are there any schools that come to mind (preferably PA/east coast/NYC or state) that might have good merit opportunities for students who are very involved in theatre and acting Forensics in high school but prefer a BA to a BFA program? My D is heavily involved in Forensics, will be a Sr. Director this year and has also been very involved in theatre, both in high school and in our community REC dept. including volunteering as an asst. director for childrens’ theatre. her grades are fairly good, some AP classes 4’s and a 5 and a pretty strong ACT score 32 (33 SS) She’s not sure if she wants to study Theatre, Communications/Rhetoric or Psychology.
What can your family pay? We need that figure in order to get a general notion of what might be made affordable.
If money no object, Vassar, Carnegie Mellon, Bard, Emerson and NYU come to mind. If the midwest is of any interest, Michigan has fantastic theater, and also Northwestern.
These are pricey colleges, however, so as you can see the question posed by happymomof1 is of critical importance to your decision.
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her grades are fairly good, some AP classes 4’s and a 5 and a pretty strong ACT score 32 (33 SS) She’s not sure if she wants to study Theatre, Communications/Rhetoric or Psychology.
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What is her weighted GPA?
IF she has at least a 3.5 weighted or UW GPA, she’d get free tuition at Alabama. Alabama has an excellent and competitive Forensics program. They’ve won a large number of competitions ~ They’ve won 15 national titles.
http://forensics.ua.edu
The Forensics Team regularly places in the top 10 in the nation.
There are add’l merit awards for Forensics…and you can stack the Forensics merit awards on top of the full-tuition awards. I know two students who are attending Bama for free because they’re stacking the full tuition scholarship and their forensics awards.
Bama also has a very good theater program, also MT, if that is also an interest.
http://theatre.ua.edu
There are some BA Theatre programs that require an audition (either for admission to the program, and/ or for scholarship consideration). And some are contingent on being a declared theatre major. Is she interested in considering those kinds of schools?
familiar with the college prices. We’ve visited Bard, St. Lawrence, Ithaca, Skidmore and we’re visiting Colby, Bates, Brandeis, Clark, Connecticut and Wesleyan. Her unweighted GPA is a 3.71. I know she’s in competition with a lot of kids because her grades/scores are on the cusp. She has mentioned wanting to visit Vassar as well as some schools in the NYC area. I was just wondering if there was merit aid that anyone knew of if you’ve done a lot in theatre and forensics. Also thanks for the info. on Alabama! I was not aware they had a strong Forensics program.
With her ACT 32 and qualifying GPA, she’d get this free tuition award at Alabama
PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR
A first-time freshman student who meets the December 15 scholarship priority deadline, has a 32–36 ACT or 1400–1600 SAT score (critical reading and math scores only) and at least a 3.5 cumulative GPA will be selected as a Presidential Scholar and will receive the value of tuition or $103,800 over four years ($25,950 per year) to be used towards undergraduate or graduate/law studies.**
This award is increased each year to compensate for any tuition increases. 
The app is live now, so if she applies now, she’d have her acceptance and big merit award in hand in a few weeks.
This is an ASSURED scholarship for stats. There is no “fine print” lol…if she has the stats and applies by the deadline, she gets the big award.
Every fall, Bama enrolls hundreds and hundreds of kids with this award. The top 30% of students at Bama have an ACT 30+. The school also has an excellent honors college which she would definitely be admitted to.
If your DD is interested in a BA, many schools have the general merit awards. I think most specific for theater awards are for theater majors, be it a BFA or a BA department. My daughter has a general merit award from her University, and also a talent award from the theater department. She’s required to be a theater (or dance) major for the talent award. Is that what you were asking, about the specific talent scholarships?
She should also be aware and ask questions about the availability of theater classes to non-majors, or opportunities to be in productions. All the literature at my daughter’s schools says that of course non-majors can take courses, but we’ve found there isn’t much space left after the majors have registered for classes, and hers is a small department in a medium sized school. Before orientation last year, I looked at the registration page and was worried that there were no spaces left in any of the required classes (she was in one of the last to register groups). When we got there, we learned the department had reserved all the spots for majors. Also, anyone is welcome to try out for the productions, but I don’t think anyone but majors gets to participate, not only because they are prejudiced toward the majors, but the time commitment is enormous, and majors are often excused from their theater courses to do stuff for the productions (like travel); a math major is not going to get excused. Theater, music, and dance majors get all the parts.
