Does anyone know where I could find the acceptance rates of MT BFA?
@zippy1616 - for which school? It varies- but most are WELL under 10%
I would not say “most” are “well under 10%”, but some are. Many more are over 10%, and many are over 20%. It would be interesting to know more stats. I bet @EmsDad could chime in!
Wow, I thought most were 1 - 3%?
@Notmath1 - I am certain you are correct taking all schools that offer BFAs into account. I suppose I am thinking of many of the schools most often discussed here on CC - and/or those that would typically find their way into the various (and often inherently flawed) “top” BFA lists.
Here is a thread on this topic from back in December:
@EmsDad ( or anyone) Any idea how many TOTAL BFAs in musical theatre there are in the US? I would guess over 100.
@Notmath1 - here is a summary from the “Big List” posted at the top of the forum including four year programs only. These numbers are only approximate because new programs spring up every year and there are probably still some programs out there that we haven’t found. It also depends on how many of the MT Minor/Certificate programs that you count. If you included ALL the MT minor programs in existence, many of which are not included in the “Big List,” then the numbers would be inflated by approximately another 20-30:
Auditioned BFA + BM programs: 140-150
Auditioned BA programs: 50-60
Non-audition BA + BFA programs: 50-60
Thxs all. Looking for percentage rates. We were told that Boco is 30% acceptance rate but CMU is 3%. Wondering if there is somewhere online that lists the MT schools with acceptance into that program.
@zippy1616 ~ Did you review this link that EmDad posted above?
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/2037126-of-kids-who-audition-vs-of-kids-who-are-offered-spots-school-list-p1.html
Excellent - class sizes work! Thank you so much! So helpful when going thru this scary process!
@zippy1616 - maybe you overlooked this post from that thread - I think it may have some of the statistics you were hoping to find. I’ve just copied and pasted it here for you from @EmsDad 's thread he noted above. But here are some stats he came up with. He is quite an amazing guy with numbers:
A while back I counted the acceptances and rejections for five year’s worth of data in the “Final Decisions” threads (from 2012-2016 as I recall). I ended up with about 500 individual data points. The acceptance rate results are listed below for programs with more than 30 data points. My conclusion is that the data is “biased high” due to the fact that people who get acceptances and are happy with their results are much more likely to have posted in the Final Decisions thread than those who did not fair well. Also, CC posters may be likely to have students that are possibly better prepared than the general populace. Hence, I think the acceptance rate numbers are about 3 times higher than actual, so I divided them by 3 to get my "estimated’ acceptance rate. The usual suspects are at the top, so I think the numbers may be at least somewhat representative:
Carnegie Mellon - 6% [63 data points] estimated rate = 2%
Michigan - 8% [52 data points] estimated rate = 3%
CCM - 9% [75 data points] estimated rate = 3%
Elon - 12% [42 data points] estimated rate = 4%
Emerson - 12% [42 data points] estimated rate = 4%
Baldwin Wallace - 13% [47 data points] estimated rate = 4%
Penn State - 14% [57 data points] estimated rate = 5%
Ithaca - 16% [58 data points] estimated rate = 5%
Texas State - 16% [56 data points] estimated rate = 5%
Otterbein - 20% [46 data points] estimated rate = 7%
Pace - 20% [64 data points] estimated rate = 7%
Syracuse - 22% [37 data points] estimated rate = 7%
Ball State - 34% [53 data points] estimated rate = 11%
Point Park - 45% [65 data points] estimated rate = 15%
Coastal Carolina - 45% [31 data points] estimated rate = 15%
NYU Tisch - 48% [44 data points] estimated rate = 16%
Rider - 48% [50 data points] estimated rate = 16%
Roosevelt - 48% [31 data points] estimated rate = 16%
Hartt - 59% [41 data points] estimated rate = 20%
Boco - 66% [44 data points] estimated rate = 22%
U Arts - 68% [34 data points] estimated rate
@zippy1616 I highly doubt BOCO is a 30% acceptance rate, they admit about 56 students into the MT program, in order to achieve a 30% acceptance rate they would have to have less than 200 apply. Most of the big programs have 400 or more, some like Carnegie Mellon greater than 700 apply(could be more) . Now out of that 700 not all audition, I’ve heard numbers anywhere from 300 to 400 audition at some of the more popular programs. If you use those numbers if 400 kids audition for 12 spots at Carnegie you have a 3% acceptance rate. Now if you assume for other programs that they also audition 400 kids for say 20 spots which it seems other schools seem to admit 10 to 20. Then you would have a 14% acceptance rate.
