Yes, my list is pretty scattered geographically, and all plans about things like whether to major in theater, music or musical theater–or something else entirely unrelated–are very uncertain. EmsDad provided very useful information, but I’m hoping to generate a different kind of list. Instead of focusing on where the best musical theater opportunities are, I’d like to focus on where the liberal arts colleges are that also have significant musical theater opportunities. If you took a list of the top 100 liberal arts colleges (and ignored the inevitable arguments about how that list is compiled), and then tried to sort it roughly by strength of musical theater opportunities, what would the list look like? Based on the responses above, it sounds like Illinois Wesleyan, Muhlenberg and Baldwin Wallace might be at the very top. Others have mentioned Amherst, Denison, Vassar and Wagner. I’d really like to hear about those other colleges and colleges like them.
It seems that some people are ending up in musical theater careers even though they went to Wesleyan in Connecticut instead of Illinois Wesleyan. I hear a Connecticut Wesleyan guy named Lin Manuel Miranda has found some success. But putting that aside, some people just want to do musical theater as a hobby rather than as a career.
Let’s say you played on your high school football team. You might prefer to play football at Alabama or Clemson, which have been the best two college teams lately. You might prefer to play for Stanford or Michigan, which aren’t as good at football but still produce some NFL players and have better academic reputations. You also might prefer an Ivy League college, even though the Ivies produce very few NFL players. And if you love football but know that the NFL is not in your future, a Division III liberal arts college may be your best bet. Many liberal arts colleges take football seriously, though far less seriously than Alabama, Clemson, Stanford and Michigan.
The same kinds of decisions present themselves to people who perform in musical theater during high school. Perhaps Carnegie Mellon, Michigan and NYU will all want you. But probably not! If you don’t have that level of talent, or even if you do have the necessary level of talent but you lack the necessary level of commitment to musical theater, you may want to participate in the liberal arts college equivalent of the Wesleyan football team (which came in second in the NESCAC conference last year).
So please keep the information about liberal arts colleges coming!
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