help us find strong communications/arts schools?

paying3tuitions
Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:52:50 +0000

IThaca College is strong in music, theater, musical theater, communications…but my niece there says that dance is the weak link. I’m not sure whether she is commenting personally on her priorities or on the program.

Consider the Five College Consortium with any one of these fine institutions that let students pursue performing arts within a highly academic, LIberal Arts setting: Smith College (strong in ballet), Mt. Holyoke (modern dance), Amherst College (theater), Hampshire College (opportunity to pursue many arts, including some film). The fifth college is the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, flagship state college, which might not offer her much special from out-of-state, but does add another 25,000 students to the valley, so in all these 5 colleges comprise 30,000 students with a free bus shuttle connecting all, and opportunity to enroll in courses on another campus. Note that Smith (almost 3,000) and Mt. Holyoke (pop #?) remain all-female and were formerly 2 of the “Seven Sisters” to Ivy Colleges. Amherst College, which was all-male until the l970’s, became coed. Standards are very high, with Amherst extremely selective numerically with just l800 pop total. Hampshire College has a strong creative emphasis and was founded to have students take advatnage of the other 4 institutions; they also conduct their own courses on campus, of course. Ken Burnes, documentary filmmaker, started out at Hampshire. In any of these 4 private colleges, you get the best of both worlds, small within large, because of the 5-college consortium that includes U. of Mass.

Syracuse U in upstate NY has a great school for communications and journalism, I’ve heard.

Columbia U in NYC was famous in journalism back in the day; I don’t know the update for today.

Emerson College also came to mind.

Study the threads over in the CC area called “Arts Major” or “Musical Theater” in case there’s wisdom there for you. To find it: Click on “Discussuion” (top left this page) and scroll down the page until you see the section on other majors.

How about New York University? Probably has the range she seeks…