If you plan on getting your associate degree in drama & theater arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #65 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for drama & theater arts students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 373 associate degrees in drama & theater arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Drama & Theater Arts School for Your Associate Degree
The theater associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their associate degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their associate degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to drama & theater arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of drama & theater arts students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt drama & theater arts students go into to obtain their associate degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized drama & theater arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for drama & theater arts students working on their associate degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Drama & Theater Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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American Musical and Dramatic Academy is one of the best schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in drama & theater arts. Located in the city of New York, American Musical and Dramatic Academy is a private not-for-profit school with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the theater program state that they receive average early career wages of $15,909.
Any student who is interested in an associate degree in drama & theater arts has to check out American Academy of Dramatic Arts - New York. Located in the city of New York, American Academy of Dramatic Arts - New York is a private not-for-profit school with a small student population.
After graduation, theater associate recipients usually make an average of $12,445 in the first five years of their career.
It is difficult to beat LaGuardia Community College if you want to pursue an associate degree in drama & theater arts. LaGuardia is a fairly large public college located in the city of Long Island City.
Soon after graduating, theater associate recipients usually earn around $15,314 in the first five years of their career.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The theater associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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