Penn State news

College Majors Musical Theater Major
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<p>With my first kid, she was able to use Fiske and Princeton Review guidebooks as they contain several hundred colleges each. We used a third directory as well, The Insider's guide to Colleges. I bought my D these books as I think she could pick from hundreds of schools. No, she didn't look at Plymouth State or Central Conn State, not because of rankings but because her qualifications and learning needs were in range for the hundreds upon hundreds of colleges in the guidebooks. There were plenty from which to pick. For a kid, for example, like her, who was valedictorian, had straight As, took the hardest classes and had very good SAT scores, I knew there were plenty of schools in the directories. She didn't NEED to find schools like the ones you named, because there were enough schools that fit her qualifications in the directories. Had she not been able to find ones that did, we'd have to do a greater search online. I still would not have needed a list of college rankings by US News and World Report. </p>

<p>Truth be told, I HAVE had clients with 950 or 1000 SATs...quite a number...and GPAs of 2 point something. Again, I have not had to consult a ranking list. If I couldn't find schools in a directory, I searched for schools online. There are college search engines, in fact. I can search by major, location, SAT scores, etc. Again, I don't need to know where a school "ranks" in numerical order from best on down, as US News does when ranking schools. Rank is NOT the same as examining schools that fit a students' qualifications. Rank is an ordering of schools by criteria that USNews has chosen to go by. I don't consult rankings to find colleges. I do searches through directories and online and just happen to also know about a lot of colleges as that is my job. It isn't about rankings. It is about being qualified for the stats required to get into a school. That is NOT the same as rankings. Rankings have to do with rating schools and ordering them as to which are considered "best", etc. by the criteria of the organization doing the ranking. Selectivity and stats don't entirely correlate with that either. One still needs to examine the academic profile of admitted students at each college to determine one's chances. That is not a ranking but merely examining a school. One can find LISTS of schools either by buying a directory, searching online, etc. and those lists are not RANKED. For instance, you can use the CollegeBoard's site to search for schools by various criteria...size, location, SAT range, majors offered, etc. and it spits out a list of schools but doesn't RANK them. USNEWS' ranking is a different thing. And THAT is a list I don't need to see. I don't need to see how a school is ranked by USNews in order to search for appropriate schools for a candidate, be it a top student or a student with low stats. I just need to research schools that fit their criteria, along with their qualifications. I have never consulted a ranked list, ever, in doing a college search with my own kids, or for many clients. And I have suggested schools to clients that are NOT in the directories I mentioned....ie) McDaniel, West Chester U, University of Hartford, Marymount Manhattan, Roosevelt, Manhattanville, University of Southern Maine, and many more. By the way, I have had a student who applied to Plymouth State. He ended up at Emerson.</p>

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<p>Hmmm...what do "CC Top Universities" and "CC Top Liberal Arts Colleges" mean? (Located on the College Discussion homepage.)</p>

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<p>HH....having not been the person who created those subforums, I can't totally answer how those schools were chosen for those forums. My guess is that, like a guidebook that selects a group of schools, CC chose a group of well known schools that are selective to have their own forums since these schools were in demand by the readership. CC also has forums from A to Z on lots more schools. The demand is high for discussions on those selective schools. Likewise, not all MT programs have their own subforums on the MT board. Some were chosen as ones that are either well known or talked about frequently on CC. When those subforums were created, CC looked at existing threads and which schools were being discussed and creating sub forums for 30 MT programs. They are not ranked, however. It is a grouping, but it is not a ranking. A ranking, ala USNews and World Report, numerically ranks schools in order by certain criteria. A college directory that choses a few hundred schools or CC choosing to create a subforum for well known schools talked about a lot on CC, is creating a grouping, but is not ranking them in any order. </p>

<p>CC, however, has a LOT of forums that discuss ALL aspects of college selection and admissions, as well as many related topics, and for that matter also has subforums on MANY colleges (see the alphabetical listing). So, I don't think CC is ALL about rankings, as you asserted. </p>

