UArts v. Emerson MT

MichaelNKat
Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:38:10 +0000

One thing that I suggest that you do is chart the curricula side by side for each school. That will give you some good insight into the comparative areas of strength and and balances of the programs. If you send me a PM with your email address, I’ll send you 2 charts I made for UArts and another school, one organized by subject matter and one by semester. As a general proposition, I think you will find that UArts is much more focused on performance classes the first 2 years than Emerson is and with Emerson you really don’t focus on performance until after your sophomore evals.

The dance and vocal programs at UArts, in my opinion, are also much stronger at UArts. On both occasions that we were at Emerson with my D (tour/info and audition), upon our inquiry about getting the getting the amount of dance and vocal training my daughter desired, we were told by admissions officers that students can cross register at BOCO to get the level of training my daughter wanted. We viewed this as a negative. With schedules as packed as they are in a MT program, students shouldn’t have to travel to another school to get what they need. At UArts, the voice and dance training are very strong and well balanced with the training in acting.

Finally, Emerson has a cut system. This has been discussed on other threads. After your sophomore evals, you can find yourself cut from the program regardless of the effort you have been making. Emerson itself states that students must “re-audition” to stay in the program after the sophomore year. At UArts, you have evals and juries each year. They are designed to be informative and instructive about your growth, strengths and weaknesses. The juries also impact on your grades. At UArts, if a student is not progressing or is not making the effort or showing commitment, they can be eased out of the program or asked to leave but this is different than Emerson’s cut system based on a requirement of re-auditioning. At Emerson, if you are cut, there are non-performance, non-arts majors you can move into. At UArts, if you wash out of the program, the options at UArts are more limited because it is an arts university.