Tamar W

i'm a HS senior who plans to study musical theatre in college, but also wants a good liberal arts education. my top two choices are NYU's tisch school of the arts and mt. holyoke college. these two schools are soooooo different, and i really don't know which one i prefer.

obviously NYU (and NYC in general) is known for its theatre. my concern about tisch is that the students would be too competitive. i know that theatre is a very competitive world, but i think it's possible to be competitive while still being friendly and helping your peers. not everything has to be about cut-throat competition. when i visited NYU, i asked several tisch students what they thought about the community there. the answers i got ranged from, "oh yeah, ppl are definitely willing to help one another out. my fave part of being here is how much you can learn from the students" to "well, if you're here it's assumed that you want to be on braodway. you have to know that that's a very competitive life, so of course it's competitive here!" it's very important to me to be in a school with a warm, tight-knit community, rather than somewhere where students are just killing each other over parts. i'm also a little put off by the fact that tisch doesn't let freshman be in shows.

attractive things about mt. holyoke:
--very small school = every student gets lots of personal attention.
--lovely campus, very warm students and faculty
--nice theatre (plus mt. holyoke students can take classes and be in shows at smith, amhearst, U Mass, and hampshire). however, there were only eight theatre majors in the most recent graduating class, so it's clearly a very different environment.

i think it might be easier to ease into a professional acting life by starting at a small school, rather than just plunging into a huge place like NYU. on the other hand, i don't wanna miss out on theatre opportunities because i'm out in rural massachusetts either.

anyone have advice about what to do?????


btw, the other schools i looks at/visited are:

hampshire
BU
emerson
brandeis
yale
columbia U
barnard
northwestern U
U of michigan (theatre school)
U of chicago
cornell U

durangotreasure

Hey, my mom told me to log in as her, so this is actually Austin Hohnke speaking, not my mother.

I'm a freshman in CAP21 this year and I love it. I've been here a little over a month and it's great. Coming in I was afraid that it was going to be the same way, and I assumed it was going to be 60 cocky theatre people...and I was terribly mislead.

In my first month here I've already met so many great people, and the fact that you can't audition is a huge benefit. You don't know yourself until you start taking acting classes here. I've already become so much more comfortable with myself, and the other actors I'm working with around me. They don't want you to audition (not to say that it doesn't happen) because they want to get rid of your old acting habits and to bring in the new stuff.

This is as tight nit of a community as you're going to get. Sure, it's 63 people this year, but all the more to know. If you "want" a smaller program with 20 some, this isn't the place for you. But I know that I already know some of these people better than I knew some of the people in my high school theatre troupe, whom I'd been working with for four years.

I don't know anything about the other college, so I can't compare. But this is definetely my experience so far, and I have yet to find any cons. I hope this helps. Have a good evening!

Austin

durangotreasure

Now this is me ,the Mom. I just wanted to mention that you can go to Facebook and find TISCH kids, as well as groups for each studio. You'll find out a lot that way. My son, has already written a lot about his individual teachers. Just another FYI

Tamar W

thank you both! i've actually spent a lot of time searching through facebook and have found out a great deal that way. right now i'm pretty much decided on applying ED to mount holyoke, even though i really loved tisch as well. i know that i can go to NYU (or another large theatre-focused school) for grad school, but i can't go to mount holyoke for grad school. i'd really like to get the best of both worlds by experiencing both types of schools, but i've realized that a smaller school would be better for me as an undergrad.

however, i'd love any other info you (or anyone else) could give me about your/their experience either at NYU, or just in choosing a college at which to study musical theatre.