<p>Is it possible to friend non-majors at big schools like CCM, Syracuse, CMU, etc. I know the program takes up a lot of time and you’ll be rooming with people within the drama dept. but it would be nice to hang out with people with different interest once in a while.</p>
<p>I’ve been wondering about this too. It seems to me that the core group of actors in your class will be so small and working so closely together, one would be better off seeking romance elsewhere. I’d like to think that dorms would help with this.</p>
<p>With one S at Rider and one at Pace I’ll say the bulk of their friends are in MT or related fields (acting, dance, directing, etc). But it is not impossible to meet others. Both my sons opted to room with other MTs but I think taking chances with the housing lottery would have opened doors to kids from other majors. That being said, they’ve both enjoyed their creative circle of friends and much fun has ensued.</p>
<p>USC (Southern California) is really weird I guess, in that we’re a huge university that has a lot of arts students, especially performing arts students. While I’m quite close with many theater majors, particularly my castmates, I tend to spend most of my free time (i.e. out of class & rehearsal) with non-theater majors. I’m in a sorority, so I’m friends with plenty of non-arts people. I’m not in a conservatory program, though, I’m a BA Theatre minoring in musical theatre. </p>
<p>For BAs, at least at SC, you can be friends with just theater majors, and there are certainly plenty of people for whom theater majors make up the majority of their friend group. But it’s also not too difficult to be friends with non-arts people (though they don’t always understand why you kind of stop existing during tech 
)</p>
<p>It absolutely can be done.</p>
<p>My daughter at Tisch made a point NOT to room with anyone in her program in the hope of establishing a wider community of friends. In fact, she is the only MT on her dorm floor and is very social and close with her floor friends. That said, I would not be entirely surprised if down the road she does decide to live with fellow actors/MTs because she is on a completely different schedule from everyone else. When her suitemates can decide to roll over and skip class when the alarm goes off, she cannot. She is also gone all day and then often gone again at night to practice or up all night writing papers. In some ways it is easier to be surrounded by people in the same boat. Another way to find a wider community are activities like a cappella. She is one of (2?) MTs in hers, the rest come from a variety of majors and interests and only 1 other member is a freshman so she has also gotten to know upper classmen this way as well.</p>
<p>My daughter is a senior at Northwestern and opted out of their theatre/MT dorm freshman year and was in another residential college so most of her friends were not in theatre at all. When she moved off campus sophomore year she was with two theatre kids, one of whom has since transferred out, but could not wait to create the apartment she has now which is with her freshman dorm friends. She crosses both groups and really likes that. </p>
<p>As halflokum said, her college life is very different than that of her apartment-mates and that was a bit of a problem when she was a freshman in the dorm but she’s had a single in the apartment for the two years so there’s no conflict there and she loves her down time with non-theatre kids. The conversations are different and really gets her away when she needs it. Her non-theatre friends are also so much more excited and enthusiastic to see her perform because they’re not trying to squeeze in two or three shows each weekend (which does become somewhat of a chore for theatre/mt kids). Finally, by the middle of junior year most of her non-theatre friends became just as busy as theatre/mt kids so they all look forward to their mixed group down time.</p>
<p>I highly recommend mixing and matching your friends!</p>
<p>Northwestern is a BA program but</p>
<p>My daughter attended Syracuse. Her freshman-year roomie was not a theater major; she was a nice girl but they had little in common. From sophomore year through graduation (and after) she roomed with classmates from the theater department. She chose to be totally immersed in theatre, as did most of the other theater majors. Her schedule left little time for anything else, anyway: classes all day, rehearsals in the evenings and on weekends when most other students were socializing.</p>
<p>BFA? Doubtful. I have known many BFA classes over the year and there would be maybe ONE non-major friend among the whole lot of them. A BFA class really bonds together and they tend to exclude non-majors (including BAs) from my experience.</p>
<p>Songsearcher, gosh that seems like a bit of a generalization. Ask yourself if you were in the BFA program at your school, would you deliberately exclude non-majors as friends? If you polled the 14 MTs and 4 actor BFAs currently in the freshman class at your school, would they really say their only college friends are in their program and they set it up that way deliberately?</p>
<p>Granted the very nature of the program means that BFA majors spend a lot of time together but it doesn’t automatically mean that one’s friends simply must come from that pool and in fact as several examples mentioned above including my reply suggest that friends can be found in many places in college, not just within the major.</p>
<p>My S is a BFA at Syracuse. Syracuse, like many other colleges, offers students the opportunity to participate in learning communities (LC). Learning communities are a way for freshmen to reside in a section of a dorm with other freshmen who have the same particular interest. My S opted for a LC and, because it was a fairly interactive LC (it wasn’t one related to the performing arts), he had the opportunity to become good friends with others in the LC. Like others have noted, BFA students tend to gravitate toward other BFA students because they spend so much of their time with BFA students in classes, rehearsals, performances and so it can seem like they become very inward in terms of friendships. However, my S continues to be good friends with students he met as a freshman in the LC and introduced his LC friends (and their friends) to his BFA classmates. Having a diverse group of friends - who are not all BFA students but who interact with each other - has helped him to feel like he doesn’t solely exist in what he refers to as “The Bubble.” If the college offers learning communities and there is one that piques the incoming acting/MT student’s interest, they are worth considering.</p>
