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Thursday, September 06, 2018
Carnegie Mellon rated No. 1 among programs offering BFAs in musical theater
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Noting that Carnegie Mellon University is "the Grandaddy of them all" — in other words, the longest-running degree-granting school of drama in the United States — OnStage Blog declared the school No. 1 in its list of “The Top 25 BFA Musical Theatre Programs for 2018-19.”
When attending CMU, I’ve heard a lot of people saying that we go to “the number one drama school” in the country. Given, hearing this is very strange when you’re actually going to the school, but reading it on a major newspaper, The Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, is even more strange. According to the newspaper article, CMU is very praised in terms of its BFA curriculum. While reading this, I was really intrigued by the facts that they were providing about CMU in comparison to other prestigious schools. I, on a completely biased level, was really excited to hear that NYU and Julliard are also considered top-notch performing art schools, and are consequently located in my hometown, New York City. It’s really cool to read something similar to a profile on my school, and hearing the outside point of view. Of course, whichever school you go to, you will think is the best- but hearing other people kindly report on what my school has to offer is comforting and reassuring.
I found this article very interesting because I had kept seeing people post the list, and I always thought "wow that's great, our musical theatre department produces very talented and employable actors." But reading this article told me a little more about what went in to actually making that list. And the thing that excited me the most and made me the proudest of the school I attend is that something that was heavily looked at this year was the value of diversity. I am very excited to go to a school where their diversity is recognized across the country. Although it is fantastic that CMU was ranked first for acting and musical theatre, I am interested in seeing what an outside opinion has to say about the other departments within the school of drama here. This article made me very excited to be going to this school full of an incredible faculty and staff and incredibly diverse and talented students.
Although I recognize the prestige and high quality of theater education that Carnegie Mellon provides, I think rankings of this kind are unrealistic. So many factors vary from school to school – professors, resources, season choices, etc. – and so many things vary from student to student that there is no way to definitively crown one program “the best.” I can say that Carnegie Mellon has the best program for me, because the way the program runs aligns with the way I like to learn, but depending on the kind of education one wants, CMU may not be the best choice. Maybe the program at FSU is more suited to their interests in one way or another. These rankings, I’ve found, can be discouraging and misleading when applying for college as well. I’ve seen people apply to colleges simply for their rank or their prestige, and then find that they aren’t getting what they want out of that school. My point isn’t that Carnegie Mellon doesn’t deserve recognition for its accomplishments, rather that ranking is subjective and has no intrinsic value.
If I had a dollar for every time I've seen this article shared this week, I'd be able to afford going to school at Carnegie Mellon. The original list that this article is written about describes CMU in a really strange way. It says that we are the "grandaddy" of drama programs, which is accurate, but then spends the rest of the blurb talking about Rick Edinger, a new staff member in the MT option. While Edinger seems to be a lovely new member of the CMU community, it's strange how the list talks almost exclusively about him, and not much about the things that actually make CMU special, like Playground. Additionally, I always wonder how much thought and debate actually goes into the creation of these lists. Of course CMU is going to make it on the list because of the name, but are our facilities and faculty that much better than all of these other schools? I'd love to accompany these judges on their tours of schools to see how much bias goes into their evaluation.
I always see Onstage Blog listed as the premiere location to find which colleges are the best to attend. In most of the colleges I visited last year, they mentioned their Onstage Blog rating as a part of their allure. I've always wondered why Onstage is so special, given that it is a blog page, and officially, just that particular blogs opinion on programs. There are no official places that rank theater programs, but that doesn't mean we should rely on one groups opinion, just like we wouldn't rely on Fox news or CNN as the exclusive location we receive our news. I wonder why everyone is so quick to trust a single blog, simply because they are the only ones who are ranking things. We are always taught not to trust things like blogs and opinions, but the entire school is very quick to trust a blog if it services them. I wish that onstage could give us a better measure of what exactly they use to rate schools, since just saying "We visited and took many factors into account" doesn't really let us know what is special about it, and their descriptions of each school are extremely vague, and have been for many years. When I was looking at their best tech theater school rankings, I found their evaluations to not always be accurate, which might send kids in the wrong direction. While I do not dispute that CMU is the best, I do think there need to be more official and published criteria from onstage and anyone else ranking schools, so we actually know exact reasons why it was rated the best, rather than just name recognition.
