College Selection

At BU anyway(and I would suspect most places), the admissions office cares about your gpa, SAT, classes, etc., and the design&production program cares about your resume/portfolio. Both matter equally, and are important in order to be accepted

ACT and GPA is what will get you into the University. Its your portfolio that will get you into the fine arts college. If your GPA and ACT schools are not good enough to get you into the University you are not going to go to the school, it does not matter if you have the best portfolio ever. Grades DO matter. Many schools won't even look at you if your ACT/SAT is not high enough. There are also many theatre programs that won't talk to you until you are accepted to the University.

After you get into the "real world" post college, your GPA does not matter unless you are going back to academia as either a teacher or a student. I have only sent out on transcript in my life and that was to get my teaching cert.
 
But what I would really like to encourage you to do is to not worry about it. You're only a sophomore, and there will be plenty of time to worry about colleges later. Get out in the sunlight and enjoy being in high school.

OP's a lighting tech. I doubt there will be much non-artificial sunlight in his/her future.

I just jumped to the end of the thread, so sorry for any repetition. I'm not sure if you're looking at conservatory programs or not, but if you are here's my sage advice as someone who literally finished the process last week.

Make your portfolio extremely impressive. Start working on it right this moment, and take copious pictures of everything you do, even little side projects that just showcase creativity. Mine (now gathering dust) is about fifty 11 by 17 inch pages, with around 10 pictures on every page. I was lucky enough to only interview at places that wanted to see me personally, if you have to mail them a smaller portfolio things can get pretty annoying.

And make sure to give examples from every stage of your designs, from thumbnails to plots to magic sheets to the final product. And regardless of the specificity of the program, schools do want to see examples of involvement in all aspects of theatre.

To answer your question, if the conservatory is serious your portfolio really will count more than your grades. What I was told at my interviews was that for NYU Tisch the portfolio is 70% of the decision process, at BU (as nathaniel said) it's 50%, at SUNY Purchase 70%, and (considering I was accepted on the spot without my interviewer even looking at my grades, essays, or application) University of North Carolina School of the Arts must rank portfolio quality at near 100%. I'll be attending UNCSA in the fall, and if you're looking into conservatory lighting schools I would seriously consider applying there, or anywhere else I mentioned above.

Any more questions, feel free to message me. I literally just finished this entire process, and am simply brimming with info.
 
Oh, I understand that. The college I'm most interested in had an enrollment of a whole 11 people for the fall 2009 semester in the Theare Design & Technology program, but it also has the largest theatre in the state of Michigan and one of the stronger theatre programs in the area.

It's true, the best programs are (usually) the smallest. SUNY Purchase's acceptance rate this year was 8%, if I recall correctly, and they've got a freshman class of forty in lighting. BU's is a hundred and forty for the whole tech program, and at UNCSA I think the freshman Technical Direction class has seven students, but is one of the best in the whole country (at least two usually drop out by the end of the year). Of course, Tisch has a starting class of 1,200 Technical Theatre students (one of the reasons I decided not to go there), so who knows.
 
To answer your question, if the conservatory is serious your portfolio really will count more than your grades.

That is not at all true. If you can't get into the University, you can not get into the school. No fine arts college is going to go to bat for you to get you in because you got horrible grades. I was one of the people that had a horrid GPA out of H.S. If it was not for my ACT score I would not have gotten into the college I attended. No college wants someone who is lazy. How you show you are not lazy is to perform well in all facets of your education.

When I taught at a performing arts magnet school with students that had killer portfolios many of them had issues getting into top schools because of grades. Unfortunately, their education was just not on par with other schools. They knew theatre, but they did not have the ACT/SAT scores to get into these programs. One of my students was accepted into a top program but was not accepted to the university and ended up at a state school.

Also, when it comes down to money, academic scholarships pay much better then talent scholarships. If it was not for talent scholarships, I would not have gone to the college I attended. However, my student loans are twice what my wife's is because she ALSO had an academic scholarship. Study hard kids. You don't want to be paying for it later.
 
It's true, the best programs are (usually) the smallest. SUNY Purchase's acceptance rate this year was 8%, if I recall correctly, and they've got a freshman class of forty in lighting. BU's is a hundred and forty for the whole tech program, and at UNCSA I think the freshman Technical Direction class has seven students, but is one of the best in the whole country (at least two usually drop out by the end of the year). Of course, Tisch has a starting class of 1,200 Technical Theatre students (one of the reasons I decided not to go there), so who knows.

I agree, small programs can be great. I believe we're actually around 100 at BU this year, at most 120(we have between 20 and 25 lighting designers, 3 of which are freshmen).

If anyone's interested in BU, send me a message and I can answer any questions/get you in touch with the right people.
 
