Hi! Great questions.
1. This is a tough one. A big part of it was how the schools were dealing with Covid - NYU kept insisting that everything was going to be a-okay by September, and whenever I pushed back and asked for a contingency plan, they refused to give me any information. I also felt that moving to NYC in the midst of Covid - especially with a lot of the city, and particularly the theaters - being closed would take away from why I wanted to move to the city. I didn't want to risk moving across the country (I'm in LA) and then being stuck in a tiny apartment if there was another serious shutdown. With Chapman... it never felt right. I interviewed with the head of the program and he spent 70% of the time talking about himself. With CSUN, once they reached out, I set up a call with their program coordinator and he spent an hour talking about all the great things CSUN had to offer. And, he set me with two students - one alum, one current student - to talk to and ask questions. Everyone had nothing but good things to say. They were one of the first schools in the country to commit to an online semester and let students know what they were in for. (We're also going to be online for spring, and they let us know this around mid-October). As you mentioned, the cost is amazing. Even if you have to take out loans, the whole program is maximum what *one semester* at NYU/Chapman/USC would be, and considering how low the pay is when you start in the industry, I wanted to minimize debt as much as possible. Oh! And it's also an incredibly small program - there's only 13 of us in my cohort - and I really loved that. I'm excited to eventually go back to campus, but they've done a great job with teaching via Zoom thus far.
2. I LOVE MY COHORT SO MUCH! I will say, it's a little weird meeting new people via Zoom. But we had an orientation, and then after we set up a facebook group to chat/share links/get to know each other. We had one professor who started us off doing a ~vulnerability exercise~ and we all bonded, and we would have happy hours 1-2x a week after class (all via zoom) to hang out and get to know each other. Just like in real life, it takes work, but I'd say for those of us who participate regularly, it's really fulfilling. Even during our break, we have a weekly happy hour to hang out and keep in touch. Everyone is so good in such different ways and personally, it pushes me to do better work. It's a diverse group of people, which I love, and it's half women and half men. Like I mentioned, there's 13 of us, which is a good size group. I was also really blown away by my professors. They were all so different, but have a breadth of experience across the industry. My TV Writing class, taught by Patti Carr (who's currently on The Good Doctor), was the HARDEST - and BEST - writing class I've ever taken, period.
3. We didn't get as many because of Covid. But we did have Stuart Beattie (Collateral, Pirates of the Caribbean), Ethan Reiff (Kung Fu Panda), Martin Shafer (Castle Rock Entertainment), and William Horberg (Queen's Gambit). And because it's a small group, everyone got a chance to ask questions. It was pretty great.
4. Workload is what you make of it. It's definitely manageable with a job, at least in the first semester - I started the semester with a full-time job (got laid off due to Covid) and was working through November and keeping up with school, no problem. When you have to rewrite something, you can choose to spend a few hours or several days. What helped me was looking at the syllabi at the beginning of the semester, putting due dates in my calendar(s), and made sure to block out time to get stuff done. All that said, this semester our big assignments were a full tv episode and a short film script. And once you'd turn in a draft, you'd get notes, and some folks spent a lot of time on rewrites and others did not. Again - it is what you make of it. I think I spent more time on my TV ep rewrite because TV is where I want to work, but others spent more time on their short because they actually want to shoot it. The next couple of semesters we'll be balancing three different writing projects each semester, so...we'll see what happens
Also - all classes start at 7pm, so you can work full-time hours and still make it to class (especially while everything is online).
5. Not yet! I'm in the midst of applying for a summer fellowship. But from what I've heard, they're doing remote internships right now. Unclear how that will compare to a normal internship experience.
6. Not directly - I think Covid has interrupted potential networking events that might have otherwise happened. But we have alums at various production companies, at Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and more.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions (via this post, or via message!)
Good luck with your applications!