Having seen the undergrad program for two years, I believe that Carnegie Mellon University offers one of the top notch programs in all areas of theater. Although I’m glad that someone else also feels the same way, we as a school should also be wary of being complacent with the ranking. Everyone loves ranking schools. It’s a surefire clickbait title that draws in big population from current students, prospective students, parents and alums. But we all know that rankings are based on subjective criteria. At least they are mentioned in the article that the “particular factors that were heavily looked at this year were quality of facilities, performance opportunities and value of diversity.” So we know that the undergrad acting program is doing great in the top three criteria, but that does not mean it is great in everything else and so it may mean that we are just baby steps ahead of everyone else, as the D&I committee proudly admitted. We really should carefully examine and read between the lines of these college rankings.
CMU drama has been told they are number one since the minute I arrived here freshman year. Don’t get me wrong; it was very cool walking through the doors of Purnell for the first time knowing that you are attending the “best” among BFA programs. Let me tell you, that feeling starts to wear off once you reach the second or third week at the school.
My initial reaction to this article was positive because I know how strong the musical theatre program is at SoD. But judging, by the way, they described CMU makes me wonder if they even know anything about life a CMU. This will be my 4th year attending SoD and I still don’t know if I would qualify myself to write a review on the program. I think it is really important to realize that every BFA program has its strengths and weakness and each is different in their own respect, so I think it is challenging and unrealistic to rate such programs.
Whenever I see Carnegie Mellon in rankings of theatre programs, I think about the speech Peter Cooke gave at the family orientation session. He said that our School of Drama appears on rankings all the time published by all different organizations, and he’s never aware of them or the criteria until the rankings appear. For a school with this much name value, it was nice to hear that the Head of School is more concerned with how we work and interact internally, rather than how we are perceived by the outside world and competitors. Of course there’s something to be said about the weight of CMU Drama’s name and it’s fun to throw around and brag about occasionally. But ultimately, the experience I’ve had from interacting with peers, professors, and upperclassmen is that the work that matters comes from the individual’s drive, creativity, and perseverance within this intense and wonderful program.
8 comments:
When attending CMU, I’ve heard a lot of people saying that we go to “the number one drama school” in the country. Given, hearing this is very strange when you’re actually going to the school, but reading it on a major newspaper, The Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, is even more strange. According to the newspaper article, CMU is very praised in terms of its BFA curriculum. While reading this, I was really intrigued by the facts that they were providing about CMU in comparison to other prestigious schools. I, on a completely biased level, was really excited to hear that NYU and Julliard are also considered top-notch performing art schools, and are consequently located in my hometown, New York City. It’s really cool to read something similar to a profile on my school, and hearing the outside point of view. Of course, whichever school you go to, you will think is the best- but hearing other people kindly report on what my school has to offer is comforting and reassuring.
I found this article very interesting because I had kept seeing people post the list, and I always thought "wow that's great, our musical theatre department produces very talented and employable actors." But reading this article told me a little more about what went in to actually making that list. And the thing that excited me the most and made me the proudest of the school I attend is that something that was heavily looked at this year was the value of diversity. I am very excited to go to a school where their diversity is recognized across the country. Although it is fantastic that CMU was ranked first for acting and musical theatre, I am interested in seeing what an outside opinion has to say about the other departments within the school of drama here. This article made me very excited to be going to this school full of an incredible faculty and staff and incredibly diverse and talented students.
Although I recognize the prestige and high quality of theater education that Carnegie Mellon provides, I think rankings of this kind are unrealistic. So many factors vary from school to school – professors, resources, season choices, etc. – and so many things vary from student to student that there is no way to definitively crown one program “the best.” I can say that Carnegie Mellon has the best program for me, because the way the program runs aligns with the way I like to learn, but depending on the kind of education one wants, CMU may not be the best choice. Maybe the program at FSU is more suited to their interests in one way or another.
