatre, but I am trying to compose a more balanced list of schools to increase the acceptance possibilities. Which BFA schools are NOT considered "1st tier", but are more reasonable? Not necessarily "safety" non-audition schools, but audition BFA schools that would be considered middle-class?</p>
<p>So far the only one on my list is SUNY Buffalo.-----It is an audition BFA program, but not necessarily first class. I know that all audition based MT programs are competitive, but which are the more reasonable ones?</p>
<p>Kent State University offers a BFA. The school is affordable (even out of state) and I believe they only audition on campus so they see a smaller number of kids. My son ended up not auditioning but the program looked pretty good.</p>
<p>Clarion University in PA offers a nonaudition BFA. The school is very affordable for PA students. I have no idea the quality of the program.</p>
<p>Wilkes University has a BA in Musical Theatre - It is audition, but I don’t think they are highly selective. My son and I were very impressed with the faculty and the quality of the production we saw. The school is not too far from NYC and the academics are good.</p>
<p>These were just a few of the options we found in our area.</p>
<p>Rowan University in NJ is an audition BA. I think their musical theatre track is new, but they’ve been putting on a couple of musicals every year. The campus is in Glassboro, there’s not much there, but it’s only about 30 minutes from Philadelphia.</p>
<p>you will find a great list of BFA programs marked with a “+” for highly selective, “~” for non-audition and no qualifier for in-between. This is a good place to begin your research. I would then recommend using the advice from MichaelNKat in the thread “Preparing to Apply…” regarding the development of a balanced list of schools.</p>
<p>Note that opinions will vary on the difficulty of getting into any program with auditions - they are all tough. There is no substitute for lots of personal research.</p>
<p>A word about Kent State - when my daughter was a rising Senior in HS we had the opportunity to meet with the cast of Hair which was playing in Central Park that summer so of course I “grilled” some of the young cast members about where they went to college, what they thought, etc. One conversation with two cast members made a strong impression in my mind; one was from CMU one from Kent State. They both graduated the same year, CMU had a showcase, Kent State did not, CMU is considered one of the best, Kent State not so much, etc. Yet, here they were, both in the same place one year after graduation. To me it made the point that it is the person who makes their career, not the school. Just a thought.</p>
<p>That is a great idea to think about: “It is the person who makes their career, not the school.”</p>
<p>I think that as long as you get study in the area of musical theatre from at least an average program, it doesn’t matter if it was at a middle class or top notch school ( but I do believe the results would be very different if it was a low quality college program). I am not saying that it is impossible to be successful in an MT career after earning a degree at a low quality school, but I do believe your talent would have to be exceptional to outweigh the lack of quality training. In the real world of the theater business it ultimately comes down to the person. What you do with your training is more important than whether you took the top tier or middle tier route. If your route was low tier, however, your talent most be that much greater.</p>
<p>I have seen two productions at Theater by the Sea in Rhode Island that have BFA majors from Ithaca, Emerson, OCU, Coastal Carolina, Northern Kentucky, Western Carolina and Rhode Island College. Some of these programs are more well known than others. There also were non BFA graduates from Univ. of Alabama, Virginia Commonwealth, and UMASS.</p>
<p>Here is a list of the MT schools in order of the number of posts on CC. This is not intended as any sort of indicator other than the data presented, i.e., I am not implying that NYU is the top school nor do I mean to imply that no. 5 UArts is “better” than no. 24 Muhlenberg. This only shows the relative interest as indicated by CC posts - this may or may not be of use, the amount of data seems to be relatively high (i.e., thousands of posts) but could be skewed by geography or many other factors that render it of dubious value (i.e., it may be that lots of people from NY are CC’ers but not people from the West Coast):</p>
<p>1 NYU/Tisch MT 5992
2 Carnegie Mellon University MT 2482
3 University of Michigan MT 2022
4 Oklahoma City University MT 1737
5 University of the Arts MT 1518
6 Elon University MT 1357
7 Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music MT 1355
8 Boston Conservatory MT 1284
9 Syracuse University MT 1230
10 Otterbein College MT 1178
11 Webster University MT 1124
12 Ithaca College MT 1008
13 Baldwin-Wallace College MT 795
14 Point Park University MT 792
15 Pace University MT 726
16 Pennsylvania State University MT 634
17 University of Hartford - Hartt School MT 599
18 Roosevelt University MT 518
19 Emerson College MT 507
20 Montclair State University MT 471
21 Northwestern University MT 450
22 California State University, Fullerton MT 448
23 Marymount Manhattan College MT 434
24 Muhlenberg College MT 425
25 Shenandoah Conservatory MT 375
26 Florida State University MT 361
27 University of Arizona MT 350
28 Indiana University Bloomington MT 316
29 NYU/Steinhardt MT 254
30 Wagner College MT 218
31 Coastal Carolina University 210
32 University of Miami - Florida MT 187
33 Temple University MT 177
34 James Madison University MT 174
35 University of California - Irvine MT 171
36 University of California - Los Angeles MT 163
37 Wright State - MT 154
38 Ball State University MT 153
39 Illinois Wesleyan - MT 152
40 University of Oklahoma MT 150
41 University of Southern California MT 127
42 Viterbo University MT 109
43 SUNY at Fredonia MT 106
44 American University MT 102
45 University of Central Florida MT 100
46 Millikin University MT 89
47 Westminster College of the Arts - Rider - MT 84
48 Catholic University MT 72
49 Texas State - San Marcos MT 67
50 Texas Christian University MT 66
51 SUNY at Buffalo MT 61
52 Western Michigan University MT 53
53 Sam Houston State University MT 47
54 College of Santa Fe MT 36
55 Northern Colorado University MT 20</p>
<p>The list MAY be of SOME use in judging the relative difficulty of acceptance to SOME programs, especially for those new to the complex world of college MT. The top half of the list is composed primarily of schools marked as “highly selective” in the “Big List of MT Schools” thread (the “+” schools) and the bottom half are mostly non-plus-sign schools. However, the data may be biased for just that reason.</p>
<p>One fairly obvious bias inherent in the data is the schools with summer programs (i.e, Oklahoma City University) and/or an unusually active set of parents, tend to generate more CC traffic, which may not be directly indicative of the relative difficulty of acceptance.</p>
<p>Reading the “Rejections” thread also seems to correlate with this list to a large extent, i.e., it is not uncommon for individuals to get zero acceptances from the schools in the top half of the list. I would only look at the data on a broad-brush basis and be leery of any comparisons without a high degree of variance.</p>
<p>Since there are so few sources to review that provide any sort of rankings or acceptance rates for MT schools that are of any substantial and objective value, it can be hard to figure out what you are going to be up against in this process, especially when you are just starting out on this journey (like my D).</p>
<p>I certainly would not base any judgement of the quality of a program on this data.</p>
<p>Something to keep in mind regarding the list EmsDad made is that there are some older, more established programs vs. newer, up and coming programs. In fact I believe that Texas State was added last year and Northern Colorado was just added this year. I think that their position on the list is a little deceiving. I remember when I first started reading posts on CC I had an impression that the schools with few posts or really old posts were programs that were perhaps irrelevant. After a year of research, I don’t see it all like that.</p>
<p>No offense EmsDad, just an observation. :0)</p>
<p>@kksmom5: great example of possible bias in the data. Hey, its just data. With the current boom in interest in MT, I think many programs (like the two you cite) are seeing a great deal of competition for slots (I know I would rate Texas State a “+” based on the level of talent among the kids that I know of that got in this year).</p>
<p>To reiterate, the list is in no way any kind of quality judgement.</p>