<p>I was wondering if anyone had any advice on good safety schools. Doing research I learned that a "safety" would be something with a BA non-audition program, but, obviously, it's still important that this place has a good program. </p>
<p>I haven't looked into it yet, but I hear that Columbia College has a first-year (no audition) BA program, and you can audition for the BFA program for your second year. Are there any other places similar to that?</p>
<p>You are right about Columbia - Chicago. There is also Hofstra University on Long Island, and several public universities, including University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.</p>
<p>Temple University in Philadelphia:
[ACADEMICS</a> : THEATER : SCT : TEMPLE UNIVERSITY](<a href=“http://www.temple.edu/sct/theater/academics/ACADEMICSTHEATERSCTTEMPLEUNIVERSITY.htm]ACADEMICS”>http://www.temple.edu/sct/theater/academics/ACADEMICSTHEATERSCTTEMPLEUNIVERSITY.htm)</p>
<p>Ithaca college accepts more than half it’s applicants and it’s a top theatre school.</p>
<p>Ithaca is an audition based BFA program and accepts approximately 5% of those who apply. It is FAR from a safety school for theater.</p>
<p>I believe the college as a whole is less selective than the BFA program, which is probably where elbeeen got the wrong impression.</p>
<p>Drew University in New Jersey has a non-audition theater BA, and I think it’s rated as a top theater program by Princeton Review.</p>
<p>Thanks, this is really helpful 
. How many safety schools do people usually put on their lists?</p>
<p>Common thinking is to have two safety schools - both of which are academically and financially a fit. This is because if for some unusual chance you only get into safeties, you at least have a choice, which feels very different than being “stuck” with one school next spring.</p>
<p>My D’s two safeties, although both larger public schools, in cities, have very different feels and very different programs. She has chosen not to have a small college safety, but as a parent I have suggested this. I’ve also suggested that she apply to a safety that will take her to the part of the country she wants to be in (she prefers the east coast to the midwest), but at this point she’s choosing not to add them. She feels very sure that she will at least be able to choose between these two schools, and she’s happy with them both, so that’s her decision.</p>
<p>Today we had this exact discussion. It turns out my D has thought that one of her non-audition match schools in the east was a pretty sure bet. Yes, her chances are excellent, but she now agrees that since being in that part of the country is important to her she should find another safety out there.</p>
<p>I was suspicious that she seemed so relaxed about having just nearby publics as safeties. I think we’ll look for both an LAC and a smallish, maybe public, university.</p>
<p>Unfortunately she won’t go to Hofstra - her cousin is starting there this fall, as a theater major, and that’s just too close to comfort for her, and I support that. </p>
<p>She’s been interested in Goucher College but hasn’t visited. She hasn’t been turned on by Muhlenberg. I’ll have her read about Temple - I do know she’s comfortable with a grittier city atmosphere, although she does like a “college-y” feel if possible. And we’ll keep looking. We’ve pretty much exhausted the outlying NYC options, did a big trip out there in March, and we’ve scoured the Boston area possibilities with not much luck. </p>
<p>I’ll post any new ideas I find!</p>
<p>For anyone who is interested - we’re looking closely at UNH. Close enough to Boston, and looks like a terrific program.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if University of Iowa’s theater department is good?</p>
<p>nifty - I’m sorry no one has info yet for you. I do know that Iowa is a great school, with big opportunities and a really terrific campus. It’s very well-respected in the arts in general.</p>
<p>I have a question: I just ran across the possibility of URI as an eastern safety. It appears to be a NON-auditioned BFA. Not easy to find. Has some great attributes - no MFAs to compete with, a really nice program, lots of things my D wants. This is what they say about selectivity:</p>
<p>“We do not require students to audition for our program. If you are accepted at URI, you may choose theatre as your intended major. However, our standards and expectations are high for all of our students and we maintain integrity within our programs by holding annual juries at the end of each year. During these juries, each student is reviewed by numerous faculty members and guest artists. Students receive both written and oral critiques summarizing their strengths and weaknesses. If a student is failing coursework or underperforming in production duties, they may be asked to choose a less rigorous major.”</p>
<p>Does anyone have any experience or insight on this school? We could live with the idea of juries - this does not sound so much like cuts but the usual performance evaluations.</p>
<p>We drove through URI last spring-- it’s gorgeous. We are going to visit and see a production this fall and will report. They’ve just revamped the website to clarify the program offerings-- the jurying sounds very fair to me too, under the circumstances.</p>
<p>PS-- Emmybet I just remembered your D really wants a city atmosphere. URI does not have that. It’s on the Amtrak line between NYC and Providence (hence DC and Boston)-- so it has great city access. But the town of Kingston is small, charming, and sleepy.</p>
<p>Thanks, Gwen! I look forward to your report.</p>
<p>Yes, my D would prefer a city, but she’s OK if it’s a train ride away, in some ways better (as with NYC). There’s no ideal safety that gives her the 5 things she wants most: east coast, city access, BFA possible, curriculum that feels right to her, cohesive medium-sized school atmosphere (i.e. not a conservatory nor a “storefront” campus like Emerson or Roosevelt). </p>
<p>Only the reachy schools can give her it all, which has made finding safeties very difficult. If she was 100% fine with the midwest, UMinn and UW-Milwaukee would give her it all. But in the east that’s not so easy. I’ve urged her to look at Temple, too, but I think she’s overwhelmed adding cities she’s never visited at this point. Boston and NYC outskirts, some parts of upstate NY and other parts of New England she’s been in, are her best bets.</p>
