My D had Ashland in her final 3. It is a nice, small campus, very pretty when we visited. We saw one show there which was good, but other schools we saw were better. Their theatre program is small but they are trying to grow it.
We met with one professor (Fabio Polanco if I spelled that correctly). It is a BA program and they ask you to audition for both theatre and music depts, but I think their bar is low as they are trying to build. I think Fabio said they tend to get about 6 kids per class, not because of their limits, just who they can bring in (that might have been MT only and there may be additional students for acting). Voice is done as an applied minor in the music dept. D had a lesson with an instructor a month or two before auditioning; it was fine but she wasn’t “wow-ed” either. They offer dance classes but I don’t remember much about those.
My D was awarded a nice merit scholarship that paid about half of tuition. I think she was also awarded a small music scholarship (something like $500, don’t remember exactly). The bad side financially was that since it is a private school that still left a lot for us to pay (although nothing like bigger name school). The good side is that Ashland is trying to stay competitive financially and announced (during 2013 or early 2014) a program to reduce their costs and hold them flat. Since my D didn’t choose that as her college I haven’t looked at them recently, so don’t know if anything has changed on that.
Aside from scholarships (my D got a better deal at her current school), the decision was between possibly more stage time vs. more competition forcing her to improve. She chose the competition and only time will tell if that was the right choice from that perspective (although she is very happy where she’s at). Another factor was that it appears that there are more performance opportunities at the bigger schools (main stage and student-directed), something my D considered. But I suspect that will change if Ashland’s program grows a little more.
My assessment is that this would be a good school for kids who aren’t competitive enough for the top tier schools or maybe even the next level down. Don’t take that too harshly, I liked the school and thought it would be a good place for the right students (and would have been fine with my D attending there). Since the school/theatre department is small I think there is a lot of opportunity for someone who is motivated to work in that sort of environment. Sort of a “get out what you put in” sort of place as long as you can self-motivate and/or want to learn outside of a highly competitive environment. I thought Fabio was great when we spoke with him and have no reason to doubt other professors would be as well.
if you have other specific questions I can try to answer them.