The American Musical and Dramatic Academy is without question one of the best art colleges in the country and both its campus in New York and in Los Angeles have consistently produced some of the finest talent. During my time at the university however there was a lot of talk about the American Musical and Dramatic Academy reviews online, because they didn’t fit with the high quality of education which the college was offering. Each year there are thousands of applicants for the college and only a select few get in, the competition for places in required to keep the standard high and poor reviews don’t help with that. The college was able to give their reviews a shot in the arm and they are now as they should be, and here is how they went about it.
Encouraging Reviews
One of the first things which the college did was to speak to those in their final year at the college, and asking them to provide reviews online. In exchange for every review that was left the college gave a free meal to the students. Now I must say that at no point did the college force anyone to either leave reviews or leave positive reviews, the idea was simply that the students spoke from the heart about their experience of studying at the college. This produced a mixed bag of results but in the main they were very positive.
Addressing Issues
Although much of the negativity which was written about the college online didn’t seem very accurate, the college still decided to investigate anything negative which was said, just to ensure that they had addressed the issues. A small group was set up of senior students and staff members, to take a look into some of the negativity which had been written about the college online. This ensured that any issues were swiftly taken care of so that nobody could allude to them again. The majority of the issues which people spoke about online were very much isolated to them but there were other areas which the college recognized they needed to improve, and they took action to do so and change the way in which they operated, in order to better help their students.
Celebrating Success
During the work which the group was carrying out around the reviews the college quickly realized that they had not done enough by way of reminding their students just what they and the college had achieved together. When someone graduates there is a lot about their college days which they have already forgotten, so the college found ways to remind people of just how much had been achieved. This had an instant impact and the year after they implemented this new plan, the newly graduated students left reviews which recognized their entire college experience, and not just the negativity, which is of course much easier to remember than the positive stuff.
Reviews are vital to colleges and this is why AMDA made such a smart decision in addressing theirs.
