Welcome to the Creative College Journey Podcast, the place to help raise awareness on the many pathways to a creative life and education and how college might be a part of it, because it's not where you go to school, but how you go to school that counts. Hosted by professional, creative and college expert, scott Barnhart, who is chatting with a variety of guests who have some amazing lived experiences from different universities, majors and creative industry interests, and we hope by hearing their stories it might help give you some inspiration to find your own creative college journey.

Hey friends and longtime listeners of the Creative College Journey podcast, I'm back. I know it's been a long minute, but I'm very excited to try something new today. I want to start doing some solo podcasts to give in real time information and advice about current topics, things that are going on in creative college admissions, and this is all in an effort to give additional context, points of view and advice to help you on your college admissions journey. As we're back to school, things are heating up Admissions talk for my rising seniors and current seniors. It's real. You guys are in the thick of it. So I want to give in real time advice and I hope itbill.

Playbill is not only the place where you get your programs when you go to a Broadway show, but it's also an incredible news resource Online Playbillcom. This is where you get theater news what's coming, what's happening all over the nation and, frankly, the world. I love this website. I continue to get up-to-date information from this website and the past few years, every year they do a back-to-school. Where do the actors of 2023 to 2024 Broadway season go to school? They call it the Big Ten and I love data. I love it. I love getting as much information about our industry as we can, and so this is actually a bit of data, but without the right context it can really do havoc on a rising junior or senior in terms of their perception of what it means, especially for musical theater or acting, what it means to go to college for this. And in many ways, my big critique of this is that there just isn't enough context for the data, what they do in this collection of information. They give you 10 schools that are most represented in a Broadway season. So that means, literally by the numbers, literally by the numbers, these actors who are represented went to these schools and were on Broadway in just this last season. The 10 schools are New York University, university of Michigan, carnegie Mellon, amda, pace, yale, juilliard, ccm, penn State, marymount Manhattan, elon and Boston Conservatory, and then there's a few additional honorable mentions.

Now, these are heavy-hitting institutions, no doubt about it. Some incredible training, really varied training. But here's the trick of reading this information is you see just a big old list of names and we don't really have any context about the school, about the program styles, about the history. It's just these are alumni who are on Broadway this year. So it makes perfect sense when you look at a school like NYU that it would be number one, not necessarily because of its training.

Certainly the training is one contributing factor, factors that lead to someone getting into a Broadway show, and maybe there's some correlation to a college, but not entirely right. Location, location matters. Proximity to New York does matter. So it would make sense that NYU would have more students in general attempting a Broadway career. Nyu is literally one of the biggest performing arts programs. So the size of a program, how many graduates out of that program are going out into the world a year, that's very different if there's a few hundred students from Tisch School of Drama versus 20 students from a smaller institution like my alma mater, wagner College or Texas State University. So we're not looking at percentage in terms of success, we're looking at just sheer numbers. And a school like NYU contributes more graduates into the Broadway industry than lots of other schools, just by the way that program is built. And you also have to realize these schools represent alumni from the school at large, not necessarily their training program. So that's other context that we're missing.

There are people on this NYU list that didn't graduate from Tisch. They very likely graduated from the business school or from the School of Communications or from Steinhardt. So when we look at this list, I love this list, I love this information, but we don't really have the full context. And that's where I just don't love a top 10 list, because NYU might be the dream school for one person and a perfect fit for one person, but it's not necessarily the fit for everyone. And that's so much of the work that I'm doing in independent education. Consulting is all about just giving families understanding about what's going to be best for them goals, artistic goals, business goals, geography goals, many different things that would make one of these schools great for them or not. Actually, I did just a little bit of math on one of these schools.

So CCM and again you see this list lovely, amazing actors. The fact is, ccm is one of the oldest programs. It's the first college in America to have started a traditional BFA musical theater program. It started in 1969. So the school has literally been in existence for 55 years. This list incorporates people who graduated from this program in the 70s and 80s no shade. But that's a very different conversation than a current junior or senior who is about to apply to a school.

Like you'll see in the CCM list there's Michelle Pock listed. I love Michelle Pock. If you get the chance to go see her in Wicked, or literally see her in anything, do it. Michelle Pock is a Tony winner. Michelle Pock has been in the industry for 30 years at the top of her game. Her ability to be in a Broadway show in this past season has very little to do with the fact that she went to CCM. That has everything to do with her long-term career trajectory and, remembering that this is a marathon career, not a sprint.

And while it's lovely to sort of acknowledge that they went to college at CCM, I think it's really important to also remember, especially for those folks who are reading this article, who this article is targeted for. This might be a very different list if we looked at people who made their Broadway debut in the past year and what schools did they go to. Things that sort of maybe are more relevant to an industry-hungry student thinking about schools, because this is where this block data just sort of skews the actual reality of the industry. So again, if you look at a school like CCM, if we do a basic math, let's say they had 20 graduates a year for 55 years. That's 1,100 graduates over the course of these last 50 years and 37 are represented on Broadway. In the past year. That's a 3% success rate I think is much more realistic for anyone walking into this entertainment industry, and that's not to scare you, but it's just to give you more accurate data.