These rankings, I’ve found, can be discouraging and misleading when applying for college as well. I’ve seen people apply to colleges simply for their rank or their prestige, and then find that they aren’t getting what they want out of that school. My point isn’t that Carnegie Mellon doesn’t deserve recognition for its accomplishments, rather that ranking is subjective and has no intrinsic value.
If I had a dollar for every time I've seen this article shared this week, I'd be able to afford going to school at Carnegie Mellon. The original list that this article is written about describes CMU in a really strange way. It says that we are the "grandaddy" of drama programs, which is accurate, but then spends the rest of the blurb talking about Rick Edinger, a new staff member in the MT option. While Edinger seems to be a lovely new member of the CMU community, it's strange how the list talks almost exclusively about him, and not much about the things that actually make CMU special, like Playground. Additionally, I always wonder how much thought and debate actually goes into the creation of these lists. Of course CMU is going to make it on the list because of the name, but are our facilities and faculty that much better than all of these other schools? I'd love to accompany these judges on their tours of schools to see how much bias goes into their evaluation.
I always see Onstage Blog listed as the premiere location to find which colleges are the best to attend. In most of the colleges I visited last year, they mentioned their Onstage Blog rating as a part of their allure. I've always wondered why Onstage is so special, given that it is a blog page, and officially, just that particular blogs opinion on programs. There are no official places that rank theater programs, but that doesn't mean we should rely on one groups opinion, just like we wouldn't rely on Fox news or CNN as the exclusive location we receive our news. I wonder why everyone is so quick to trust a single blog, simply because they are the only ones who are ranking things. We are always taught not to trust things like blogs and opinions, but the entire school is very quick to trust a blog if it services them. I wish that onstage could give us a better measure of what exactly they use to rate schools, since just saying "We visited and took many factors into account" doesn't really let us know what is special about it, and their descriptions of each school are extremely vague, and have been for many years. When I was looking at their best tech theater school rankings, I found their evaluations to not always be accurate, which might send kids in the wrong direction. While I do not dispute that CMU is the best, I do think there need to be more official and published criteria from onstage and anyone else ranking schools, so we actually know exact reasons why it was rated the best, rather than just name recognition.
Having seen the undergrad program for two years, I believe that Carnegie Mellon University offers one of the top notch programs in all areas of theater. Although I’m glad that someone else also feels the same way, we as a school should also be wary of being complacent with the ranking. Everyone loves ranking schools. It’s a surefire clickbait title that draws in big population from current students, prospective students, parents and alums. But we all know that rankings are based on subjective criteria. At least they are mentioned in the article that the “particular factors that were heavily looked at this year were quality of facilities, performance opportunities and value of diversity.” So we know that the undergrad acting program is doing great in the top three criteria, but that does not mean it is great in everything else and so it may mean that we are just baby steps ahead of everyone else, as the D&I committee proudly admitted. We really should carefully examine and read between the lines of these college rankings.
CMU drama has been told they are number one since the minute I arrived here freshman year. Don’t get me wrong; it was very cool walking through the doors of Purnell for the first time knowing that you are attending the “best” among BFA programs. Let me tell you, that feeling starts to wear off once you reach the second or third week at the school.
My initial reaction to this article was positive because I know how strong the musical theatre program is at SoD. But judging, by the way, they described CMU makes me wonder if they even know anything about life a CMU. This will be my 4th year attending SoD and I still don’t know if I would qualify myself to write a review on the program. I think it is really important to realize that every BFA program has its strengths and weakness and each is different in their own respect, so I think it is challenging and unrealistic to rate such programs.
Whenever I see Carnegie Mellon in rankings of theatre programs, I think about the speech Peter Cooke gave at the family orientation session. He said that our School of Drama appears on rankings all the time published by all different organizations, and he’s never aware of them or the criteria until the rankings appear. For a school with this much name value, it was nice to hear that the Head of School is more concerned with how we work and interact internally, rather than how we are perceived by the outside world and competitors. Of course there’s something to be said about the weight of CMU Drama’s name and it’s fun to throw around and brag about occasionally. But ultimately, the experience I’ve had from interacting with peers, professors, and upperclassmen is that the work that matters comes from the individual’s drive, creativity, and perseverance within this intense and wonderful program.
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