2025 Best Acting Associate Degree Schools in New York
3Colleges in New York
210Associate Degrees
an associate degree in acting is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #198 out of 1020 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Acting Associate Degree Schools in New York ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 210 associate degrees in acting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Acting School for Your Associate Degree
The acting associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality acting program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on acting students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other acting students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized acting related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for acting students working on their associate degree.
The acting school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Acting Associate Degree Schools in New York.
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Acting in New York
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for acting students seeking a an associate degree.
Every student who is interested in an associate degree in acting needs to take a look at American Academy of Dramatic Arts - New York. Located in the large city of New York, American Academy of Dramatic Arts - New York is a private not-for-profit school with a small student population.More information about a associate in acting from American Academy of Dramatic Arts - New York
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in acting needs to look into New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. Located in the large city of New York, New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts is a private for-profit school with a fairly small student population.More information about a associate in acting from New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts
Best Acting Colleges in the Middle Atlantic Region
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).