Hello! I am an Italian High School Senior student with a great passion for theatre/cinema acting.
Academically speaking, I am in the top of my class with one of the highest GPAs, 3 great recommendation letters from my teachers, 1 from my principal and 1 from my acting teacher.
Furthermore, I have been acting for 13 years in local acting schools/academies, I have also got a good musical curriculum: I can play the piano (studied for 9 years) and guitar (especially chords). I can speak English, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.
I will take the Toefl and (if the pandemic doesn’t get worse here) the SAT.
I’d like to try with the best universities/academies offering BAs/BFAs or similar… I am interested in both conservatory-style curriculums and broader curriculums including literary studies and more.
I have to choose a list of colleges as early as possible in order to apply on time.
Don’t know if the best but depends on what your looking for but Check out both Northwestern and University of Michigan.
Tisch at NYU. Famous alumni list is a mile long.
USC, UCLA, CMU. For Masters - Yale
Carnegie Mellon and Boston University also have strong programs. There are quite a few excellent schools for this – and there are also lots of remarkably talented, well-trained professionals who have to hustle for work (and not always get it).
I’d look at all the options - now! - to make sure you understand what’s involved in applying. Some may drop out from that alone. I’d also figure out what you want the academic experience to be, especially if you are focusing on acting. Some programs make it easier for students who get work to take it while continuing with their studies.
I recommend viewing the acting and theater threads on CC. Read the stories from previous years and you’ll get a feel for the admission process (very involved compared to “regular” college admissions) and the level of competition. Regardless of your talent, highly encourage you to apply to a non-audition safety with a good program. Those threads will point you to some options in that area as well. The BFAs come down to talent (the vast majority put talent well ahead of academics - not all of them, but most). Really hard to predict outcomes there. You can be quite talented, apply to 20 programs, and get shut out or get accepted to several.
Actually good practice for the real world which I imagine is even more competitive.
Would also suggest having a well balanced list. Don’t just get caught up in tippy top, name brand schools like NYU, Julliard, Emerson, etc. If you are quite talented, certainly apply, but add several from the next tier. Not unusual to have 1000 applicants for 20-40 spots. You can do the math.
Make sure you can afford these pricey schools.
There are published lists of things like what schools award winners come from, too.
Forbes: 15 top colleges with the most Hollywood Stars https://www.forbes.com/sites/gracekay/2019/08/15/the-15-top-colleges-with-the-most–hollywood-stars/#1ee2a4293e20
There are also annual lists of the colleges that produce the most Tony, Emmy, Oscars, Golden Globes etc awards. I don’t think CC allows links to most of the sites that publish them as they are usually entertainment-related sites, but you can google them. Like the above list, NYU, USC, UCLA, Michigan and the ivies tend to be the most well represented.
As above, the best are often pricey, and have limited funding for internationals.
Just note that NYU awarded 1094 fine arts Bachelor degrees last year, CMU awarded 144, as an example. So raw numbers don’t tell the whole story.
True, you do have consider the size of the programs, but it’s going to be hard to beat Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese! The Forbes list does seem like a pretty good starting point though.
However, it is important to separate those colleges which were attended by famous actors before they were famous versus after they were famous.
Universities such as Harvard and Yale often accept actors who were already famous in order to boost their own prestige and fame, and have nothing to do with training the actors. So Emma Watson isn’t a famous actress because she attended Brown University, but the opposite - she was accepted to Brown because she was already famous.
So the fact that Jody Foster, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon, Brooke Shields, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emma Watson, etc, attended Ivy league colleges are absolutely no indication that attending these colleges will help a person with their acting career
Of course there are many actors who attended Ivies because they are the kids of famous actors or other celebrities, like Lourdes Leon or Rashida Jones. Since their acting careers were likely helped more by their pater and mater than by their Alma Mater, I would not take these actors as indicators of Ivies being conducive for an acting career either.
There are actors who attended Ivies before they were famous like David Duchovny, Rachel Dratch, or John Legend, but most struggled to succeed as actors just as much as graduates of other colleges.
NYU, USC, UCLA, Northwestern, Julliard, and a few others on that list are meaningful. however, as I noted, I would not consider Harvard to be an especially good college for aspiring actors, nor Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, or Brown.
That being said, a degree from Harvard may provide a better choice of employment at a better salary for struggling artists, but an undergrad from USC or NYU may be better, John Legend worked as a consultant after college, rather than as a barista, and that may have been because he graduated from UPenn.
For OP’s query regarding actors - I think you probably can do better than Marty.
And Spike’s undergrad degree from Morehouse doesn’t make it an acting powerhouse.
@MWolf , good points.
Barton MacLane, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bradley Whitford, Dana Delaney, and William Christopher all graduated from Wesleyan before landing a single paying gig.
Why do you want to study performance in the US? Are you hoping to break into the industry here?
What kind of work are you ultimately looking for? What are your options where you are?
Are you only interested in acting, or do you also have interest in design, tech, stage management, dramaturgy, directing, writing, arts management, etc.?
It might make best sense to complete your first degree closer to home, and then come to the USA for an MFA (Master in Fine Arts) program. Those often are fully funded so you would be able to find one that you didn’t have to pay for.
That is a good point. I get what you mean. Italy has very good universities, but my main concern is that they do not offer acting programs. Of course I can take other paths (literature, foreign languages, medicine, etc.) but I would end up with quite a different curriculum.
There do are four great acting academies but they only accept around fifteen/twenty students in a pool of more than eight hundreds. Also, I am interested in acting and, maybe, directing but not in other careers: I mean, I may consider them for a living but as of today they’re not what I’d choose.
What I like about the US is that universities give students the chance to mix up their curriculum with a variety of subjects, which are not directly related to their own major: I think it is important for an actor to also have some literary knowledge, for instance. If I were admitted to Harvard or Yale, I may also consider taking a different route in order to receive a broader formation.
With that said, I am also applying to college in the US because I’d like to get a breath of fresh air and go abroad, I think I would have more chances to do what I love than here and I have the general feeling of a charming place (kind of the “American Dream”, ahahah).
I don’t know if that makes sense… Anyway, it’s surely a great idea to go for a Graduate degree and I’ll do that if I am not admitted / I can’t afford an Undergraduate education in the States.
The level of competition that you describe for the acting academies in Italy is lower than the level of competition for admission to top acting programs in the US as an international applicant. That is to say, if you apply to both, the chance of getting a spot in Italy will be better.
What is your family truly ready, willing, and able to pay for your education? Do you have a figure in US dollars? Think about that. In the end where you can attend will be determined by cost.
I was going to recommend that you also post in the theater/drama forum, but I see that you found it. Spend some time reading through different threads there for more ideas.
Thank you!
Anyway, I found out that the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) has an acceptance rate of about 83%. If that’s correct, it is way higher than the Italian standards (and also of schools like Juilliard, Calarts and AMDA). I think it sounds great: is that a good choice?
AADA is not a 4 year Bachelors degree program.
An audition is required. There is one major: acting.
You don’t need a conservatory type experience to learn acting.