<p>In any case, while I have been responding to you, and I understand how a discussion can morph to a new or related topic, I am cognizant that this thread was started to be about PSU. So, I'm not sure how much more we should be discussing whether CC is all about rankings and whether people start with rankings to find colleges. I have proferred my point of view and method for choosing colleges. I certainly am aware of which schools are most selective, selective and least selective. That is not necessarily the same list as a ranking. Back to MT colleges, which have no numerical ranking, there are "groups" of schools that are well known and considered more selective than others. Again, that is not a ranking but is a comment on their selectivity. In an actual "ranking system" like US News puts out, a school that has a lower admit rate (more selective) could conceivably be ranked lower than a school with a higher admit rate. US News has several criteria for ranking the schools. I personally do not need to know a college's rank to find appropriate schools for my own kids or for clients. I do need to know how selective the schools are and the stats of admitted students. I don't need to know any "order" of the schools by USNews, however. </p>

<p>A forum for very selective schools is warranted for those seeking out that level of school (often top students). That is a special interest group, so to speak. I see it as no different from having a forum for musical theater applicants which is another special interest group. Just within my own family with two kids, I had one seeking selective schools for a BA degree and one seeking BFA in MT schools. So, subforums that discussed those groups of schools would be helpful to me. If you read CC long enough and the various forums, there is a large contingent of students who are TOP students and so our forums cater to the different needs of the membership. Read the stats some time of the kids who post on the Ivy forums. There are a lot of extremely well qualified students and their parents reading CC. But we also have forums that discuss many schools and many issues related to admissions. We have learning disability forums, homeschooling forums, and so on.</p>

<p>CC's counselors get a lot of clients who are applying to very selective colleges. My own training with CC dealt a great deal with elite college admissions even though I advise a wide range of applicants. But for certain, CC has many clients in the ballpark of highly selective colleges.</p>

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<p>I think rankings matter to many, they mattered to us when we were putting together the initial list, but I stress the word initial. Rankings are most often based on averages and formulas that don't always apply to MT. "Success" in an engineering program is often based on the average $$$ paid to it's grads. and the percentage of grads working after graduation as well as the number of hot research projects a given university has on the stove. This is not applicable to MT because success in the arts is more subjective.
We paid attention to play bills when we went to the theatre. We cared about which schools had the most students working on Broadway and national shows. We found that CCM, U Mich, CMU, Penn State, OCC, FSU, NYU, Ithaca, Northwestern, Bo Co & Elon had many working grads. In the end, my D only auditioned at six of these schools because other reasons became more important to us... The list of reasons is long and I won't bore you, but my point is that ranking mattered at first, but in the end they were fairly insignificant.</p>

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<p>However, those schools are not ranked in numerical order. Looking at reputation and selectivity is a different thing. Grouping schools by those that are highly selective or well known in the field is natural. That is not the same as a ranking by various criteria in numerical order that USNews does for colleges in general and was the question being asked here as to which schools are ordered into the top five by ranking. But yes, selectivity and if a school is well known, may be factors in a list of one's personal college criteria. In my mind, I do group schools by their academic selectivity and their artistic selectivity and if they are widely known for their programs, etc. I could not number each program in sequential order, however. And I wouldn't care even if such an order existed, if I went to #4 or #7 and if I liked #7 because it fit my college criteria, that would be all that mattered. However, my college criteria MIGHT include going to a very selective school for the level/challenge and also a school with a good reputation for its program. Schools, including those for musical theater, CAN be roughly grouped in that way. I don't need a ranking or numerical order, however.</p>

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<p>Here on the east coast, rankings and reputation are hugely important to a great many people. What do you expect in a society that values designer underware, and $80,000.00 SUV's? Ranking are like anything else, they need to be taken with a grain of salt.</p>

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<p>Sarahsmom, I hear you. I feel fortunate that my kids did not attend a competitive high school environment and my community also is not obssessed with competitive college admissions as I have learned is prevalent in certain communities. The idea of rankings such as the ones in USNews was foreign from my kids' experiences, as well as my own, until I read about it on CC where I have met many who live in communities or attend schools that are full of a competitive climate, discuss college admissions a lot, care about these sorts of things like rankings and labels and what not. I know that exists in certain areas, I do! It just doesn't where I live in rural Vermont and the more I have learned about that atmosphere, the gladder (is that a word?? LOL) I am that my kids didn't go to school in such a climate. Applying to colleges was not really discussed that much amongst the kids here and certainly not in any comparative fashion. Nobody where I live has ever discussed rankings, that's for sure. I know it is a hot topic in some areas, as I have seen with what others discuss on CC on some forums.</p>

<p>PS, for that matter, nobody here drives an $80,000 SUV either :D.</p>