<p>My S came home today telling me his drama teacher suggested that he should go with Pace no matter what. ( he got an acceptance call from them today) He still has irons in the fire at a handful of other schools including CMU. She was telling him that he should chose Pace over CMU if they admit him too.</p>
<p>What do you guys think? </p>
<p>I'd love to hear from current students, hopeful students, parents, faculty, etc.<br>
What do you think the strengths of each school are? </p>
<p>Don’t know about drama, but the Pace recruiter flat out lied to S1. Told him they had his major, but the are not even in the ballpark. They are a pesky bunch. Called repeatedly until we essentially told them to leave us alone. </p>
<p>That would be such a lovely problem to have. I would say CMU, but it would depend on FA and feel and fit and how you feel about NYC versus Pittsburgh. </p>
<p>Discounting any concerns over cost, I don’t think that there would be any definitive reason to choose Pace over CMU. Would be interested to know what the teacher’s reasons were for her comment.</p>
<p>Pace… oh, the misery.</p>
<p>I would be curious to know more about why the drama teacher is making such a strong recommendation. With a comment like that they should have a lot of specific knowledge of each school to back it up. </p>
<p>My understanding is that CMU is, along with Julliard, the pre-eminent straight acting school in the United States…with the slight difference that it is entirely undergrad. Pace is a good school and it’s in New York and has lots of industry connections. But as I said earlier, having to choose would be an excellent, excellent problem.</p>
<p>This is not even close. CMU is one of the very best theater programs in the country. If money is not the issue, CMU is miles ahead of Pace…</p>
<p>From my research, Please correct me if I’ve gotten something wrong here, but I think… they cost about the same. Both schools are private so have discretion about the financial aid offered. </p>
<p>One of the things she told him was that CMU BFA’s would have to compete against MFA’s for spots in productions. Does CMU have a graduate program?</p>
<p>^Not for acting!</p>
<p>Not for performance majors so that information is entirely false. This is a classic example of something that there is a lot of… opinion. </p>
<p>If I had a nickel for every opinion that I had to listen to when my daughter was applying to schools, well I’d have a dollar at least by now. 
My favorite was a friend of mine who kept insisting that my daughter should be applying to Yale no matter how many times I told her that they didn’t have a BFA in MT and that the amazing Yale drama she was thinking about mostly applied to their graduate program. She was a broken record on the subject.</p>
<p>The only opinion that counts is yours (and obviously your daughter’s). I can think of several reasons to choose one program over the other and just as easily argue the reverse. </p>
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<p>This is a perfect example of why no one should rely on the information provided by teachers and coaches. </p>
<p>There is also more to a college drama education then just being in productions. I’d judge a school on the in class training sooner then the amount of the plays their students are in.</p>
<p>strongly ditto shacherry’s post. </p>
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It’s of course true that Yale doesn’t offer a BFA in MT, and that their MFA program is legendary, but several of the strongest MTs D knows have found exceptional undergrad MT training there as well. She knows at least two for whom it was their top choice, and the one who has graduated works more steadily than most MT BFA grads ever will. Yale was D’s second choice school, after another great no-BFA school with great MT training. Yet another reminder that everyone should look deeply into programs to see if they are best for what YOU want and not accept other’s opinions out of hand. ;)</p>
<p>@momcares. Obviously Yale is a wonderful school and I have no doubt there are incredibly talented people that would chose to attend there and study theatre. Nevertheless, the degree is “Theatre Studies” and the available number of theatre related classes one is eligible to take there is nowhere near the number you would find in other programs. For the student that is looking for depth and breath of theatre related, studio type work it may not be the best choice.</p>
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True. If a student wants prescribed 9-6 studio MT classes 5 days a week, Yale is probably not the top choice, but I think D and her friends felt that between the Shen MT Curriculum, Fridays at Five workshops and the available private coaching, the biggest missing component was the “business of MT” classes, which they felt they could easily fill in through mentors. I didn’t look into it as closely as they did, but given what I know of them and of your D she might have loved it there - as I KNOW she loves her current college-home! 
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<p>I was just reinforcing the idea that the OP shouldn’t take ANYONE’s word about which program is best since that choice should be a highly personal one.</p>
<p>@momcares… agree. Nobody should read anything into how we did the math for Yale either. (And to be clear… GREAT school that anyone would be honored to attend.) We are good at math but everyone enters their own variables into the equation as we did so the result can be different. Yale didn’t make the list but the reason I used it as an example is because the person that kept saying it like a broken record had absolutely no idea really what she was talking about. She thought I was being a bad stage mom who wasn’t taking my daughter’s academic talents into consideration at all. She is still a friend of mine, but she was bringing her own baggage into the story and dismissing the work we had done to narrow our own choices. People need to ALWAYS do their own math. </p>