<p>Your daughter has so many requirements and some cancel the others out. For example, a highly competitive school where the students are not competitive! There are arguably, but certainly comparatively, few top theater schools on the west coast. The best-known (UCLA, USC) are not small and the others do not excel academically. I don’t know much about Occidental but Reed is a tiny school with little depth outside the humanities. And while I disagree with arwarw about the academics of the Claremont Colleges (Pomona is a top-ranked school.), none are top theater schools, and anyway your initial encounter was problematic. While you may find a school that sorta fits your criteria in the west, you’ll probably find a better fit somewhere in the east–as far from home as possible.</p>