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<p>Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr are "work hard, play hard" ? I don't think so...work hard, yes, discuss alot, yes - but the party scene is dullsville...</p>
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<p>Word.</p>
<p>Two urban schools that combine a strong work hard/play hard rep with quality liberal arts are Penn and Duke. You'll find an active music scene at both, too. (I'd put Penn among the top three in the country for top-notch a cappella if you like to sing.)</p>
<p>Hanna - would you say there was (relative to other schools), "strong" music/theatre arts at S/H/BM? I would be surprised by that characterization (we certainly saw little evidence of it in our searches - they all had them of course - but "strong" would hardly have been the adjective I would have use.)</p>
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<p>would you say there was (relative to other schools), "strong" music/theatre arts at S/H/BM?</p>
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<p>No, I wouldn't say that of H/BMC, although I'd put Swat a cut above. Given the size of the place, I thought the quality and depth at Swat were quite impressive (perhaps because there's a theater major there?). At any rate, I haven't seen any other school that small do a better job putting on quality performances. Theater and especially musical theater at H/BMC will be a letdown compared to high school for a lot of kids -- mediocre facilities, tiny budgets, one faculty-directed show per semester for the two campuses together.</p>
<p>sailorseraph, I don't think Columbia is a super reach at all. Why don't you go to the library and pick up one of the SAT test books and take a practice test? See where you are. </p>
<p>Doesn't Columbia have great theater?</p>
<p>sailorseraph, I take it your school doesn't have a good college counselor. If not, I would e-mail a couple of schools' admission departments and tell them you exist. You are going to have many choices next year. Good luck.</p>
<p>"At any rate, I haven't seen any other school that small do a better job putting on quality performances."</p>
<p>Probably true, but it is awfully small, and the full-time faculty in theater and music is tiny (in theater, like 3? the rest are visitors and adjuncts, and change from year to year.)</p>
<p>crash, you're not the only person who loves Trinity. :)</p>
<p>Ones that come to mind immediately: Trinity, Fordham, Connecticut College (though New London's not too big), Wesleyan (Middletown's a major town, not city), Smith, Macalester, Amherst, and Yale (though not an LAC).</p>
<p>Thank you, Beginning - nice to see we can OCCASIONALLY move away from the HYPs, Swatties, Brynnies, and Pennies. I also concur with your other suggestions as well.</p>
<p>I would add that -- with the exception of Kenyon -- many of the best theater schools (Catholic, Ithaca, Muhlenberg) are not always LACs nor are they at the the top academically (though still very good...)</p>
<p>By the way, there are hundreds of schools with strong acapella groups - I got called down on that a few months back, checked the suggested web site and they were correct.</p>
<p>Well, it's not like Trinity's ranked all that far below them. It just doesn't get the same recognition as the others, and I never understand why.</p>
<p>Conn's one of the top theatre (and dance) schools, so that's an LAC. I agree there aren't many, but they're out there. Fiske lists the following small colleges and universities for theatre:</p>
<p>Bennington
Bradford
Connecticut College
Juilliard
Kenyon
Lawrence
Macalester
SUNY-Purchase
Otterbein
Princeton
Rollins
Sarah Lawrence
Skidmore
Vassar</p>
<p>For dance:</p>
<p>Amherst
Barnard
Bennington
Butler
Conn
Dartmouth
Goucher
Juilliard
Kenyon
NC School of the Arts
Princeton
Sarah Lawrence
Smith
SUNY-Purchase</p>
<p>For music:</p>
<p>Bard
Bennington
Butler
DePauw
Illinois Wesleyan
Lawrence
Loyola (IL)
Manhattanville
Mills
Oberlin
St. Olaf</p>
<p>For a capella, what about Rowan? They have Westminster. (Or is it Rider that has it? It's one of them.)</p>
<p>Barnard may be another choice for the OP.</p>
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<p>there are hundreds of schools with strong acapella groups </p>
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<p>There are hundreds of schools with a cappella groups. Not all of them are strong, some have only one or two strong groups, and all campuses are certainly not created equal on this score. Penn is one of a few standout campuses nationally in terms of the widely-imitated innovations that have come out of groups there over the last fifteen years and in the number of groups in different genres that are consistently excellent. (I'm a former judge at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella and member of the Recorded A Cappella Review Board.) There's no guarantee that you'll get into the group you aim for at any school, so it's silly to pick Tufts just because you HAVE to be a Beelzebub, but a student interested in a cappella should certainly take into account the different opportunities available at various campuses when deciding where to apply/attend.</p>
<p>Sailorseraph,I KNOW it's rural (so don't jump all over me) but since we're listing all possibilities, you should take a look at Williams. They just spent $50 on a new performing arts center and its a great location for kids with interest in theater, dance and music. Plenty of performance opportunities even for non-majors. Definitely a work hard - play hard kind of place with no shortage of intellectual stimulus. Good departments in history, English, philosophy as well.</p>
<p>Wow, the possibilities are endless! Haha. Thank you for all your suggestions - I've been doing a little research into all of these schools now. Hanna, which schools have strong a capella groups, specifically? Not that it would be enough to make me change my mind completely about a school, but that information would be nice to know in my consideration. I know that Yale & UPenn have strong areas in that..unfortunately, I'm a little ignorant about everywhere else :)</p>
