I’m graduating from high school this year and I’ve decided I want to be a producer or a screenwriter. I want to apply to USC’s Film School but I don’t feel prepared this year because I have no experience. I figured I would major in something else for undergrad then apply to USC for grad school. Does anyone have suggestions on a major that would help me improve my craft and make me competitive for admissions? I’m not sure if I’m gonna apply to the producing or screenwriting graduate major. But I was thinking about film and media studies for undergrad because it helps with both.
USC SCA is extremely hard to gain admission to for its undergraduate majors. The acceptance rates are in the range of 4-6% I believe. Basically, you have to gain admission twice… being accepted generally by USC as the overall university and also swaying the SCA (School of Cinematic Arts) admissions’ staff/faculty. Gaining similar admission to graduate level programs at USC SCA is only going to be harder (or at least as difficult) and will require a significant creative portfolio, especially related to filmmaking production or screenwriting, based on your declared interests. I would thus suspect that a film and media studies undergraduate major is not going to be sufficient alone, absent a tremendous amount of extra work on your part to craft the prerequisite portfolio that they will expect to be seeing from you. If you truly are thinking about pursuing an MFA in either production or screenwriting, I would instead encourage you to apply to programs where the degrees are geared more specifically toward one of those areas… and not just an area concentration in film/media studies or the like. You could potentially spend a few semesters deciding on which major to declare, but I would then graduate from an undergraduate program with something more fine-tuned than just a generalist degree, like media studies.
Websites like CollegBoard.com offer college searches where you can differentiate between those type of majors and specifically locate schools that teach film/tv production (like USC, FSU, UMiami, etc) or screenwriting versus just more general degree categories.
You can certainly pursue a more diverse degree like film/media studies, but if USC SCA is truly your goal for an MFA program, a more specialized education could serve you better. At least that is my opinion.
Good Luck…
@WWWard Thanks for that advice. I’m just confused about which majors would be more specific. I thought the only other option was film production. And I don’t know if it’s worth it to go to film school for 4 years then try to get into USC.
You’re welcome.
Well, first of all, USC is very unique in this. I cannot think of any other college or university that is going to offer the breadth of options that they do - related to all things film/tv/interactive media. They have a separate School of Cinematic Arts and offer 6 separate paths toward an undergraduate degree (Film & TV Production, Cinema & Media Studies, Interactive Media & Games, Media Arts + Practice, Animation & Digital Arts, Writing for Film & TV)… plus they also offer a # of Minors related to Cinematic Arts.
So… you could, in theory, apply to USC SCA for undergraduate and list two major preferences… i.e. 2 of these 6. That is one option for you. It is what my daughter is doing this fall. She is a rising high school senior and will be applying to USC SCA, selecting 1) Film & TV Production and 2) Cinema & Media Studies as her two major preferences. USC SCA is her clear first choice. She also though plans to possibly apply to Stanford, Yale, Brown, UTexas, FSU, UMiami, Northwestern, Columbia, UChicago, Rice, UFlorida, Duke, UVa. Most of these schools do not offer Production per se. USC, FSU and UMiami do. It is a rare undergraduate major offering. Some other schools that do are: American University, CalArts, Chapman University, DePaul U., Drexel U., Emerson College, Ithaca College, Liberty U., Loyola Marymount U., NYU, Syracuse U., UCLA, UCSB.
This link does a good job explaining what various colleges have to offer: