Know of any colleges with good dance programs?

Question:right now i'm in a pre-professional company and i'm looking for a college that has a dance program where i can keep taking classes and dancing a lot, but i'm most likely not going to be a professional, so i don't want to go to a place like julliard (not that i could get in or anything)
i also want it to have pretty good academics and maybe even a scholarship?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: right now i'm in a pre-professional company and i'm looking for a college that has a dance program where i can keep taking classes and dancing a lot, but i'm most likely not going to be a professional, so i don't want to go to a place like julliard (not that i could get in or anything)
i also want it to have pretty good academics and maybe even a scholarship?

The question you're asking is actually a bit tough to answer since you state that you're NOT looking to dance professionally. Otherwise, I know of plenty of top-notch college dance programs that have excellent reputations for preparing professional dancers. My daughter is a senior BFA dance major who transferred from another college dance program, plus she received training from two other college dance programs. With that background, along with the other programs she checked out and auditioned for, AND with all the reading I continue to do on the subject, I've come to know quite a lot about college dance programs.

The best college dance programs where you are "dancing a lot" are the BFA programs: at least 75% of your graduation requirements are either dance technique or dance-related academic classes. But since you want a college with "pretty good academics," you may need to consider colleges that offer a B.A. or a minor in dance. But then, you wouldn't be dancing "a lot," as a B.A. dance major only needs about 50% of their graduation requirements in dance and a minor would be taking even fewer dance classes.

Next, if you're thinking you want to keep up in ballet at the pre-professional level, you have to realize that all of the B.A. dance programs (and, actually, most of the BFA programs) are focused more on modern dance. When my daughter was a guest student at the dance program at the local university (a highly selective university with excellent academics, btw), she was a high school junior in a college freshman ballet class and she was one of the best students in the class because it is a modern-focused program.

There is a lot of discussion about good college dance programs for students in your situation on the "Ballet Talk for Dancers" message board.
http://dancers.invisionzone.com/index.ph...

Go through the alphabetical listing in the "Colleges and Universities with Ballet Programs" section for comments on a large number of colleges and how students at those places manage to keep up with dancing. In actuality, most of the listed colleges don't have full-fledged BALLET programs. Instead, the section covers everything from the quality of ballet CLASSES at a college to whether there are any good ballet studios close to the campus.

As for scholarships, the dance scholarships only go to the top dance majors. If you think you might want to be a BA dance major and even double major in something else (in order to get a dance scholarship), then you'd need to find that narrow category of colleges where you can be tops in a program where no one is looking to be professional and still manage to find challenging enough classes. Not an easy task, but they do exist: places like Barnard, Amherst, Swarthmore, etc. At a place like the University of Utah, though, it is very competitive just to be accepted as a dance major, as it is one of the top dance programs.

Otherwise, if you just meant an academic scholarship, then you just have to maintain excellent grades and get really good test scores. My daughter has both an academic and a dance scholarship at her university, but I'd say the academics are just "OK" there.

Happy hunting.

University of California has a good program, you should check it out. Many colleges actually have dance programs, all over the country. :)
Happy Dancing!!! :)

hofstra university. it has a realy good dance program and 50% of the people who apply get in. the teachers are realy nice. i don't know were your looking, but i would highly reccomend hofstra.

Boston Conservatory has a great dance program! that is where i go.

University of Utah, good for ballet and modern.