College Selection: Our Journey to UB
College Tours: 4 Schools, 5 Days, 361 Miles Driven
Our college tour began with a flight from Atlanta to Syracuse. I live the #SkyMilesLife and status has it’s privileges. Derrian was able to fly first class for the first time. It was quite entertaining as he started to recognize the differences in the experience.
As soon as we touched down it was straight from the rental car counter to Syracuse University.
My Syracuse University Pros: Large dorm rooms, decent diversity (and inclusiveness of different cultures, interests, and lifestyles), lots of available food across campus (he IS the snack king), the campus felt safe, they have a partnership with Syracuse Stage (a local theater), availability of rental text books, and a local airport. A big positive for me was the rule that public performances are not allowed during freshman year. This policy is to allows students to focus on getting settled into college and to not compete with each other before bonds are formed.
My Syracuse University Cons: They have co-ed dorms (neither Derrian nor I are a fan of this), they have individual bathrooms as opposed to community which has its advantages but really looses a part of dorm life, and it’s not a fully closed campus. So although it did feel safe, open campuses are concerning to me.
Given that Derrian’s academics and extracurricular experience are both strong I felt confident that he’d have his pick of all of the schools that he applied to.
And then… we walked into the information session for the performing arts program and the advisory to the program stated that for Musical Theater they are accepting twenty three students. *GASP* I knew that there was no way I heard that correctly. So I raised my hand… “Did you say 23, like 21, 22, 23 (as I counted one, two, three on my fingers in disbelief)… a two and a three, 23?” Out of more than 1,000 applications each year they accept TWENTY THREE students (barely 2%). This process just got harder.
Day two of the tour took us from Syracuse to Ithaca. Ithaca College was Derrian’s #1 choice. I’ve been hearing about Ithaca for YEARS, I expected amazing. I was unimpressed.
My Ithaca College Pros: Closed campus, vocal training all four years, a more rigorous curriculum, core classes follow a theme to be more relevant to each students interests.
My Ithaca College Cons: Ithaca lacks a college town feel (and an airport), as well as diversity. There is no greek life (he’s still undecided if he’s interested) and no major sports (sporting events in my opinion are a valuable part of the college experience). And overall, I just did not like the vibe. It didn’t FEEL like where he belongs.
From Ithaca we headed to Fredonia. Prior to Derrian’s college search I had never heard of Fredonia. And that’s where things got interesting. Fredonia isn’t a city it’s a village. A VILLAGE… we aren’t village people (I couldn’t resist the YMCA reference). But seriously, while Fredonia was a nice place (with extremely nice people) the extremely small town vibe didn’t appeal to him. We contemplated skipping the tour since we weren’t spending the night in Fredonia but I’m glad we attended. If you (or your student) are interested in a great theater program at a small school in a small town then consider SUNY Fredonia.
After the tour we hit the road to Buffalo. Let me start by saying, if you need a good co-pilot to keep you awake on narrow windy back roads DO NOT… I repeat DO NOT put Derrian in the passengers seat. #WorstCoPilotEver
My first thought when we arrived at University at Buffalo was “Whoa! This campus is huge”. The parking lots at UB are probably the size of Fredonia’s campus (I’m probably exaggerating, don’t fact check me).
We toured the main campus but because we were there on a Saturday we weren’t able to attend an info session for the theater program. I fell in LOVE with Buffalo. Everything about it just felt RIGHT!
My University of Buffalo Pros: The campus is beautiful and everything that you could possibly need (barber shop, CVS, groceries and other recognizable brands) is on campus, Amherst is one of the safest cities in the US, they have great diversity, Division I sports, and an airport.
One of the biggest selling points for UB is the theatre district in downtown Buffalo. There are roughly 20 production companies within a few blocks. This represents a HUGE opportunity for Derrian both during college and after. Opportunities to perform, to apprentice, to work backstage are abound and Buffalo is significantly more cost effective for a starving young artist than New York City.
I also think it’s supper cool that Buffalo is 30 minutes from Canada, it’s a great opportunity to explore having another country in your backyard. And given that I travel to Toronto quite often it gives me the opportunity for a “pop-in” periodically lol.
We spent our last day visiting Niagra Falls (on the Canadian side) before we headed back south. And from here the college application process began… but that’s another blog for another day.
(Oh yeah, I forgot my Buffalo Cons… it was really just the class size for core classes. The typical class is 13:1 and lectures have hundreds of students. These are common challenges of larger schools.)
The Decision: We always have to be EXTRA!
I’ve been waiting to announce that he had been accepted and chose University at Buffalo for over a month. But due to several administrative speed bumps we’ve kept it (semi) quiet until he was officially registered!
I had the idea of recording a video to announce his decision. Mr. Starr took the idea, mixed in some additional creativity and props and we went into “script writing, stage direction, and production”.
Who says only mega star college athletes get a breaking news press announcement… Musical theater majors can play a college athletes on “TV”.
College Athlete: Derrian Brown
Reporter #1: Auntie Felicia
Reporter #2 (Bob… Johnson): Mr. Starr
Reporter #3 (Brittany Squarre): ME!
Random Voice: #ParkerLogan
Videographer & Executive Producer: ME!
Sound Man, Script Writer, Stage Designer, Director: Mr. Starr
