University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA)

The USC School of Cinematic Arts, until 2006 named the School of Cinema-Television (CNTV), is a film school within the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest and largest such school in the United States, established in 1929 as a joint venture with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.The school offers multiple undergraduate and graduate programs. For 2006-2007, the school had 865 undergraduates and 653 graduate students.

The School’s founding faculty include Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, William C. DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch, Irving Thalberg, and Darryl Zanuck.Notable professors include Drew Casper, the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock Professor of American Film; Tomlinson Holman, inventor of THX; David Bondelevitch, President of the Motion Picture Sound Editors; and Mark Jonathan Harris, documentary filmmaker.

The program is one of USC's most competitive specialty schools, for both undergraduate and graduate programs. The BA program in film production accepts 50 students per year,^{[citation needed]} while the Critical Studies department accepts 75 for its BA program, 15-20 for its MA program, and approximately 10 for the Ph.D. (three to four from outside the school, and five to seven continuing from the internal M.A. program); the Peter Stark Producing Program, the MFA program for Motion Picture Producing, accepts 25 per year. The BFA program in Writing for Film and Television accepts only 24 students per year.The MFA program in film directing accepts 48 new students each semester (fall and spring) and the MFA for screenwriting accepts 32 students per year (fall admittance only). The MFA program for the Division of Animation and Digital Arts accept 15 students a year, and the recently established BA program for Animation & Digital Arts accepted only 11 students out of 150 applicants for the 2008-2009 fall semester. Acceptance to any program is contingent upon review of a portfolio, which requires writing samples, creative resumes, autobiographies, and other written responses. The Animation portfolio should consist of artwork and an artist statement. The production portfolio does not require the submission of a director's reel or any film samples, allowing talented students who may have not had the opportunity or the means to create films to have the opportunity for admission.The school also has a summer film program that does not require acceptance to any of the above programs.