paul10r

University of Oklahoma - Acting program only (these are the numbers shared with parents by the Director during his Q&A session with parents during on-campus auditions):

Number of applications reviewed annually is 2,400. Number selected for audition is roughly 240 (10%).

Number of students accepted as incoming freshmen each year for their School of Drama is 44, of which 24 are for acting slots (12 boys, 12 girls). The other 20 of the 44 slots are for: Stage Management, Technical Theatre, and Dramaturgs.

jacksdad

Great info-would love to hear the MT numbers for OU as well.

jbinca

Has anyone posted Purchase numbers? Several years ago when my D auditioned it was about 1000 for 22 spots-I don't see more recent numbers here.

soozievt

Remember for Tisch, if overall it is 15%, that includes acting and MT (as Jacksdad did note) and for CAP it is more like 6%. For many of these other programs, the rates being noted are for MT and so make sure you compare rates for MT between schools as opposed to overall rates for all programs at a particular college with those for MT programs. I venture to say that at many BFA schools that offer BOTH MT and Acting, the acceptance rate for acting is usually higher than for MT. I also venture to say that the toughest/lowest acceptance rates are for girls pursuing MT vs. boys pursuing MT and vs. all those applying for MOST acting programs (with a few exceptions of the very tippy top acting programs).

jacksdad

Baldwin-Wallace 300/12-14 (accept 20)
BOCO 1000/40 (accept 57)
CCM 750/24 (accept 30)
CMU 1000/28 (Acting: 16, MT: 12)
Elon 400/20 (accept 24)
FSU 240/12
Hartt 400/25 (accept 60)
Indiana 315/10 (accept 12-15)
Ithaca 500/12 (accept 32)
JMU 100/9 freshman; 2 transfers (accepted 18 freshman; 2 transfers) (BA stats)
Michigan 450/22 (650 applicants-450 academically eligible)
North Carolina School of the Arts 900/20 male 10 female
NYU Steinhardt (BM in VP) 275/25--accept 50 to yield 25 (approx. 15 are MT, 10 classical)
NYU Tisch 2300/350 (all studios); approx. 1000+/64 (accept 75) for CAP21
OU(BFA Acting) 240/24
Otterbein 340/8 (accept 10?)
Penn State 500/12 (18 accepted to yield 12)
Syracuse 800/30 (accept 60)
UArts 600/24
UCLA (BA Acting, MT, Theater Studies, Directing) 1500/65, has no wait list
USC (BFA) 500 (accept 26 to 30 to yield 20 - as of 4/24 spots were committed for 9 male and 10 female), has no wait list

I have included the percentages of students accepted-schools are MT unless otherwise noted. I did not include UCLA until we get an idea of how many kids auditioned for the MT program.
BW 6.7%
BoCo 5.7%
CCM 4%
CMU(acting and MT) 2.8%
Elon 6.0%
FSU 5%
Hartt 15%
Indiana 4.8%
Ithaca 6.4%
JMU 20%
NCSA 3.3%
OU (acting) 10%
Steinhardt 18%
Tisch CAP 21 6%
Tisch All Studios(Acting and CAP21) 15%
Otterbein 2.9%
PSU 3.6%
Syracuse 7.5%
USC (acting) 6%

CA-MOM

My D heard that Indiana made 14 offers for musical theatre this year and all of them accepted.

jacksdad

That's amazing for a young program. I know that one of the girls struggled between IU and Penn State and chose IU at the last. Bloomington is such agreat town and the University Setting is one of the most beautiful campuses that I have ever seen. I know that they are positioning themselves to be one of the big dogs! BTW-I used 15/315 to get my percent accepted. I'll adjust the next time around-should be 4.4%

Tranquil

My son auditioned for UCLA for MT. We were told that approximately 300 students auditioned for MT. You need to apply through the UC system first. There was one audition date in Chicago--at the same time as Unifieds. The other date was in L.A.

soozievt

Jacksdad,
Is your computation based on how many are accepted or how many slots available? Just checking as often I have seen other posters confuse these and tend to use number in the class in figuring out acceptance rate when it truly is how many are accepted (which at many programs is more than slots in the class). If you could clarify that for members, that would be great.


