<p>I hope I don’t come off as curt to the Tisch homers, but I would hands-down choose Purchase. I don’t know what your financial situation is and how much aid you’ve gotten from Tisch, but if the cost between the two is in any way proportional to their respective sticker prices, the answer is a no brainer in my book. We’re talking the least expensive of the prestigious undergraduate training programs versus the most expensive, here. </p>
<p>As one who will soon don a cap and gown and walk the plank, I’m damn glad I won’t be doing it carrying a huge ball and chain of debt affixed to my ankle. It’s rough waters out there! I see that CG03 is already swimming in it and can fill you in on things better than me, but I’ve seen some very talented and well trained actors who have had to essentially give it up because they simply cannot afford to BE actors because of all the loans they took out before they really fathomed what they were getting themselves into. Even if your parents are willing to take on all the debt themselves, what if they had the difference on hand to help you get started in the biz after graduation? </p>
<p>Of course, I might reverse that position if you just don’t like Purchase, your parents are multimillionaires, or you‘re independently wealthy. Have you visited?</p>
<p>I agree that the money difference is huge. And I also agree about a student, particularly one seeking a career as an actor, taking on debt. So, if it is a money decision, l would go with Purchase!</p>
<p>If comparing options without the money, I’d pick the school that fits what you want over what anyone else says about either school. </p>
<p>As far as parent debt to send a student to school, I’m in that category, as we are the ones financing our kids’ education, not them, and so they are not faced with the debt. I just want to add that not all parents would do what fishbowl is suggesting…with regard to if a college is cheaper, they’ll be able to support the student after graduation. Speaking just for myself, we support our kids through their entire education, but once they graduate, they must support themselves. And yes, my actor kid is doing that. She doesn’t have college loans but she is working in the world of theater in NYC and supporting herself doing so. It was never a “take the money for college or for afterward” deal in our case. And it is not as if we have the money just sittin’ around. I am willing to borrow money to pay for education but not to support my kid as an adult. Just saying that some parents fall in our camp.</p>
<p>Wow. You didnt help her out with the first few months rent or anything? I definitely come from a different perspective since my father left my brother and I life insurance policies with specific instructions in the will for the money to be used for college and any left over to be ours to get started in life afterwards. Im one of the lucky ones in that preparation has met opportunity and Ive already scored a good agent and am booked til Fall, but it sure is nice to have that nest egg sitting there for the lean times. Now if I can get REALLY lucky, Ill still have it there to put my own kids through college. How scary is that thought? LOL</p>
<p>fish, soozievt’s daughter has been almost constantly working as a performer since she graduated, so I don’t think she needs help with the rent! That’s great that your dad thought ahead to making sure you and your brother were taken care of, because, as you say, having a financial cushion to fall back on in lean times is a huge blessing.</p>
<p>Daughter is finishing first year at Tisch/Playwrights. It has been a fantastic experience. Definitely not conservative in anyway shape or form, the commitment has been all in all the time. As a freshman you cannot audition and that is a good thing because it is a conservatory schedule 9-6 three days a week, rehearsals with your group outside of class, commitments to tech other evenings, assignments around the city on the weekends and your additional academic requirements. It is not for the faint of heart, or those with low energy. Daughter has existed on 4-5 hours of sleep if lucky for weeks at a time, but she would not have it any other way. Playwrights exposes you to all of the acting genres so you are not in a “one way” style. Good luck with your decision, I would suggest that you should also consider how independent you want to be, and what you want your campus to look like, cause at NYU you are a new yorker, not a college kid, GOOD LUCK and congratulations on your acceptances!</p>
<p>Just chiming in as the parent of another happy NYU Tisch kid, though mine is in the musical theater studio (CAP21.) My D was fortunate enough to attend a really good arts high school where she had actor training for four hours a day, five days a week for four years (modeled on conservatory BFA programs) and auditioned for both acting and MT BFAs and was fortunate enough, in the end, to be able to choose. She has been VERY happy with her decision to attend Tisch and has very good relationships with her teachers and mentors there. They know her, she knows them. When she has needed extra help or coaching or advice (on everything from audition material to choosing what to do with her summers to non-theater-related stuff) she goes to them and they are more than helpful, concerned, caring and interested. </p>