Make your portfolio extremely impressive. Start working on it right this moment, and take copious pictures of everything you do, even little side projects that just showcase creativity. Mine (now gathering dust) is about fifty 11 by 17 inch pages, with around 10 pictures on every page. I was lucky enough to only interview at places that wanted to see me personally, if you have to mail them a smaller portfolio things can get pretty annoying.

And make sure to give examples from every stage of your designs, from thumbnails to plots to magic sheets to the final product. And regardless of the specificity of the program, schools do want to see examples of involvement in all aspects of theatre.

Seriously? I didn't even know what a magic sheet was in HS. Undergrad programs aren't interested in how amazing your portfolio is and how awesome you may think your designs are, they care about what they feel is your potential. One of the lighting designers graduating with my class this year came from a HS with all of 6 lights FOH. Enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and dedicate yourself to a program is what you need.

If you have good stuff cool, but don't worry about it too much.

Also you are sophomore in HS and you've decided on your major already? are you SURE? have you tried other things yet? Theatre is a tough world to be in.

Be a good student too, you will get cheaper tuition. Had I taken the ACT twice I would have saved more money.

Also @Chris, check out Webster. They don't recruit as much from IL as they should but it's one of the best programs in the midwest. My graduating DTSM class is all of 12 people. PM me if you'd like more info.
 
I am almost 100% that this is what I want to do. I love being able create a look that will evoke an emotion, and its always fun to work with your hands and get a rig up. What schools would you say are good that are around MA?
 
Besides BU, there's Northwestern, and Yale has a pretty good design program (not as good as you would think, though, not in the top five certainly). There's also UMASS Amherst, which I was initially skeptical of but, after spending three hours hanging (out) with the lighting crew, seemed to also be a serious program. And if you head just an hour into New York there's SUNY Purchase, which was my second choice, and is one of the best design programs in the country.

Footer, you're right. I didn't mean to say that grades don't matter at all. One certainly couldn't slide into any good design programs with a C average. But if I were given a choice between putting in the extra work to get an A on a paper (as opposed to a B or so) or making my light design the best it could be (and I have been given that choice), I would choose the latter. I also scored well on my SATs, so maybe I'm not the best example, but by focusing on what I'm actually passionate about, extracurricular theatre and not academics, I think I dramatically increased my chances of getting into all of the conservatories that I did (and I say this based on what I've been told at my interviews).

Folks are absolutely right about academic scholarships, though, so there is also a serious incentive for doing well in addition to making your passion a priority.
 
Seriously? I didn't even know what a magic sheet was in HS. Undergrad programs aren't interested in how amazing your portfolio is and how awesome you may think your designs are, they care about what they feel is your potential. One of the lighting designers graduating with my class this year came from a HS with all of 6 lights FOH. Enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and dedicate yourself to a program is what you need.

Definitely true. As far as the Massachusetts area, there are a few options. Yale is geared more towards graduate degrees than undergrad, but BU and Emerson are both good options(I would say BU is better and more serious, but I'm obviously biased, so feel free to disregard this opinion)

The biggest piece of advice I can give for choosing a school is to visit. not just the school(although that can be helpful), but the theater program. I applied to NYU, Carnegie Mellon, and BU, and after visiting all 3 I knew that BU was where I needed to be.

Good luck.
 
I am almost 100% that this is what I want to do. I love being able create a look that will evoke an emotion, and its always fun to work with your hands and get a rig up. What schools would you say are good that are around MA?

New York State, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are all filled with great theatre schools, all within a 3 or 4 hour train ride of anywhere. The northeast has more colleges then anywhere else in the world. Figure out what kind of program you want and go from there.
 
One of the lighting designers graduating with my class this year came from a HS with all of 6 lights FOH. Enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and dedicate yourself to a program is what you need.

Also you are sophomore in HS and you've decided on your major already? are you SURE? have you tried other things yet? Theatre is a tough world to be in.

Be a good student too, you will get cheaper tuition. Had I taken the ACT twice I would have saved more money.

The school I come from has a pretty nice setup for a high school auditorium with 650 seats, 400 channels/400 dimmers, about 70 Colortran ERS/fresnels, 4 S4 Zooms, scrollers and I-Cues, and most notably a brand new Element 60 to replace our aging Innovator. Although I've worked hard on trying to work every show I get the chance to, it's difficult considering I also enjoy acting and the school's speech team, and I'm not the only person interested in lighting at my school, adding another level of challenge. However, I've been checking backstagejobs.com regularly and trying to figure out other opportunities outside of school to gain more experience. I haven't completely settled on a technical theatre degree (I would prefer something broader than simply lights alone) I'm fairly certain it's what I'd like to do. Grades haven't been a problem for me (at least this year) and my projected ACT score from another standardized test looks quite promising, so as long as I can keep this up I shouldn't have too much of a problem making it into a lot of courses.
 