When viewing this list, I want to mention something that should be considered by those who are selecting schools to apply to. Acceptance rates do not tell the entire story. Some schools with a very low acceptance rate may be "easier" but NOT EASY to get into than others that also have a very low acceptance rate. The acceptance rate doesn't tell the entire picture. Certain schools draw from a more national pool of talent or a different pool of talent than some other schools. When creating a college list with a BFA applicant, I don't go simply by acceptance rate in helping to balance the list. Some of the BFA programs are harder to get into than others GENERALLY SPEAKING (but as we can see in some members' results, there are exceptions to that). I always worry about offending someone but CCM and CMU would be considered harder to get into, for example, than Point Park or Indiana even though they all have low admit rates. Of course there ARE exceptions as we have someone on this thread who was admitted to what tend to be known as harder schools to get into than Point Park and someone on this forum who got into CCM but not Indiana this year and so this is not a hard and fast rule of thumb. But my point is that admit rate alone is not the only factor in determining selectivity of a program and university because its talent pool will differ (some attract top national talent) and then of course there are factors like the academic selectivity of each program which varies widelly as well.

Lastly, on a different point, there is not a whole lot of difference between a 4% admit rate and an 8% admit rate as both are very very low and hard to get in! Most MUSICAL THEATER BFAs have acceptance rates in the single digits which suffice it to say, makes getting into almost all of them very very difficult and chancy!

jacksdad

Hi SVT-I used acceptances offered as I figured that was the important number. The yield numbers are up to them-for instance when Michigan ended up with 30 in their freshman class and I believe a similar situation occurred last year at Pace. Your other points are well taken-there is very little statistical difference between the 4% of CCM and the 7.5 % at Syracuse and there are so many factors at play. Now the >15% rate at Hartt, JMU, Tisch and Steinhardt is interesting.

babar

And again, while CMU is considered to be among the toughest admits, they do go to a waitlist, so they accept more students by the time they've built their class than those they originally accept. This, I think, makes their percentage of admits higher than the number you have. It is not a precise science. My kid was admitted to a school listed here which has a much lower admit rate than the admit rate of the school he chose to attend, which is also on this list. This is compelling information for those of us who have lived through it, I agree, but all of the caveats cited so far are worth paying attention to. These are very different schools which provide very different experiences and if one is fortunate enough to have choices, fit is as important with a BFA as it is when considering BA programs. Also, Doctorjohn had an interesting post once where he figured out the percentage of students who could be expected to be accepted somewhere, anywhere, based on the numbers!

KatMT

JMU is a BA program, so it may be a bit of comparing apples with oranges in terms of admissions stats -- I think that many students who really want a BFA choose not to apply to JMU because it is a BA.

I agree with babar -- "these are very different schools which provide very different experiences... fit is as important when considering BFA programs as it is when considering BA programs."

All of the stats can be a very helpful starting point, but they (of course) do not tell the whole story.

soozievt

jacksdad, the admit rate at Tisch of 15% is for all of acting and MT and for many programs on this list, the figures given are JUST for MT and so it is not comparable. For instance, get the admit rate for acting at Elon and add it to the total like for Tisch and that would be something to compare. But right now the admit rate for Tisch is not comparable to admit rates for BFA programs listed with just their data for MT. The comparable figures would be for CAP21. Again, the admit rate to most acting programs is HIGHER than for MT (except some tippy top schools like Juilliard, etc.). So, say Syracuse or CCM, I am sure the admit rate for acting is higher than for MT and the total combined is higher than the number cited on this chart.

jacksdad

Yeah I got that but I decided to leave it because I didnt have any other info and when you audition for NYU they ask you if you would be interested in the other studios if you dont get CAP21. Do you think we should delete it or just use a disclaimer?

soozievt

No, I think you should leave it. I was ONLY commenting on your comment about how it was interesting that a few schools, including Tisch, had admit rates over 15% and so I was saying that that figure is not comparable to other programs' MT admit rates which are the main stats on the list at present. For that, you'd have to compare with CAP21's admit rate. Still, I think the overall admit rate at Tisch is worth leaving up! The other programs listed appear to MOSTLY be listing only their BFA in MT rates/data. The overall Tisch rate could be compared to the other schools' overall combined MT and Acting rates but those simply are not all listed. It totally does not matter. I was only responding to the comment about the schools you gave as examples of accepting more than 15% because I think that would be applicable to many schools that have BFA in Acting as well as in MT because generally speaking, most schools have a higher acceptance rate for acting than for MT. Again, the longest odds seem to be for girls in MT. Acting isn't easy to get into by any means but the odds often are not quite as long at most schools as they are for MT.