liberal arts vs. conservatory

teriwtt
Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:52:43 +0000

soozievt:

“I don’t know which program, Steinhardt or Tisch that you considered liberal arts oriented or conservatory oriented. Steinhardt is a BM degree. Tisch is a BFA which is conservatory oriented.”

Actually from what I read on “Colleges for Musical Theater Major FAQ” Steinhardt was initially a more appealing choice because of the description “it is not a conservatory style program” as opposed to Tisch, which states “it is considered a conservatory-style program.” However, over the last day or so, I’ve been doing research on how many credits out of requirements needed for graduation with a BFA (or BM) are needed to fulfill gen ed requirements or electives, in other words, a chance for her to meet other people outside the MT program. That is important to her. For example, although one wouldn’t consider Ithaca a conservatory, 97 out of a needed 121 credits to graduate are pretty much planned out - that doesn’t leave as much room to pick a few other classes as say, Steinhardt. I understand that there’s not necessarily a correlation between the number of credit hours you’re taking any given term and how much time you actually spend in any classroom during any given week.

I had a new thought this week, one I shared with my D. With her academic stats so high, I’m willing to cut a deal with her. If she doesn’t get into an auditioned-based program, but is willing to consider some top-notch academic schools that have BA programs in theater (or English if she wants) where she can get great scholarships, I would be willing to contribute our savings on undergrad tuition toward an MFA. Of course, she could change her mind in the meantime, and decide she can fulfill that passion without a grad degree, but it’s still a door through which she can get formal training in a university setting. I realized all this when, as I was looking at different schools, many of the MFA programs mention that they get applicants from all walks of life, with many different kinds of undergrad degrees. This is actually the route her theater director took - undergrad in secondary education, then got his MFA from DePaul. He attributes this diversity of experience to his successes he had in the finance business world for 10 years. And now he gets to teach, and return to the stage as available. The possibilities are truly endless if you are committed, but persistent. Perhaps my own making a major career shift in my late 30’s (returning to school for my MA in an area totally unrelated to my undergrad degree) has reinforced that philosophy that we’re life learners and can do almost anything we set our minds to. I won’t even begin to tell you what my ACT scores were out of high school (truly, truly embarrassing - let’s just say there was not a number 2 in the score results!) But I found my passion, applied myself, got into grad school and made mostly A’s (I think 4 B’s). And now I have a somewhat flexible job that allows me to schedule work around my D’s major performances, college trips, and auditions this fall/winter. So the door is never closed, but sometimes we prefer to have someone open it for us (getting directly into an auditioned program as a freshman) as opposed to searching for the key that works.