I would agree that some of the acceptance rates listed seem a bit high. I know that Hartt auditions approximately 700 - 800 potential MTs and places offers to an average of 80-100 in order to yield a class of around 25-30 each year. So that would equate to a rate of about 10-14 percent.
Some schools will share numbers directly. For instance, this is from WSU’s current website:
“We hold auditions four times a year at Wright State University from November to February, seeing 400-500 students annually. We select about 14 Musical Theatre and 14 Acting students to join our program annually (about 3% acceptance rate in Musical Theatre).”
@Boilermom and @MTfamily1 - a clarification on nomenclature:
“Acceptance Rate” is based on the number of offers extended vs. the number auditioning, not the number enrolled vs. the number auditioning. No school, not even CMU, has a “Yield” of 100% (ratio of offers accepted divided by the number of offers extended) except in extremely rare circumstances. Yields for MT programs are typically 20-60% so Acceptance Rates are usually at least 2-3 times the target enrollment rate in order to get a class of the desired size.
For example:
Based on numbers that Boco quoted at the parent meeting when my d auditioned for them , they said that they auditioned around 1000, made offers to 200 or so, and ended up with a class of around 60. So, their Acceptance Rate was around 20% and their Yield was about 30%.
Based on what I have observed, it is not unusual for MT programs to inflate their audition numbers and understate the actual numbers of offers extended.
The numbers that are quoted in post #11 are real data points, albeit from an arguably relatively small sample set.
@zippy1616 My D and I are both stat-nerds. We love #s, and we (normally) tend to get really, really hung up on them. The information that @EmsDad and others impart is invaluable. Because it is so important to be informed, and to go in with eyes wide open. That said-try not to eliminate a school based on odds. Eliminate schools based on program, proximity, & price, yes. Seek to expand your list? Perhaps. But anything can happen. As my husband has always very astutely told my D: “The only 100% no is if you don’t try.”
I used the data to help my d balance things out and avoid ending up with only extremely competitive schools on her list. I used other factors as well in order to estimate the relative levels of competition between various programs. I have no doubt that Michigan, Ithaca, Penn State, CMU, Elon, and Texas State all would have been great fits from her perspective but that would not have a been a wise all-inclusive list for her.
@EmsDad What other resources did you and your D use to narrow your list? Coach? Visits? College websites? Other families? Teachers?.. besides your excellent stats?
Here are the factors that we considered:
- Input from faculty members at her PAHS, who had decades of experience getting kids into all kinds of programs from the tippy-top famous ones to the hidden gems.
- We used Mary Anna Dennard as a coach for d, and she supplies a great list for her clients.
- I did a survey of every Broadway show and National Tour and counted all the schools noted (in this post: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/13750942#Comment_13750942)
- I looked at the amount of traffic here on CC for the schools posted at the top of the forum (which can be found here: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-schools/) - although this is pretty weak indicator, it points to many of the usual suspects.
- I looked through lots of old threads here on CC about the "top" schools for MT - while individual posts should be taken with less than a grain of salt, when taken in aggregate I think you can form a decent picture of the usual suspects. You can find links to some of the old threads on this topic here: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20796944#Comment_20796944
- I read back through all the old "Acceptances," "Rejections," and "Final Decisions" threads and kept a running tally of what I found. It is pretty clear that a lot more students get offers from certain schools than other ones.
- D's high school hosts a large regional audition each year and by looking at the size of the callback lists, you can get a pretty decent picture of the highly competitive programs (their lists are usually quite short).
Through it all, I was looking more for “data trends” rather than trying to establish any sort of detailed ranking. I didn’t really care what the actual numbers were or their accuracy, I was much more interested in which names seemed to consistently float to the top, whatever method of analysis was used.