musical theater and drama programs

My daughter is a junior in high school. She sing, dances, acts, and plays piano and is equally passionate about them all, and has a 4.1 GPA. She wants to attend a university as opposed to a strict conservatory. Other than Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan, and NYU can anyone recommend any other schools for these disciplines?

What state do you live in and what is your budget?

Is she strictly interested in performance, or is she also interested in design/production/arts management/etc.?

For a reach school, Johns Hopkins. Students can take classes at the Peabody conservatory but not be conservatory students.

I wouldn’t suggest Hopkins for this particular student. Their drama department doesn’t do much musical theatre. There are opportunities outside the school to perform and the Baltimore theatre scene is fine, but in-school she wouldn’t be getting a lot of support for the sing/dance/act part of her enthusiasms. JHU focuses on STEM, that’s their strength. They are not strong in the arts.

Might look at Spitzer or Pomona, not universities but they have the 5 college exchange so you have a wide range of opportunity?

American University in DC might be a good low match or safety. I’ve been impressed by their performances.

The Musical Theater board in the Majors section of CC is very active and they would probably have a lot more ideas for you.

Moving to MT Forum.

Look at Penn State.

University of Arizona Acting & Musical Theatre, UCLA, USC, Texas State San Marcos, Indiana U, TCU and countless others – but those are good starts if you want the BIG U experience…

If she is looking for a large university experience Syracuse and Boston University would be two others to add to the list. If she is interested in a wider variety of curriculum (BFAs often have a fairly limited range of choice) she might want to look at BAs as well

LOL - you’re on the right board now!

In addition to the above, all of which are excellent suggestions…

Chapman
Temple

In addition to all of the above: Northwestern (if it hasn’t been mentioned yet).

University of Miami (FL), Illinois Wesleyan, James Madison, American University, Oklahoma University,

WoW! I’m new to this site, so thank you all for your advice!! To answer your questions, we live in Los Angeles, and she’d rather go away to school, so UCLA, USC, Chapman and Pomona et al. are low on our list. Money is always an issue (lol), but we will find a way to afford it. For whatever crazy reason, my daughter thinks she doesn’t like Boston! She is more interested in performance now, but the reason she wants a university is to be able to take other courses and explore the possibility of a double major or a minor in something else. However, it doesn’t have to be a large university. She definitely is not interested in tech/design.

What is TCU?

VVNstar- Do you mean University of Illinois?

and MTTwinsinCA2- what is TCU?

My daughter considered Butler. It’s a BA, but I was impressed by their program. Only drawback was that they currently do not offer tap classes. It is expensive, but they did offer us a good amount of merit and talent scholarship. Unfortunately, not enough.


[QUOTE=""]

what is TCU?

[/QUOTE]

Texas Christian University

BU does not have a MT degree but does have MT Concentration as part of the BFA Acting program.


[QUOTE=""]

Do you mean University of Illinois?

[/QUOTE]

Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington, IL offers a MT degree.

Also Millikin University in Decatur, Il. offers a BA and a BFA in MT.

@EVDLLD You got some great suggestions above. You really need to look at the curriculum at each school. Do not assume that because a school is a university that she will be able to take a lot of academic classes. There is a big difference between Carnegie Mellon and NYU/Michigan, for example. Carnegie Mellon is essentially a conservatory even though it is housed in a university.

Does she want to audition for programs? This is a major decision she needs to make right now.