Good Theatre Schools?

EmmyBet
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:04:34 +0000

You have a nice balance of various schools and programs, including different levels of selectivity.

It seems like you like smaller LACs (Oberlin) as well as bigger schools. That’s not bad - you have almost a year to decide exactly what you want, when you have your answers.

A college visit that comes to my mind that might be very helpful would be to Kalamazoo, to look at Kzoo College and Western Michigan. You’re very likely to get into both academically. Kzoo is a lovely college that would be a very nice “likely” to back up Oberlin. Plus it has Western MI basically across the street to give you more options in cross-registering. Western MI has both an auditioned BFA in performance and a nice-looking BA in Theatre Studies. Sometimes it’s weird going to a school that has both programs (BAs can feel like second-class citizens) but at a big school like that the chances are better that everyone can get what they want. You’d have to check on the details on what the programs entail, and also whether/how you can apply to both. I have no idea where Western MI’s BFA falls on the selectivity scale.

But remember - any auditioned program has very low admission rates - UMich, though, is in the single digits, and maybe Western MI could be more like teens or even twenties - barely better than Oberlin, and way less predictable. UMich has a Bachelor of Theatre Arts, which has no audition, but it has other very stringent application requirements. It is not considered a performance training program.