<p>I am not saying NYU is perfect: their online billing drives my husband and me crazy! And it is frustrating sometimes to my daughter that though is automatically enrolled in all her studio classes, she has sometimes been closed out of the academic classes she had as first choices, and thus has had to take other classes. </p>
<p>But overall, she wouldn’t change her decision for anything.</p>
<p>That said, if going to NYU Tisch means coming out of college with a big debt, DO NOT GO.</p>
<p>Fish, just to get back to you regarding your post #23, we do expect our kids to support themselves when not in school. We have generously paid for all of college and graduate school and will be paying that off for years to come and that ain’t easy for us. We made sure neither would have to pay any of it back. </p>
<p>However, our kids had a little nest egg already…they got money as a graduation gift from us and their grandparents and had some existing savings. But no, we don’t send monthly checks. D had a summer job lined that paid for the summer after graduation, as well was cast one week after graduation for a tour in the fall. Since then, she has several jobs in theater and music and does support herself that way. The only thing we paid for so far was health insurance, though now she is getting it through Actors Equity and that expense went down. I think she has done well earning money, and working in her field, and has no back up jobs that are not theater or music oriented. Once in a while, she may get a gift, like last weekend, while visiting grandparents, she got a nice little gift. But she has to rely on earning her own living. So far, so good. It can be done. And she lives in NYC. Currently she has work lined up through September to cover all her expenses. She has many friends doing the same.</p>
<p>(yes, we literally stopped paying rent the day of graduation…our kids have never complained…they know they have it better than friends who have to pay back college loans themselves…and then they have rich friends whose parents still support them out of college…I guess you could say they are more fortunate than some and less fortunate than others but on the other hand, they don’t expect or want their parents to support them as adults who are not in school)</p>
<p>It is interesting trying to figure out who all the parents are of the kids on the forum, I have not looked here since last year I was poking around to see if I could tell which SDM kids were headed to Tisch, but I guess we will know soon enough. We are not sure what we will do with ourselves this summer without the drive to Loch Sheldrake, are there any support groups for parents of former campers? Just kidding. Daughter is the last of 5, a linguist, a physicist, a businessman, a dancer and now an actor. We will miss the camaraderie of sloshing through the mud in the parking lot, being rained out in the Forum, waiting for the late show in the Elsie because of the rainout, lining up for OTC, cheering on all the kids, moving rooms between sessions, eating lousy food, sleeping on lousy beds, having daughter thrilled to die on the barricade, play women, men and even plants, but being with wonderful parents from across the US, and some not so wonderful to teach us how we didn’t want to behave as well. Good luck to all of you still on the journey</p>
<p>^^^I don’t know whose parent you are and my kid is now 21 and so older than yours, but she is a SDM alum (8 summers, 16 sessions) and I can totally relate as it was weird the first summer not going back to Loch Sheldrake. But I can tell you that Tisch was like doing SDM full time all year and even better…same idea…intense with others who are very into it. And so now we go to NYC to see her shows, not Loch Sheldrake. And she is still very very good friends with many Stagedoorians in the city who either went to Tisch with her or came to the city after graduation from other programs. She even shares an apartment with another SDM friend she has known for 11 years! SDM is in their blood, LOL. Tisch is just a new stage but the same sort of bonding. But will always have the fondest memories for SDM!!!</p>
<p>It took me a moment to realize that SDM = Stage Door Manor. The one local kid we know who did a summer there was able to afford it only because of the pay she got for a small role in a Shyamalan film. :)</p>
<p>Averagetim – you say that when your daughter was at Tisch/Playwrights she had weekend assignments around the city. I am curious about what those consisted of.</p>
