I made a topic about this before in the wrong place, so I am reposting it again in the correct thread.
Hello all, I just got back from a college trip and I am trying to decide between the BFA acting training program at Hartt vs the acting BFA program at northern Illinois university. I’m out of state, so I can’t get in state tuition at northern Illinois, so it’s a toss up for me. I was really impressed with both programs and what hoping to hear from some current students or alumni on which they like. My current worry about NIU is the Meisner technique, I’m not sure whether I would respond to it well after feeling so comfortable with Stanislavski. Plus the fact that MFA actors can take the big roles a lot of the time. Plus their theatre facilities are currently under renovation so they have no theatre building. That being said, I absolutely loved the rest of the department. The students there feel so close like a family, and the instructors have taken a personal interest in me. Hartt on the other hand seems amazing as well, their facilities are awesome, and their instructors seem to care as well. I guess a negative would be it seems more focused on musical theatre, and the building is separated from campus. Does anyone know how nice the campus is there? I didn’t get a chance to tour it much. Also, how is the acting instruction there? Any help would be awesome!
I don’t know much about NIU, but my D did audition and get accepted to Hartt in 2015 after auditioning at their early audition date. She first found out about Hartt at the Int’l Thespian conference the summer of 2014. She got on very well with their admissions person there and did well with her audition there. At that point in the game, she wanted a straight up BFA acting program that was conservatory or conservatory-like with an abroad element and a classical focus (girl loves Shakespeare). All of that Hartt had. We flew out to do the early audition and her audition itself she felt wasn’t her best and she didn’t feel like she connected with the auditors that well–but obviously they didn’t feel the same and she got an offer with a somewhat decent talent scholarship in January. We didn’t do the theatre overview session that they offer that day, but we did do a campus tour. It’s a nice enough campus, very suburban, and the housing is separate from the academic halls which is separate from the theater. This really didn’t seem like a problem, just something of note.
My D is definitely acting and not MT, so she wasn’t concerned with not being able to do the musicals (although MT students can audition for the straight plays). She did like the affiliation with the Hartford Theatre. She liked that the M> F ratio in the AT program seemed appropriately balanced. It wasn’t so girl heavy that the girls would always have to play male roles. She also liked the theatre facilities–they are definitely top notch. My D didn’t love the campus. We did a campus tour, and she felt like she’d only really connect with the other Hartt students on a more intellectual level. She did like that they bring in therapy dogs during finals, but it wasn’t enough to sway her.
However, I will say it felt great to her to have a BFA acceptance before heading into Unifieds, and if worse came to worse and she didn’t get any other offers, she would have been OK to attend. She also really wanted an urban campus…but didn’t really figure that out until she was there either, so if anything, the Hartt experienced helped her figure out what she really did want.
That’s all very good info! Thanks a lot for that! I toured the school myself and really liked it (though I didn’t get a chance to tour campus). I didn’t know that the MT’s could audition for straight plays.
Hi there @shadowlinkos - I am the mom of a current Hartt freshman MT (whose roomie is an AT) - both are very happy with the training they are getting. The MT and AT students overlap a little, at least in Year 1, taking the same Acting classes and some other class I can’t recall. The MT’s don’t routinely audition for AT shows, but depending on the cast size, are sometimes invited to do so. There were quite a few MT students in Nicholas Nickleby, which had a very large cast and needed additional students to pull off! The acting training there is very well rounded. You are taught multiple techniques and methods and you incorporate them into your repertoire based on what works for you. The campus is OK, but you don’t spend much time there since almost all of the classes are at HPAC, where the auditions are held. It is very much a conservatory style program, so if you want lots of gen eds or a big campus feel, it won’t be right for you. They have terrific connections with Hartford Stage and Theatreworks in Hartford, and the Monomoy Theater in Cape Cod for summer stock. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM and I’ll try to answer or put you in touch with my D’s roommate who will be happy to help! Congrats on your great choices!
I would love to get put in touch with your daughter’s roomate! That’s all really good info. I guess my only concerns at this point would be whether the school is more focused on MT or not, and if that is where the priority is.