<p>“Awful” or “bad” dorms at NYU is a very relative concept. Even the worst dorms at NYU are mansions compared to the average craptastic college/university dorms the nation over. I had a “bad” dorm my first year (which is now houses the NYU Longhorn Medical center and dorms for the med students), and even that was better than my friends at other schools were dealing with. It’s too bad though that NYU dropped it’s most amazing dorms. I use to live in two apartment style dorms way, way off the main campus, and they were so incredible. One was a luxury, long stay hotel that use to charge 8k a month (and this was years ago, long before I came to NYU), and the other was a high rise down in the financial district that just a couple years ago got turned into very expensive apartments for the Wall Street types who work down there.</p>
<p>Same goes for the dining halls. When I was there Rubin had the worst reputation; just plan mediocre food. And yet compare Rubin to your average college dining hall, in selection, and even quality, and you’ll be amazed. It wasn’t the best NYU had to offer (I was partial to Palladium’s AMAZING dining hall), but it was above average for dining hall food on the whole. And they use to do a decent breakfast back then, with fresh made to order omelettes and waffles. Wonder if that’s still the case?</p>
<p>For anybody looking for info on Atlantic, I did a very long post on it here. I’ve still got ties to the school, so I know it hasn’t changed much training wise (but has in other ways) since I matriculated:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/nyu-tisch-mt/1314964-nyu-tisch-studios-8.html#post15649923[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/nyu-tisch-mt/1314964-nyu-tisch-studios-8.html#post15649923</a></p>
<p>I will say this about Atlantic; it’s geared primarily toward making you an effective, working actor. The technique it offers, born of Bill Macy and David Mamet, is more cerebral (it’s Mamet, not shocking) than most. It’s also less technique, and more tool. Because you can walk into Atlantic with any kind of technique that works best for you, and still adopt tools that are all about helping you apply the theory of your technique into a workable, repeatable process that’ll serve you on the job. They make this clear from the very beginning; you are never asked to choose any particular acting technique over the Atlantic one. It’s designed to work in conjunction with anything. So you can use sense memory, but you’re not wed to only sense memory. There however is definitely an eye-rolling attitude there about actors who believe they need to “feel it” always, every time, in order to give strong performances. One of my teachers, an incredible, working actress of some report, said she gravitated toward the Mamet technique after she got tired of emotionally abusing herself before each performance. You get tired of reliving your poor kitties death afterwhile, trust me LOL!</p>
<p>Anybody at ETW? Are those kids still peeling their clothes off? It’s funny, each studio has a stereotype, and on some level the stereotypes were so true! When I was there it was a strong program for a very specific type of actor, with very specific goals. But I will say this; it didn’t do a whole lot for preparing actors to take on the demands of a typical pursuit in the craft.</p>