By SHARON EBERSON
In naming Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama the No. 4 best drama program for earning an acting degree from “L.A. to London,” The Hollywood Reporter should have said, “in the English-speaking world,” as its Top 25 list includes a school in Australia.
Mostly, however, the 2025 list stays closer to home, and includes Penn State at No. 24.
THR chose CMU — the United States’ longest-running collegiate drama program — to follow Juilliard, Yale and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts by “weighing factors including overall training, cost, alumni success and industry connections.”
Reasons for Carnegie Mellon’s high ranking include “the more than 50 alumni working on Broadway this past season.” Those included the stars of the musical Buena Vista Social Club — Tony winner Natalie Venetia Belcon and Isa Antonetti — plus Tony-nominated Megan Hilty and Leslie Odom Jr.’s impending return to Hamilton. The Hollywood Reporter, which emphasizes a focus on film in its name, noted it has been “a pretty big year” for Stephen Schwartz, the composer of Wicked.
It did not note that Schwartz’s latest original musical, The Queen of Versailles, hits Broadway in October, nor did it say that Billy Porter is headed back to Broadway, first in Cabaret, and next year, in a new revival of La Cage aux Folles. In 2024, when CMU also came in fourth, THR noted that is illustrious alumni include Judith Light, Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer, as well as Sarah Pidgeon and Will Brill, both in Stereophonic.
The list of stars of stage and screen, including behind the scenes, is a very long one.
“The school’s conservatory-style undergraduate curriculum sees acting and music theater students taking the same core curriculum in acting, moving and speech before segueing into more specialized areas,” THR writes, adding, “CMU admits 12 acting and 12 musical theater students each year, with an annual tuition of $67,020.”
The image used for CMU is very telling: It is from the school’s pre-Broadway production of Tony-nominated John Proctor Is the Villain.
Finding Carnegie Mellon in the top 10 of any poll of top collegiate drama programs is not a surprise. Where the school lands, however, is based on the information-gathering process, and how statistics and reviews are weighed.
For instance, in a poll of the “2025 Best Colleges for Performing Arts in America,” Niche.com named Carnegie Mellon No. 6. Using “key statistics,” student reviews and data from the U.S. Department of Education, the ranking compares the top performing arts colleges, drama schools, theater programs and acting schools in the U.S., the site says. The Niche rankings this year introduced an “Economic Mobility Index,” based on the student’s economic background, and removed ACT/SAT scores, “to reflect a general de-emphasis on test scores in the college admissions process.”
Of Penn State, the THR article says: “Several alumni from Penn State’s musical theater program have landed on national tours and on Broadway, including Jasmine Forsberg and Maria Wirries, who are both featured in Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, and Caroline Bowman, a lead in this season’s Smash.”
The article noted that A. Kikora Franklin, a dancer and choreographer who is a longtime member of the Penn State faculty, was named interim director of the school in August for a two-year term. THR adds that undergraduate tuition and fees for an acting major were about $20,000 in-state last year and $42,000 for out-of-state.
For the full rankings, visit The Hollywood Reporter by clicking here.
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