It is hard to believe we are on week two already, folks! For yours truly, it has been mostly researching more colleges including Appalachian State University, Elon University, Western Carolina University, Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University and Brown University. I have a tip for anyone who's documenting colleges - stay organized. In the beginning, I was simply typing things up almost at random, leaving no thought to the categories. Once I realized my mistake, I went back and put things into the categories I mentioned back in the blog post for week one. Another thing I’ve learned is to realize that I am me. When I say “I am me”, I mean that in the sense of, I am not one of the people who rank all the top colleges. While I was researching, I was led to a top 20 list of theater colleges on Princeton Review. Whenever I was reviewing a college that held a spot on the top 20 list, I had to think to myself. Am I genuinely interested in this school or have I convinced myself that I am interested simply because it appears on a list? When I say “I am me” I also mean that I am not one of the students enrolled in one of the top twenty colleges. Just because it worked out well for those students does not mean it will work out well for me.
As I started looking more closely at particular colleges and what I found attractive and unattractive about each one, I realized that what might make a college appear on a top 20 list or in the top 25% category may not be important to me. For example, many of the rankings stress how hard it is to gain admission or how much money alumni give to the college after graduation. Things that are more important to me are a beautiful campus with high quality facilities, professors who care about students and provide mentorship, small class sizes and strong study abroad programs. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll need to reevaluate my criteria and make sure they are tailored to my needs and preferences. This will be a fun journey, but I don’t think it is going to be easy.
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Hello everyone, I'm so excited to get this twelve week project off to a great start! As you might have read before, I am researching various college theater programs to see all the different factors that go into picking a college and see how I might just find the right place to help me with my Broadway dreams. Of course, there are lots of factors that go into picking a college. Cost, distance from home and even if they have a good theater program or not. It's important over the course of these next twelve weeks that I try not to get too fixated on one factor and forget the rest. For example, there are online reviews and top twenty lists of colleges, I might get so focused on a factor like that, that I completely forget if I could even afford to go to a top twenty prestigious college or university. Another thing for me to remember is that I should research as many factors in choosing a college as possible (without going overboard of course) due to the fact that while one factor of choosing a college might seem small to me, it could mean a great deal to someone else making the exact same decision. I want this blog to help inform other people about the factors of choosing a college or university and how all those factors can vary depending on where you want to go to get a higher education. Some of the colleges I’ve looked at thus far are Converse College, Hollins University, Drew University and Wagner College. Those are only four schools and already there is quite a bit of variation in factors like the amount of undergrads they have, distance and location, the fact if it is a women’s college or not, etcetera. Even if it is only a few thus far, one can catch my drift that there are lots of different options to choose from. I will feel accomplished in knowing that even if the twelve weeks are done and I haven’t decided on where I want to go, I’ll have helped my future self and maybe even helped a few other people too.
Hello everyone! Welcome to week 0 of my Genius hour project! Since reading my classmates' and teacher's feedback on my pitch, I have decided to follow through on my idea to research theater programs from various colleges. This way, I can personally see which choice is the best for me to follow my Broadway dreams and share a little information about which theater program could work for you.
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AuthorI'm a high school student researching theater programs for college. Archives
December 2019
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