Going to college for dance-- help?

To begin with you should pick up a copy of Dance Magazines' College guide. It lists all the schools, what they offer and what they require. http://www.dancemagazine.com/thecollegeguide/intro

You will be happy to know that the majority of schools are contemporary focus which means ballet and modern and they are pretty equal with perhaps a slight leaning towards modern in regards to choreography and performance. The top schools like this are also the ones with the highest hire rate would be NYU Tisch and Juilliard followed by Ailey/ Fordham.

Schools where alumni also do well are SUNY Purchase, Marymount Manhattan, Point Park(that is Triple focus of ballet, modern and jazz.)

This being said, there are Juilliard and Tisch students without work and you will find students at lesser schools who do get work. It is just the percentages are in the favor of the schools I listed. One of the reasons is that they are in NYC or close (SUNY Purchase) except for Point Park. You can make great connections in NYC.

In terms of academics, Juilliard is not too great. You only need a H.S. diploma to get in. Not even a SAT score. NYU Tisch is NYU of course. So that makes it the Juilliard for smart kids.

There is a great school in NYC that offers a BA not a BFA in dance. You do realize that you will be getting less dance than you would at a BFA program. That would be Eugene Lang. They have Francois Peron as ballet master ( POB trained and danced with NYCB.) He also teaches at Juilliard and the Manhattan Youth Ballet and they have Rebbecca Stein for modern. My daughter had him when she was in Manhattan Youth Ballet.

Bottom line is that for concert contemporary dance, only 10% of the best trained dancers get work and only 10% of them can make a living at it.

* Juilliard accepts 24 students. !2 girls and 12 boys. That means a 1 in 12 chance of getting in. NYU Tisch accepts 30 dancers and no quotas on gender.

*EDIT: Jdavies usually has good advice, but this time he is wrong. For ballet you need to work right out of high school but for modern/contemporary dance you really need the college programs to both get stronger, older and to expose you to the very choreographers who may eventually hire you. They are the guest choreographers at most schools. One of the best ways to get hired is to be exposed to these people and work with them. Many students were hired right form their last showcase at Tisch when my daughter went getting several offers before they even graduated.

*SandraL is dead wrong. A BFA is for performance and is what is offered at both Juilliard and Tisch. If you wanted to teach, Juilliard has nothing for teaching and Stienhardt not Tisch at NYU offers a BA in dance for those who want to teach. SandraL is obviously not a professional dancer if she thinks 12 year olds at small studio companies is what a dance company is all about. Professional modern companies like Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Aszure Barton etc. all use college age dancers and obvious aren't using 11 year old dancers in their company.. Just look at the resumes of people in the top modern/contemporary companies. All college and conservatory trained. Parson's summer intensive is only open to college age students. Seems anyone can call themselves professional dancers these days if they dance and don't make a living at it. To be a professional and not a hobby, it has to be your main source of income.

1. UC Irvine or Utah.

2. None, such dancers come from dance schools, not colleges.

3. I'd recommend UC Irvine over Utah then.

4. BFA is for teaching, not a performing career. You need to go to a dance school for that, not college.

I think you are going the wrong route for this, you really should be going to a dance studio and working on your training if you want to perform.

Also, if you want to perform, chances are you may need to form your own small company of dancers. Most companies only accept dancers 12 or younger, not college age dancers.

Look into the history of the dancers and see where they went to college. If they went to college for dance at all.

My guess is that you'll be wasting your money.

There is nothing like 4 hours of Swedish Cinema...with lots of meat .

ummm... im pretty sure desales university in pennsylvania has a pretty good program. check it out.