I am a big fan of Alabama due to their generous merit policies for kids with decent stats. The school is definitely going to rise in the ranks for this reason, and the degree is worth something.
Although it sounds like your daughter is targeting smaller, more intimate schools, I’m guessing that the theater/forensics departments at Alabama would be their own small and intimate crowd…you know, that “little school within a big school” feeling. The beauty of the bigger school overall, though, is the flexibility to seek other majors if you end up changing your mind like so many kids do.
Wrong coast but you might look into Willamette University. It’s a small-ish liberal arts school in Oregon. A fairly good GPA and high test scores can get you a big merit scholarship (which if I remember correctly, that scholarship will be estimated on their net price calculator.) They also offer decent scholarships for both forensics and theatre (additional application/auditions.) D favored a different school but we were surprised at how affordable they were able to make the school with academic and a theatre scholarship.
Their theatre program is small but it’s a passionate staff that gives their students a lot of power to develop and produce their own shows. It’s a program whose graduates have the ability to start up their own company. You don’t have to be a major to have real opportunity in the theatre program but if you take a theatre scholarship, you need to be involved (though don’t have to major.)
If you’re looking primarily at LAC’s (and from your visit list it would appear you are), a few other high-caliber schools with strong theater (I know nothing about forensics) that offer merit aid are Oberlin, Kenyon and Whitman. Keep in mind the kind of merit awards you’re going to be looking at at these places will probably not exceed ~$12K, and their sticker prices are around $60K, so while it will take a bit of the sting out, they’re still very pricey propositions unless you get need-based money as well.
And, of course, how much merit money is thrown your way is in part dependent upon how far above the middle of a given school’s academic distribution you are. Oberlin, Kenyon and Whitman are basically matches for a kid with your daughter’s stats, so they may be less inclined to give merit, whereas at a school like Willamette (which some media outlet recently declared to have the best B.A. theater program in the country, fwtw), she’d be comfortably in the top 20% or so of their applicant pool and a stronger merit aid candidate.
What do you want your annual net costs to be?
Have you run any NPCs?
Keep in mind that any merit awarded at various schools will get applied to “need” first. Merit won’t reduce what you have to pay unless it’s large enough to cover “need” plus some of EFC.
Many people mistakenly run the NPCs and see that their net cost is X after the school has applied grants, and then think that a merit scholarship will then reduce that X. No.
…and, of course, all of those schools are outside your preferred geographic area. This is what we found when I was going through a similar exercise with my daughter a few years back: northeast schools basically suck when it comes to merit aid, I presume because they can get all the applicants they want without offering that additional incentive. Likewise, topmost-tier schools from a selectivity standpoint (almost every LAC in the USNWR top 15 or so) don’t typically offer any.
So, if you’re determined to get merit aid, you’re generally looking at dialing down the selectivity a notch and/or looking a bit further afield. There are some excellent LAC’s that offer merit aid (the three I mentioned above, Grinnell, Davidson and many other less selective ones) but almost none of them are in the northeast. Not sure about some of the PA schools like Lafayette, Dickinson, Muhlenberg and Gettysburg.
Muhlenberg is super strong in theater, by the way, and stats-wise, your daughter would be a merit candidate. Looks like their merit awards go as high as $18K. There ya go! A geographic match! It can be done!
It’s not in the area you are looking for but check out Ohio Northern University.
https://www.onu.edu/academics/college_of_arts_sciences/academic_departments/biological_allied_health_sciences/majors_minors/forensic_biology
https://www.onu.edu/academics/college_of_arts_sciences/academic_departments/theatre_arts
https://www.onu.edu/admissions/financial_aid/scholarships
Rider University in Lawrenceville NJ
Drew University in New Jersey gives merit scholarships, as well.
And the University of Vermont, including for OOS applicants.