Auditions after 1st or 2nd yr

soozievt
Sun, 17 May 2015 01:42:36 +0000

@MomCares … you make a good point about how with a BFA, you not only commit to a major before entering college, but it is a very prescribed curriculum at many programs with little flexibility. And yes, a huge number of college students change majors in college and so committing to a BFA at a young age is not for everyone and can have limitations. My D felt ready to commit (and she was particularly young as she was applying around her 16th birthday) and it worked for her, but many change their minds in college.

But one thing I think was great at her particular program, NYU/Tisch, is that there is a lot of flexibility in one’s curriculum that one might not find at all BFA in MT programs. At Tisch, you can change studios after two years or after three years. If you are an MT, for example, you can do an acting studio for part of your training or an acting for the screen semester in a different studio. You can study abroad. You can do an academic semester. You can double major or minor in something else. You can veer off into directing or producing or writing. If you had told me my D would not do the MT studio all four years at Tisch when she entered, I would have been shocked. However, she did the MT studio for five semesters and Experimental Theater Wing studio for three semesters (she had to audition to get into that studio!) where she could focus more on acting training, but also in the final year of college, there were many course choices in that studio and it was not as prescribed as in the MT studio. Further, she could do what is called an Independent Project in her final semester in ETW studio that she could not have done in her MT studio and for that, she wrote/composed her first original musical that was staged and she starred in it. She wanted that experience as part of her college studies. This kind of thing happens at NU of course. But as you say, it is not as common in some BFA programs, but it is doable at Tisch.