Penn State news

soozievt
Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:44:19 +0000

PSU is regarded as one of the top 5 musical theatre professional training programs in the country.



I have never heard of this before and wonder the source as there are no rankings of MT programs. This is nothing against PSU’s program. I mean I think they have a great program and my D got in and would have been happy to have attended. I’d have said this no matter which school was being discussed in this way.

There are no rankings of which schools are best. What is best is the best fit for what you want to do. There are certain schools that are more well known than others. That doesn’t necessarily equate with which are “best”. And there are certain schools that are more selective than others. Again, selectivity is not a direct correlation with best either. When I think of MT programs, I think of general groupings that are not ordered within the groupings, as to more well known or more selective programs. Sort of like little piles.

Hereshoping, I didn’t realize you have a son involved in theater or at Penn State. Cool.



that’s a good point, but then again, if there weren’t rankings based on someting, no matter how arbitrary, we wouldn’t be here on cc, would we?



I can’t relate to this. For one thing, I came to CC over 4 1/2 years ago when my first child was starting to explore colleges as she began her junior year of high school. I learned then and have continued to learn over the years, lots about the schools and the process of college admissions. I also enjoyed and continue to enjoy having a group of people to share and learn from and give and get support from who were going through the same process and stage of life as myself and my children. I was never ever interested in rankings. I had never even heard of college rankings until I came to CC, where yes of course, there are SOME who are interested in that. My own kids were never aware of rankings or where the schools on their lists ranked. They didn’t care and neither did I. Once, I bought US News and World Report out of curiousity after all the talk I read of rankings on CC. But my kids didn’t pick their schools with regard to ranking, and had no clue where they ranked. For instance, my oldest child, when deciding which school to attend once her acceptances came, narrowed it down to certain favorites and she preferred two of her acceptance schools over a certain Ivy League school she was admitted to and took that school off the list for final revisits. She preferred some schools ranked lower. I only know this because I eventually looked that up given the chatter about rankings here and how she wasn’t into that scene whatsoever. So, I never read CC due to any interest in rankings and still don’t. This is even after going through training to become a college counselor. I still don’t deal with rankings and I guide many students with college selection and the admission process. I discuss selectivity and their chances of admission. For BFA programs, there is the academic selectivity of the school itself and then there are certain schools that are more artistically selective and/or more well known than others, but these are not in some ranked order. I think we all know roughly which schools are well known (again not necessarily better) and which are harder to get into artistically speaking). But a ranking? I don’t know of any that exists. I have no idea where the #5 for PSU came about. I’d love to see the source (I read the reference to the top five in the linked article, however). In any case, it is a topic that is often asked about on this forum periodically. Even IF there was a ranking, I can’t imagine picking a school that way. To me, picking a school is about how well the school matches up with your personal criteria and preferences, and your qualifications in terms of admissions.