This is a hard industry to get into, regardless, right. So really taking that into consideration because what I see happening with a lot of these schools and the want to go to a highly rejective conservatory program is that there's a sense that oh, if I get in then the rest of it's going to be easy, and that's just not the case. The industry getting into working, trading your talents for cash money is very different than getting a degree in a topic. They are not completely intertwined and I think there's a deep, deep misunderstanding about what a college degree can and cannot do for a young, aspiring working actor. Again, I start to sound like Doomsday, chicken Little. The sky is falling. That's not my intention at all, but it is to sort of lower some of this pressure as you're going into this, because I actually think this list sort of causes some inaccurate points of view without proper context.

Another thing that just doesn't come up is like Yale is on here and Yale doesn't have a training program for their undergraduate degree. The training program is in their master's level degree. So many of these schools also have master's programs or bachelor's programs. They don't all have BFAs. They all have different things going on and this is why Use this list as a jumping off point.

But remember, as you're going into this college season and as you're finalizing your list and clarifying it, you have to start with your goals first, right, and when I look at this list, when I work with clients, usually out of this 10, any one given client, once we've talked about their goals and what they're after, really only two or three of these are going to make sense for them for any number of reasons financial, academic, artistic kinds of training, the ability to double major, a study abroad programs there's lots of different things that will sort of like make up their algorithm that would make the perfect school, and often you know one of these top 10 schools will fit on it, but not all 10. In fact, I don't think in the years that I've been doing this, I've had a student or a client apply to all 10 of these top 10 schools. So this is the key is you have to take this information with a big old grain of salt, try to get the context that you need and then, as you're going into this college process, I implore you find out your key criteria. What are the three to five things that are deal breakers for you in your pursuit of a college creative degree? Is it the style of training? Is it the financial cost? Because, believe it or not, I truly believe one of the greatest markers for potential success for an aspiring artist is financial solvency, is having the least amount of financial debt, because you're then able to go after many of the gigs that other people, saddled with six figures of debt, literally can't afford to do.

Is it location? Is it cultural? Noticeably absent on this top 10 list, there is not a single Hispanic-serving institution or historically Black college or university that's of note institution or historically Black college or university that's of note. And for students of color, the ability to study theater in and around their culture could be the absolute thing they need on their journey towards a Broadway career, and that's why I would hate for this list to discourage a student for going after something that they are genuinely needing in their life and artistry. Is it prestige? I'm not mad at prestige. These are all very prestigious schools in many different ways.

What are the things that you're looking for? And then see which schools actually provide it, so that you don't rest on the laurels of a statistical top 10 list, because we, as artists, we're not statistics. We're humans with very different needs and very different stages of our development. So finding the right spot for you in your development and based on your creative interest and creative drivers. So really keep keeping that in mind as you're walking through this, because they've been matches for them and that's the key when we start to deal with sort of big data like this is how do you read it? How do you get into this? How do you look at that? So that's just my hot take on a recent article on Playbill. There's a lot of opinions about this on Instagram. By all means, check it out.

Another thing to sort of consider with this is also this only reflects the students who did go to one of these colleges. This doesn't account for the many hundreds thousands of people on Broadway who either didn't get a degree, got a degree at a totally different school and or found their own pathway towards a Broadway career, Because, remember, it's not where you go to school. It's how you go to school that counts. The other thing this list doesn't account for is all of the graduates from these programs who have transferred their skills into countless other careers, industries and jobs, both in the industry and out. So realizing this is just one tiny sliver of the actual data out there and remembering as you're walking through this you've got to forge your own path into this.

I hope this is helpful. I love talking about this and if you've got thoughts or questions or comments about this sort of list and what it means and how it might affect you or how maybe it's skewing your point of view about your list, don't hesitate to reach out. Email me at scottbarnhart at gmailcom. I'm happy to have some more conversation, or you can leave a comment here on the podcast episode. I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on this and whether or not this sort of clarification is helpful. Know that this month I'm actually doing some pop-up events. I'm doing some workshops about pre-screens, how to do them, best ways to do them at home on a budget and things to just generally look out for as you're starting to produce your monologue, song and dance pre-screens. I've got lots of tips and advice on ways to go about that. If you want to learn more about that, just head over to my website, creativecollegejourneycom and sign up for the mailing list and you'll get information on how to access those dates and that information.

That's another episode of the Creative College Journey podcast. We hope this in the news episode with me, scott Barnhart, was beneficial to you and I wanna thank you for taking time out of your busy day to listen. If you are in need of some encouragement, guidance and inspiration for your college journey and would like to work with me, scott, don't hesitate to head to our website, wwwcreativecollegejourneycom to schedule a free, no obligation one hour consultation to find out the many ways the creative college journey can help you on your path. You can also find Scott Barnhart on Instagram at Scott Barnhart. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcast. It really does help others find us, and be sure to come back in the coming weeks for more discussions and interviews about creative college admissions, lowering the temperature on the process and the many industry pathways and transferable skills that a creative education and life can offer. Don't forget it's not where you go to school, but how you go to school that counts. Thank you.