Top 276 Film Schools in North America
Dan Mirvish's Aggregated List of the Top 276 Film Schools in North America (2025)
This is Dan Mirvish's secret list of the Top 276 Film Schools in North America in 2025.
Overall ranking ("Ovrl") methodology is based on proprietary formula that gives substantially more weight to the Trade/Magazne rankings/listing (THR, Variety, Wrap, Filmmaker & Moviemaker) which all tend to be curated by journalists familiar with the film industry. That said, most of them conflate both undergrad, grad and associate/certificate programs, as well as conflating film production with film studies programs. I give the "college mill" rankings and listings considerably less weight overall because they tend to be statistics-based, yet often contain glaring anomalies. On the other hand, their individual listings do a better job parsing between undergrad and grad programs, as well as between production and studies programs. Because their stats largely come from the US Department of Education, they mostly ignore the Canadian film schools.
CalArts and RISD did not get officially ranked on The Hollywood Reporter (THR) 2025 list because they'll be on a separate THR Best Animation School list later. So in the THR column, I assigned them the number they got on the THR 2024 list instead.
Var=Variety, Wrp=The Wrap, FM=Filmmaker Magazine, MM=
MovieMaker, USN=USNew&WorldReport, Nch=Niche, Prn=Princeton Review, CF= College Factual Overall, CF-Prd=College Factual Film & Video Production, CF-Std=College Factual Film/Media/Cinema Studies, CF-Grd=College Factual Film/Video/Photographic Arts-Masters Degree,
CR-UPrd=College Raptor's undergraduate Cinematography and Film/Video Production,
CR-UStd=College Raptor's undergraduate Film/Cinema/Video Studies,
CR-GPrd=College Raptor's masters degrees in Cinematography and Film/Video Production,
CR-GStd=College Raptor's masters degrees in Film/Cinema/Video Studies, u=Undergrad Program, g=Graduate Program, a=Associate/Certificate/Extension Programs,
ELaw=they have a well-regarded Entertainment Law program,
AAC&U=their institution's president signed the American Association of College & Universities' "Call for Constructive Engagement" letter. Canadian schools indicated with Maple Leaf Flag.
Dan=Dan has either been a guest lecturer, screened on campus and/or visited extensively.