BU's degree in Theatre Arts with a track in Technical Design may be what you're looking for, Chris. NYU has a similar program, but which is more focused on acting and dramaturgy-type studies than tech.
 
BU's degree in Theatre Arts with a track in Technical Design may be what you're looking for, Chris.

After looking into it, BU seems to have a phenomenal program, but with the high tuition costs it just doesn't seem feasible. The college I mentioned in my first-ish post, Oakland University, is about a quarter of the cost for in-state tuition, and apparently I may be able to pay in-state tuition as an Illinois resident. And a good chunk of my first year would be paid for by a scholarship given to students with parents/grandparents who are alumni (both parents and two grandparents went there, none in the theatre program.)
 
Things must have changed since I went to collage!

Apparently its spelling as well.

Cheap shot, I apologize.

Chris, you're absolutely right about BU's cost, and what's more is the fact they just don't give out good scholarships as a rule. NYU has the same policy, as do many of these larger private universities, of charging as much as they please and taking primarily the people that can afford to pay it.
 
Chris, you're absolutely right about BU's cost, and what's more is the fact they just don't give out good scholarships as a rule. NYU has the same policy, as do many of these larger private universities, of charging as much as they please and taking primarily the people that can afford to pay it.

For me, what basically ruled out any Illinois school was the fact that the five that have technical theatre programs (according to a couple of college search websites) are expensive private programs, and the only one that stood out as particularly interesting anyways was DePaul, which is unfortunately much too costly. Thus, I'm beginning to branch out, and my main interest at this point is a public midwestern university that doesn't increase tuition for out-of-state students and has a rather strong technical tehatre program. OU stood out to me simply because both of my parents went there (neither theatre-related,) and I'm familiar with the area after growing up minutes away.

Another related question: How would transferring from 1-2 years of gen ed community college to a major university's a technical theatre program compare to simply spending all four years at said major university? This may end up being my only option, so I'm curious as to how it compares considering the significant cost reduction.
 
For me, what basically ruled out any Illinois school was the fact that the five that have technical theatre programs (according to a couple of college search websites) are expensive private programs, ...
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a state school, has a highly-regarded theatre dept., but does seem expensive, even for residents.

As for two years of gen ed at a "cheap" community college then two years at a "good" university--I know people who have successfully done that in other fields, but not in theatre. I'm certain no BFA program would allow it, and suspect some BA programs wouldn't either. I think you'd be cheating yourself, by cutting in half your participation in productions.

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As long as I'm here, I'll bring up two topics I'm passionate about:

Choose an institution of higher learning not by the quality or newness of its equipment or facilities, but for its faculty and program. All the state-of-the-art whiz-bang gizmos don't mean squat if the professors don't know how to teach, or don't know how to use the "toys" themselves. Besides interviewing potential professors and current students, a campus visit should also include seeing a performance. Now while it's possible a HS student will be impressed with any college production, it's not always a given. I once saw a production at a "name" theatre school, with an MFA program, and the production values were so poor there is no way I could ever recommend that school. Now that I think about it, that's happened at two different schools.

Another thing--I'm leery of any school where the students design too much. (Controversial statement? Please continue reading with an open mind, before responding.)
My college allowed only seniors to design mainstage productions, and rarely if ever would allow more than one student designer on a production. I see too many students who have designed many shows, but without proper supervision. Therefore, they lack critical analysis of their work, and don't know how to collaborate or defend/explain their design decisions. IMO, design is best learned via the mentor method, not on one's own in a vacuum. Choose a college, primarily, because of its faculty.

/end lecture rant
 
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Another related question: How would transferring from 1-2 years of gen ed community college to a major university's a technical theatre program compare to simply spending all four years at said major university? This may end up being my only option, so I'm curious as to how it compares considering the significant cost reduction.

I think it would depend on how you do it, and how well you research the ability to do it where you want to do it. Say if you wanted to do 2 years for gen ed. and then go finish at a 4 year, with the intent on staying more then 2 years, say if you were going to stay for 3-4(+) years (perhaps double majoring reasons) and be active that entire time with your theatre education, I could see it possibly working out. However, it would depend on the schools and their programs, I would not do it or plan on doing it with out lots of research.
 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a state school, has a highly-regarded theatre dept., but does seem expensive, even for residents.

I did consider U of I for a while, particularly after getting a good look at their theatre program during 2009's Illinois High School Theatre Festival. I also believe that another lighting designer from my school is headed there next year. Unfortunately, much too expensive.

As for the question about beginning at community college, I think that I may end up working full time for a year or two after high school and then heading to a four year.
 

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