I just did some research and found:

– FSU has one of the best BFA programs

– MFA is ranked 3rd within the university

– 100% guarantee to find a job within 12 months…

Unfortunately, a single reliable source for this information does not exist. This is largely due to the fact that determining the “best” film school lies in what any given aspiring film student wants — and what the parent university expects — from their film school. For example, the AFI (American Film Institute) and Cal Arts have very different programs driven by remarkably different missions, and neither one of them resemble USC’s program, which is quite different than FSU’s program. A student looking for an industry-oriented film school experience, for example, would be sorely disappointed by the educational approach at Cal Arts.

What are you looking for in a film school? (I assume you’ve posted questions because you are interested in film school.) The answer to this question will help you research the various programs around the country to determine which is “best” for you.

The US News & World Report used to rank film schools but discontinued this practice in the mid-1990s. They had a difficult time establishing reasonable benchmarks of quality. In their last rankings, however, FSU was #3 among publics.

If an aspiring film student wants to attend a school that has a history of producing successful filmmakers in the U.S. film industry, then he/she might find it useful to look to some industry indicators of quality (e.g., Student Academy Awards). As you likely already know, an FSU film student won the Gold Student Academy Award (Student Oscar) this year in the narrative category. In fact, FSU students regularly pop up as winners in both the Student Television Academy Awards (Emmys) and the Student Academy Awards (Oscars).

Other schools that routinely produce students who win the Student Oscar include NYU, Columbia (the Ivy, not the one in Chicago), AFI, and USC. Students from Stanford often win in the documentary category, and students from Ringling School of Art and Design, as well as SCAD, often win the animation category.

The Directors Guild of America in New York has recognized three film schools in past 7 or 8 years for their excellence: USC, NYU and FSU. The Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker contest engages 13 top film schools in a competition that results in screening the winning film in approximately 20,000 theaters across the country (you’ve likely seen these shorts in the theater). Students have won the competition from NYU, USC (this year), Columbia, Chapman University, and FSU (twice).

In response to your second question, there are more than 300 film programs in the United States. Film programs seem to be everywhere, and they exist in every form of education – from vocational organizations such as The New York Film Academy, The Brooks Institute in California, and Full Sail in Orlando, Florida; to Ivy League institutions such as Columbia University; to state universities like the University of Texas and Florida State University. These programs span the spectrum of possible ways for aspiring filmmakers to earn educational credentials, from certificates, diplomas and associate degrees, to baccalaureate, masters and doctoral degrees.

Given the popularity of the field, vocational-technical for-profit organizations have found the business of film education to be quite lucrative. For-profit organizations in film production education typically demand unusually high tuition costs, market themselves as providing hands-on training in the use of state-of-the-art equipment and facilities (e.g., “A Real World Education” Full Sail, Orlando), and are held to less-rigorous educational criteria from lesser-regarded accrediting organizations than those normally associated with university programs.

In recent years, many of these for-profit programs have begun to offer bachelors degrees in an effort to attract students whose parents might not otherwise support their children attending a “vo-tech” program. Though the quality of these programs is considered by many to be suspect, the promise of an undergraduate degree seems to appease the concerns of many parents and certainly contributes handsomely to the bottom-line goals of these organizations.

This is much more than you asked for, so I’ll stop now.

In summary, I would rank FSU as clearly in the top 10, very likely in the top five, and for the student who is looking for the kind of education FSU provides, number one.

BTW- actually gaining admission to any of the top 5-10 film schools is extremely difficult. (That’s why the for-profit schools are making so much money – they’ll take anyone, and plenty want to go to film school.) So another way of looking at how to choose the “best” film school for you would be to accept an offer from any of the film schools that are typically regarded as among the best – USC, UCLA, FSU, NYU (Columbia and AFI for graduate school only – they don’t offer undergraduate programs).

Hope this helps.