<p>ActingDad, I have to respond to what you said above:</p>
<p>“I agree with you that ‘prestige’ by itself should not be the criteria. However, there is generally a reason why some schools are more selective than others. It is usually because they provide better training and opportunities.”</p>
<p>This is an unending, unanswerable issue, but I would like to remark that:</p>
<p>1) You seem to be saying that selectivity and prestige are two entirely different things; I would argue also that neither one is an absolute indicator of quality. First of all, every auditioned program in theatre is highly selective. None has an acceptance rate better than the top-ranked colleges generally discussed on CC. Also, as with Ivy-League schools, applications are inflated at certain prestigious and more well-known programs - that is just human nature - which increases selectivity but has no real correlation with quality. I strongly believe that the difference between a school that accepts 15% vs 8% in the long run is not significant enough to say that the 15% school is measurably lower in quality. Factors such as prestige (which you already somewhat discount), availability of auditioning (such as Unifieds and multiple audition locations/dates) do inflate selectivity at some schools, and have no reflection on the education they offer.</p>
<p>2) No matter how selective, or prestigious, a school might not be the right school, or even very high quality on an absolute scale. There are very prestigious and very selective schools that are very wrong for many students. Sometimes a prestigious or highly selective theatre school does offer certain opportunities, as with other types of colleges, but there have been many arguments made on this forum that going to a selective school does not guarantee, or perhaps even measurably help, a student in their professional career. No one can answer or predict the future for any given student. There are too many unreliable factors in this equation for selectivity or prestige to predict success, or even happiness. Every student, at any school, is taking a chance, and should choose based on personal taste and their own needs.</p>
<p>3) As with any college choices, quality is a nebulous factor that can only be measured to a certain extent by ranking, and must be decided upon entirely by the individual. Since there aren’t official theatre school rankings, I’ll just say that in regular college ranking, there are so many factors that the difference in quality between, say, a top 10 school vs a top 50 or even 100 school cannot ever be reliably determined. My family and I have a lot of experience with highly and less selective and prestigious and less prestigious colleges and graduate schools, and I have yet to have a clue to the answer to this question, even where rankings exist.</p>
<p>4) I believe that the quality of a theatre program involves many factors - some are somewhat definable, such as the available curriculum, the facilities and to a certain extent the qualifications of the instructors. Some are subjective; for example, in the case of opportunities to perform, many “prestigious” schools do not guarantee or even allow a lot of performing by students, and many schools do not allow students to work professionally while in training - even though there are students who would feel their education would be compromised by limited performing while in college. Who can say who is right? Personal chemistry with teachers and peers is almost impossible to determine in advance and is not guaranteed at all by prestige or selectivity, yet it is often extremely important in how a student responds to their educational environment.</p>
<p>I am all for looking for a quality education. This was a primary goal for me, my husband, and both of my daughters, in college and in graduate school. But I never would have equated quality with prestige and selectivity. I firmly believe that is letting other people and their prejudices and assumptions make your life decisions for you. I also believe strongly that your success in life is what you do with the opportunities you are given, not by the prestige and selectivity of those opportunities.</p>
<p>Thank you for listening. I wish you and your daughter all the best in this exciting and difficult process.</p>