<p>For many schools she’s willing to give up city access or her preferred size, and she can accept getting a BA if the program excites her. We’re having a very hard time finding a way for her to have an east coast guarantee. In the case of URI, and also UNH, which also seems like a good safety, the location is OK enough. URI is coming out ahead because of the BFA, and because I think in the long run its location will feel less remote. But we’ll surely visit if it (or UNH) really becomes a serious contender in the spring.</p>
<p>I have family in that part of RI, so we’re pretty used to how the various places feel in terms of distance. I could imagine her ending up having a car at URI as a trade-off, too.</p>
<p>I think you’re so lucky to be near UMinn with their BA-- it would be D’s first choice safety if she didn’t want to stay closer to home. Great teachers, great city you can walk out into from your dorm… Well, everyone is so different…</p>
<p>Yes, the “grass is greener” phenomenon is funny - I’m sure RIers would think she’s nuts for thinking URI would be a “whole new option.”</p>
<p>I’m a little concerned about the “party school” rep, but we’re SO used to that here in WI and know many, many kids who manage to have a great non-party life at our state Us. Somehow the smaller universities (10-20K students) appeal to her more than the LACs she’s reading about. Actually, I went to a college-within-a-university, so I understand the feeling of wanting a nice theater “family” surrounded by lots of other opportunities. </p>
<p>We’re going to spend a couple of days in Twin Cities in October, and she’ll visit a current senior in the BA Theater program whom she knows and respects. She might even have an acceptance in hand by then if she gets her act together. I’m guessing she’s going to be very happy with the school once she sees it. I’ll comment here about how that goes.</p>
<p>Having grown up in MA, I kind of understand how it’s turned out that there aren’t as many public options in the major cities there - out here the schools started as teachers’ colleges and then were absorbed by the state. Most private schools here started at the same time, or later, as opposed to so many privates in the east that were long established before state schools developed. I think that’s one reason why our public Us are in much more desirable areas, too - they got the choice spots first.</p>
<p>But all cities are different. For theater schools in Chicago, you have to be comfortable with very, very urban (Roosevelt and Columbia) or urban and Catholic (DePaul and Loyola), or have very high stats (Northwestern). Not much else without a fairly long drive in.</p>
<p>I’ll plug UW-Milwaukee again for people who want a new part of the country. Milwaukee is a great city on Lake Michigan, with dozens of theater opportunities and wonderful things going on. They have a very nice BA, a second year auditioned BFA, no MFAs in Acting to compete with, and a campus with great city access without the “downtown” feeling, in a really lovely lakefront area. Academically it’s practically a guarantee for a B student with a medium-low ACT score.</p>
<p>A few east coast schools that don’t get mentioned a lot here are Rowan University in NJ, Towson and UMBC in Baltimore. </p>
<p>Rowan is in Glassboro, NJ, and is about a 20 minute drive to Philadelphia. Glassboro is a small town, but you’re so close to Philadelphia it doesn’t really matter. It’s an audition BA, so technically it’s not a safety, but it’s not as well known as some of the big name schools, so your odds might be a bit better. The theatre program is small, admits about 25-30, I think that they said they normally had around 50-60 people audition. My daughter was accepted here and loved the campus and the program, and was all set to go, but then she got off the wait list at her first choice school. They don’t have MT, but I think that they said they might be adding an MT program in the next year or two, you can minor in dance and they do put on musicals. A friend of my daughter just graduated last year and he’s working as an actor in Philadelphia. One of the cool things about Rowan is that about half of their senior class of 2010 were all moving to New York together after graduation. </p>
<p>Towson has a great theatre program, they have a BA Theatre and an audition BA in Acting. When we visited last year, they said they were in the process of getting a BFA acting program in place and said that it should start in the 2011 school year. Towson has really nice facilities, the theatre building is brand new, maybe 2 years old. There didn’t seem to be a huge difference between the BA acting and the straight theatre BA, except for an acting and movement class that was only open to the acting track. You can reaudition into the acting track during your freshman and sophmore years if you want to try again. Towson is not a musical theatre school though, they were really up front about that, so if you’re looking for MT, you may not want to go there. My daughter liked the program, but really didn’t want to go there because a lot of people from her high school were going there and she wanted to go somewhere completely different.</p>
<p>UMBC is not an academic safety (unless you have really high test scores), but it has a good theatre program and a non audition BFA. This may not be true, but it’s what we were told last year. Actually a lot of the information we got at a high school theatre day last year was wrong, so I’d double check with the school. We were told that at the end of the freshman year you applied to the BFA program (application form and essay) and the department said yes or no. I think that you could apply again in your sophmore year if you didn’t get in the first time. UMBC is a nice campus, and they have some really generous art scholarships, but I’m not sure if those are just for in-state students.</p>
<p>We never went to visit Goucher, now I don’t even remember why. It’s right next door to Towson, so if you’re going to visit Goucher, you should check out Towson. </p>
<p>I know that there are a couple of people here who are at Towson and UMBC, they would probably have more accurate info.</p>
<p>Thank you so much, slwalker! These are great suggestions --I’m so glad to have a couple of places to consider that I hadn’t known before.</p>