<p>I can’t answer for averagetim…but there are writing courses and theater studies courses (not the studio courses) that have involved going to certain sites in the city for assignments. Since that D is a freshman and there was an academic reference, I do recall the freshmen writing courses, which center on the arts, requiring excursions to observe certain things and write about them. These were around the city.</p>
<p>Daughter visited art museums around the city for observations, they were given a list of sensual experiences/places for one class, the directing class in studio required a visit to an uncommon NYC site and a music composition created, there were drawing requirements in the city, those are the ones that I can think of off hand, but she was always on the go with some project/inspiration…More so than her roommate who is in Strasburg. Soozievt, you were very helpful last year and our tally, SDM, 6 summers, 16 sessions, so they crossed paths. You are right, this year at Tisch has been the experience that they all talk about as wishing they could find and attend “Stagedoor College” As for our summer, for the first time in 7 years we won’t spend Fathers Day/ or my husbands birthday on the road, but “in a very unusual way” we will miss it terribly…</p>
<p>wow, my D is going to love Playwrights!! And as someone who was worried about the narrow focus of a BFA, I am thrilled that she is going to get such a total immersion in the arts and the life of NY!</p>
<p>SDonCC, it’s not just kids in Playwrights who have assignments that take them out into the city. My kid is in CAP21 and she had the same assignments, which came through the required freshmen Writing the Essay and Intro to Theatre Studies/Intro to Theatre Production classes. For WTE, my daughter had to go to several art museums and to other places around the city.</p>
<p>Averagetim…it is possible that they did not overlap after all. The summer of 2005 was the only summer my D went one session (she usually went two sessions and one summer did three sessions), but that summer was the one prior to starting college and so she had to earn some money that summer and started/directed a MT program locally and was in professional summer stock locally. So, she only did first session at SDM in 2005 and was in Jekyll and Hyde. I don’t recall Pirates and 42nd Street being during that session. Did your D go second and third sessions that year? Then again, I kind of remember a friend being in Pirates and the show time for Pirates was the same as for Jekyll and Hyde and we had to miss that show.</p>
<p>Ah, now I just noticed your D went in 2004 also! It is hard for me to recall all the shows for each session. I’ve seen A My Name is Alice at SDM but it was not in 2004 and so I wonder if that was in third session? My D went first and second that year and was in West Side Story and Nine. </p>
<p>Obviously I am biased as a student at Purchase, but I do have several friends in various Acting studios at NYU so I feel somewhat knowledgeable about both programs. My personal pick would be Purchase because of the individual attention and the all inclusive, conservatory training. I am in a company of 19, which will probably get smaller over the years. I LOVE the personal training that I get here: all of our teachers know us incredibly well individually. My speech teacher could tell you absolutely anything about my speech patterns within the second week of school. Purchase is a conservatory with one liberal arts class a semester: we have full days and tons of work to do outside of class. You also are in main stage, fully mounted shows for all of Junior and Senior year. I personally find our faculty to be unsurpassed. In addition, because of the evaluations and “cuts”, only students that have truly put in the work and are representative of the four years of training here will graduate and go on to showcase. This may seem daunting, but in reality, it’s a great plus because that ensures that Purchase keeps its good name in the industry. With only a 10-18ish kids graduating a year from an initial 20, it is practically GUARANTEED that everyone who graduates from the program is completely prepared to enter the work force. Also, I remember the worry about a program with cuts when I was auditioning, but I can assure you that you will stay at this program if you do the work. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Now that my D is in Playwrights, I just want to say that the assignments that they get that take them around the city are not the same ones as given through the Theater Studies or WTE classes. For Playwrights, i know she’s had to go to the Cloisters and to a museum on Long Island City, for example, to find works that expressed a specified emotion or theme and then sketch them. The program is fascinating!</p>
<p>Also, the teachers definitely get to know them!! And that applies to the studio and to the Tisch WTE and Theater Studies classes.</p>
And it is frustrating sometimes to my daughter that though is automatically enrolled in all her studio classes, she has sometimes been closed out of the academic classes she had as first choices, and thus has had to take other classes. </p>