<p>Oh, and I don't remember who recommended Trinity originally, but I've looked into it and now I'm definitely interested, even though it's not a large university and what I've typically looked for...</p>
<p>I recommended it and Beginning backed me up. Let me just add - last year, the musical revue did selections from new shows on Broadway including Wicked, Avenue Q, Titantic (also some Rent songs, too)...it was tremendous...especially "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. The year before they did Sweeny Todd and Turandot.</p>
<p>Also, the academics are very good - kudos to: English Lit. (great Shakespere course), creative writing, Econ., Psych., Poli Sci., - and Engineering.</p>
<p>Two other schools with good music programs are UHartford and Wagner on Staten island across from NYC - a beautiful campus.</p>
<p>Oh yesm an Catawba in NC is also a great theater school.</p>
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<p>Hanna, which schools have strong a capella groups, specifically?</p>
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<p>This is by no means an exhaustive list, but in addition to Penn, Tufts and Stanford have been the leading trendsetters in the last 15-20 years. There are some terrific groups, and high standards overall, at UVA, Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Brown. UNC has a couple of fabulous, nationally respected groups. Princeton has a big and very traditional scene; the top groups there are always rock solid. JHU, Brandeis, and William & Mary are the best examples of schools with vibrant and visible communities, but that based on what I've heard/seen, I would not put in the same musical class as the others I've mentioned. Most of the schools discussed on CC (Northwestern, Duke, Wash U, BC, Michigan, etc.) are somewhere in this class -- in other words, lots of fun to be had, but depending on the group and the year, quality can be hit or miss. A school for singers to avoid is my childhood home, U of Chicago -- I honestly don't understand why they are so far behind the curve on this. I'd also like to see the Claremont Colleges step it up.</p>
<p>Yale is just its own category. Not to everyone's taste, but it has plenty of true believers.</p>
<p>Scenes can change very quickly. USC came up out of nowhere in the last five years and went from zero to very much on the map. Individual groups, other than the most ultra elite in the country (Princeton Nassoons, etc.) almost always have year-to-year quality fluctuations, which can be substantial. I also have to mention that there are pluses to singing at a small, rural LAC; your concerts have less competition for audience and the after-party will often be the biggest event of the weekend, especially if you bring in guest groups. (I think the ideal way to enjoy this is to BE the guest group from a bigger school -- I had one of the best weekends of college when we were invited to sing with the Skidmore Dynamics.)</p>
<p>ALL OF THIS IS IMHO based on my experience as a judge, reviewer, guest group, and fan -- if you have other opinions, go ahead and share them, but let's not get into a big fight because I wasn't impressed by the groups at your favorite school. (I'm a tuning ***** and I don't go in for much of the goofiness that a lot of groups use to cover up sloppy musicianship, so people who are more into the sketch comedy approach might find some of my favorite groups square.)</p>
<p>Hanna - you mention Skidmore - how about acapella groups at other LACs. Most of the schools you discuss are universities...</p>
<p>I second Brandeis-- 20 minutes from Boston, strong liberal arts and theater programs, about 4,000 students. A capella very popular. Good merit aid, too. Last year Brandeis offered a Blue Ribbon application for top applicants. Not binding ED, but applicants knew by February if they were accepted.</p>
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<p>how about acapella groups at other LACs.</p>
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<p>Most of them have them, and in some cases there are very old, well-established groups (Colgate, Smith, etc.). It's tough to generalize, but across the board, the scenes tend to be more informal than at universities: less black tie, more goofy humor, less emphasis on The One Huge Important Annual Jam in the 1000-seat theater and Keeping The Sacred Tradition Alive and more on singing at campus coffeehouses, hall parties, etc. At Skidmore, we were impressed by the Dynamics, who were only a couple of years old at that point and already solid. One of my favorites of the groups that I have judged in a live performance was the Amherst Zumbyes; they managed to combine goofiness and serious musicianship better than anyone else in the competition. I've sung with two groups from Vassar (both well-established and solid), one from Wesleyan (a co-ed group that recorded its album naked -- welcome to Wesleyan!), and of course all the groups at BMC/Haverford (bottom line: guy groups OK, coed group OK, female groups...not so much). I'm not aware of any LACs that have the kind of consistency and excellence from a core of top groups that you'll find at the universities like Brown and Stanford that I mentioned above, but there are plenty of LACs where you'll find the lower-pressure, let's-all-have-fun scenes of the Brandeis/JHU variety, and also some top-notch individual groups here and there (Zumbyes being a case in point).</p>
<p>You can read some of the reviews I've written here: <a href="http://rarb.org/people/hanna-stotland.html%5B/url%5D">http://rarb.org/people/hanna-stotland.html</a> (pro as well as collegiate). Note that a strong campus scene does not mean that every album from every group at that school is strong, and the opposite is true as well.</p>
<p>Hanna, can you remember the guy from Tufts that used to post on PR and sang for the Amalgamates? What was his first name?</p>