help us find strong communications/arts schools?

paying3tuitions
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:41:02 +0000

Oh well, now that we’re unglued from the East Coast, look at these websites:

Oberlin College and Conservatory (BUT watch out for Marian’s concern there),
in Ohio - great LAC, creative writing major, theater/dance department, but it’s got to be studied for available opportunities for music-loving college students. Don’t assume it’s impossible for them, as there are college-based activities and a music major within the LAC too, but it has to be questioned carefully there. She could take free private lessons from a conservatory student for college credit, but the conservatory faculty is reserved for conservatory students when it comes to PRIVATE lessons. The Con students are heading for work in the nation’s symphony orchestras, but the College is full of music-loving and music-playing people, too. It’s a rich environment for hearing and participating, but as Marian says, investigate those barriers with care. As a college student, she could take courses at the Conservatory, hear great music, and do some ensembles, but for l:l teaching she’d have to be content with a conservatory student, not a conservatory professor. Great to hear the student and faculty recitals, sometimes 3x per week, mostly for free, with unbelievable guest artists for big concerts. Very enriching! Oberlin’s theater/dance department is a serious, artistic atmosphere with good showing in college theater expositions. Again, it is studied within the LAC context, not as pre-professional training. For Communications, there’s no department but the opportunity to major in Creative Writing (portfolio competion at end of sophomore year) is there. Courses are very popular in all the arts, so it can be hard to enrol when a freshman or even sophomoore in some favorite courses.

West Coast: Chapman University in Orange, CA (near Anaheim, 40 min outside of L.A.); see the communications offering (TV based) in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, as well as the dance/theater offerings of the University. Newly consolidated departments, and a fine new performing arts center there. Compared to some LAC’s already mentioned, Chapman U is not as high-octane in terms of SAT expecations for the school in general. The additional audition/portfolio requirements of the creative departments can be quite competitive, so read up on each with care. Chapman (unlike Oberlin) really emphasizes a commercial entree into the working professions, which some embrace and others find compromising to their artistic goals.
I met some very smart women planning to go into TV journalism over at the Dodge College of Film, where my S is a freshman now majoring in Screenwriting and considering a second academic major within the university.
It;s got a less stress-filled ambience than some of the East Coast schools, at least among the handful of students I met during freshman orientation. Also, the sun always shines there. Check out airfare deals to Santa Ana airport or Long Beach airport (suburban) and you can avoid Los Angeles Airport.