<p>halflokum, it does seem like a generalization, doesn’t it? I did actually stop and think (and even scrolled around on facebook to double-think). Not to say there aren’t exceptions, but the BFA classes tend to bond pretty closely, very much so a “Bubble”. They might have the occasional acapella group of friends they are close to…still, it is the others in their majors who will be their roommates, out at parties with and the ones they are closest to.</p>
<p>I agree with you, SongSearcher. It’s not that the BFA students deliberately exclude non-majors – but unless they are in a LC like nansan’s son, the theater programs are so intense and time-consuming that they may not have the time to meet other students, even if they have the desire to do so. I have observed this with my daughter and many of my other students who have gone into BFA theater programs.</p>
<p>You both have at least a year’s jump on me in terms of experience. I’m only reporting what I’ve seen 1 semester in at NYU which as you know, is a very big program in a very big school. Perhaps by virtue of its size it is different than what one might find in a program with a dozen or so kids. (Maybe the same at NU AMTC?) NYU is all that I know “sort of” first hand so my answer is from that perspective.</p>
<p>I asked my daughter who is home now about whether or not she thinks the MTs limit their friendship circle to the major and her answer was, “No way. We don’t know each other well enough yet to decide to do that.” Maybe down the road that will be what will happen organically but at the moment, her closest circle seems to be the people on her floor and none of them are MTs though she does have several very good friends in her program that live elsewhere on campus. Her non-major friends, very few of whom I’ve actually met in person, sound pretty charming though. Some of them I’d bet will be around for the long haul but time will tell.</p>
<p>Interestingly her friends in other majors (mostly they are studying business or in the arts and science college) don’t specifically socialize with anyone in their respective programs — at least not yet. There is something about the BFA track that jumpstarts those in-major relationships which is a big benefit but it doesn’t have to be a limiting factor either if you choose to cast a wider net.</p>
<p>I think it’s true that in many ways NYU is a slightly different story than other BFA programs, partly because it takes a larger number of students, and partly because of the way the program is set up. Many other BFAs, like Syracuse, have a much smaller program, and a bit more of a conservatory feel. During freshman year, when kids are making friendships and developing relationships, my daughter only had one non-theater class each semester. Virtually all of her other classes were with the same small group of ten students – and inevitably, those students were the ones she became closest to, particularly because of the nature of acting classes, which almost force an immediate intimacy. Although freshmen at SU are not allowed to perform, they are required to work tech on at least one show; so many of her evenings and weekends, when many college students are socializing, were spent at the theater.</p>
<p>And of course, once she graduated, virtually all of her theater friends moved en masse to NYC, and she’s still close friends with most of them. Through her professional work, she has expanded her circle of friends, and they are still mostly actors. (I should add that soon after graduating, she took a job with a cruise line. There she befriended many non-theater folks from all over the world. She still communicates with them online, but rarely gets a chance to see them in person now that she is back on dry land.)</p>
<p>Of course, everyone’s college experience will be different, depending on personalities and the particular school in question. If a student really desires a broader group of friends and experiences, there are certainly ways to do it. And if they prefer to focus more intensely on their theater friends and way of life, that is very easy to do with a BFA program. Either way is neither good nor bad – just different!</p>
<p>Halflokum - I think there is some truth to what you say concerning NYU. I have a good friends daughter who attends and she has a very mixed group of friends as a Freshman. I do think that as time goes on and the MT kids (or straight Theatre kids) start working on their shows either in front or behind stage the intensity will create a stronger bond with those in their major. I think a lot of that happens in most majors. </p>
<p>At NU my daughter has made a concerted effort to keep friends in different areas for the mental stimulation and different relaxation having kids outside of your major allows. If I had to guess I’d say most of her friends are from the School of Communication so they do include Film/TV students because of all the student films she acts in. She also finds taking math classes fun and relaxing - another good diversion from the pressures of her major.</p>
<p>I think it all just depends on the student and their desires. Although I would say that a school like CMU makes it most difficult to meet/befriend those not in your major (any major) because of how strictly they separate all majors.</p>
<p>There are kids who make an effort to “get out of the bubble” so to speak. I know my daughter would go crazy if she was surrounded by the same 12 MT’s around the clock and during college visits we met many who said the same thing and purposely planned their living situations to allow for some degree of separation.</p>
<p>Interesting amtc that you mentioned CMU. When we toured campus two years ago we asked this very question (friends outside of the program?) to the lovely MT that gave us the theatre tour. She said that she started out with a deliberate strategy to have friends outside her major but felt pressured eventually to spend more time with the core MT group. I think her quote was along the lines of “in order to be a part of the group, you have to fully commit to being IN the group.” </p>
<p>Hindsight being 20/20, is that REALLY true at CMU or just this particular student’s version of the truth as she saw it? We’ll never know but it was the main reason that my daughter decided not to apply to CMU. Could very well be that that is how things worked for that tour guide but it didn’t have to be how things worked for everyone. Funny how easy it is to have your opinion shaped by those tour guides when you are 18 and pretty much hanging on every word. Wonder if they know the extent of their power? :)</p>
<p>I know my daughter values her friends both in and out of the major and is at least for now interested in having some life outside of the bubble that many of you have mentioned. An acting teacher that she really admires always made a point of telling her she’d be a better actress if she had a broader set of experiences to bring to her acting and I know she took that very much to heart. Anyway, maybe it is an NYU thing I don’t know but I do know so far the bulk of her FB pictures feature the non-MT friends by a wide margin.</p>