Western Michigan could be worth considering. It is known for its music and theatre programs. It should be very affordable. Plus, WMU is in Kalamazoo, a cool college town with a vibrant music scene. Kalamazoo College, a well-respected LAC, is right next door. See the link featuring Kalamazoo College, which also describes the town.
https://www.kzoo.edu/news/kalamazoo-named-among-top-college-towns/
So much helpful advice and reality checks here—thanks very much, all! I’m absorbing this and following the links, and will check out the Theatre & Drama threads as well. Please keep it coming if you have more thoughts.
I think it’s entirely possible that the auditions might not work in my daughter’s favor, so while she is already looking into each school’s audition process & deadlines, I want to make sure she’s also applying for BAs. Good food for thought here.
If ok with UBC what about UToronto and McGill?
I’m OK with the cross-country distance of the East Coast, and the extra logistical barriers of being over the border on the West Coast, but I’ve had a not-entirely-rational resistance to having both of those barriers to her being able to come home easily if she needs/wants to. Traveling while trans can be fraught—but it’s probably not that big a difference to be on Canada’s East Coast.
My kid is trans and my best friend teaches at UToronto. They are incredibly inclusive and diversity focused, more so than most even liberal US schools. But I get the distance thing for sure. We are having our own journey of looking for trans-positive schools but he is a stem kid so not looking at same places. But I have to say - NYU?
Why do you feel this way? If she wants to be a performer, her life will be filled and filled some more with auditions…with a lot of rejections in those auditions that she will continually need to do.
Does your daughter have a resume of performances she has been in already?
Is she perhaps more interested in technical theater, or something behind the scenes?
I think it’s unlikely she’d get into Tisch, but she also feels she’d rather be in a slightly smaller pond with a better chance of being cast in performances. (A fellow theater kid from her school is going to Tisch next year, but that girl is a real standout star.)
I’d love to compare notes about the college journey for trans kids! I’ll look for a thread for that too.
Why do you feel this way? If she wants to be a performer, her life will be filled and filled some more with auditions…with a lot of rejections in those auditions that she will continually need to do.
Does your daughter have a resume of performances she has been in already?
She actually has a decent acting resume for someone her age, though her professional & community theater roles were all prior to HS. She’s a good actor, but she also wants to do a singing audition (she loves MT), and I don’t think she’ll stand out as a singer.
Musical theater is a trifecta…singing, acting and dancing.
Has she done school shows in high school?
Many colleges have shows that non-majors can participate in. Would that interest her?
Would be fun to have a thread for parents of trans kids (or maybe trans and nb and other non-cis kids) of 2023. Can share scoop - not that I have much beyond the obvious- the haters and the hater states don’t make it hard to figure out - they are very obvious!
My son is trans and a second year getting a bfa in drama. This is a huge discussion and you need to separate out the best schools for bfa that will accept and support trans students, if your daughter wants the rigor and concentration of a bfa or if she is looking for a ba theater program that will be affordable and give a good education. Some schools for bfa to consider are definitely uncsa (but this is one of the top programs in the country and extremely selective), Emerson (very expensive), Tisch (much less selective but extremely selective), Northwestern (academic admit only), and for BA Muhlenberg, Oberlin, Skidmore but all of these are very expensive. Happy to discuss more over pm
What about Bard?
Colorado State (Ft Collins) and U of Northern Colorado both have BFAs in theater. Both are WUE schools so she’d get a tuition break.
Ft Collins is more liberal than Greeley, but both in more conservative areas than Boulder. Boulder has a very good theater program, but is just pretty expensive (and the town is more expensive to live in). Students from Fort Collins or Greeley can travel into downtown Denver for the music and theater communities in a little over an hour.
Emerson would be great but probably too expensive. They give merit but not much.
SCAD in Atlanta. They offer merit. My S21 got it down to about $36k/year for film. Atlanta is very LGBTQ friendly. Lots of movies here. They’re filming a Netflix show at the hotel next door as I type this.
DePaul in Chicago. It also came in around $35k for S21. Great for film and I also think theatre. Catholic school but very accepting. Surrounding area is LGTBQ friendly.
If it is still the same as it was 5 years ago when my daughter was applying, SCAD is rolling admissions; that was her first admit (with merit. No audition). It feels so great to have an acceptance early on! And yes, for TV and film lots happening in Atlanta (less of a theater scene, but in general…school time is for school anyway, not for outside work).
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.