USC

It was a nose-to-nose thoroughbred horse race between USC and AFI, winner of 2011's first Top 25 Film Schools list in THR, but in the narrow consensus of experts consulted — indie insiders, academics, industry titans — in 2012, USC School of Cinematic Arts was ahead by a whisker. "It's been quite a year," says dean Elizabeth Daley. Alums made $7 billion worth of films.

FULL TEXT: The Hollywood Reporter's Second Annual List Of The Top 25 Film Schools

TUITION: $42,000 (plus room and board)
DEGREES: B.A., M.A., MFA and Ph.D. programs in film, TV, animation, interactive media
NOTABLE ALUMNI George Lucas, Ron Howard, Jon Landau

Did you like The Artist, Bridesmaids, The Tree of Life, Moneyball, Hugo, Modern Family, and The Killing? Thank AFI Conservatory for training their makers. "In an industry utterly wedded to presold titles, the ones coming out of AFI push that," says Oscar-winning alum Ed Zwick. AFI scored 3 Oscar noms, 12 Emmy noms, and the most Student Academy Awards.

FULL TEXT: The Hollywood Reporter's Second Annual List Of The Top 25 Film Schools

TUITION: $39,760 for first year; $48,365 for second year (includes thesis tuition of $8,605)
DEGREES: MFA, Certificate of Completion
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, Wally Pfister

Bejing Film Academy

Beijing Film Academy is the cradle of the nation's cinema, which cast a growing shadow this year when China closed in on Japan as the world's No. 2 film market and released the first $100 million Chinese epic with a Hollywood star, BFA grad Zhang Yimou's The Flowers of War. 

FULL TEXT: The Hollywood Reporter's Second Annual List Of The Top 25 Film Schools

TUITION: $6,700 – $9,400 for overseas students (classes not in English).
DEGREES: B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. programs in directing, cinematography, film management, film technology, acting and animation.
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Lu Chuan (City of Life and Death)
 

University of California Los Angeles

UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Dean Teri Schwartz is retooling the film program to blend with the theater department, which made THR's 25 best drama schools list. USC might have production and editing chops, but UCLA is said to produce stronger storytelling, directing and writing skills. And UCLA grads strike co-workers as happier without being lazier, as proved by 2012 Oscar winners Alexander Payne and Gore Verbinski.

TUITION: B.A.: $14,010 ($36,888 nonresident); MFA: $23,468 ($35,713 nonresident); M.A. or Ph.D.: $14,809 ($29,911 nonresident).
DEGREES: B.A., M.A., MFA and Ph.D.
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Justin Lin, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine).
 

New York University Tisch School of the Arts

NYU proudly still maintains the mean-streetwise filmmaking traditions of alums Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Vince Gilligan, but it's also keeping up with the times. Now students can can get an MBA/MFA in producing, or advice from Ted Hope and Geoff Gilmore in the new Cinema Research Institute. NYU struck a partnership with Corbis providing preferred access for rights to thousands of tunes.

TUITION: $46,269
DEGREES: B.A., BFA, MFA, MPS, M.A. and Ph.D.  in moving-image archiving, preservation, performance and cinema studies
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Joel Coen, Charlie Kaufman, Todd Phillips

La Femis

As the film biz goes global, foreign schools pop up more and higher on this list — including La Femis in Paris, up five slots from 2011. Last year, the Paris-based school accepted 44 of more than 1,100 applicants. All instructors are industry pros. A TV degree program launches in 2013. Classes are taught in French.

TUITION: Free for European Union members (for foreign students, $13,105)
DEGREES: Screenwriter, director, producer, sound engineer, set designer, editor, distributor, theater director
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool), Noemie Lvovsky (Camille Redouble)

Wesleyan University

Film Studies chair Jeanine Basinger, auteur of Wesleyan's program, has sent hundreds of students from Middletown, Conn., to Hollywood, including Joss Whedon and Michael Bay. This year, Benh Zeitlin and 27 other Wesleyan grads made Beasts of the Southern Wild, the Sundance and Cannes prize-winning Oscar contender. "We cover all the bases — we've got the art films and we have blockbusters covered with Joss' Captain America," says Basinger. "And we've also got Battleship and People Like Us — we're the top of the flops!" This cultural trifecta explains Wesleyan zipping up from No. 9 to 7 on this list.

TUITION: $59,402 (includes room and board)
DEGREES: B.A. in film studies
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Whedon, Bay, Miguel Arteta

California Institute of the Arts

CalArtians (as CalArts alums are known) are glad the L.A. Times called it the "Harvard Business School of animation." Grads have made films grossing $25 billion. Two of the five top-grossing films of 2012, Brave and Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, were CalArtian-directed, and grad James Chinlund's production design gave The Avengers its billion-dollar look. But they wish people knew they make live-action films too, like the indie Only the Young.

TUITION: $38,438
DEGREES: BFA, MFA in film, video and experimental animation; MFA in directing; BFA in character animation
NOTABLE ALUMNI: John Lasseter, Brenda Chapman, Tim Burton, James Mangold

Emerson College, Visual & Media Arts School

Boston's Emerson College's film, TV and media program is so eminent that only one in six applicants gets in. But it's getting even more eminent, and so it zoomed from 18 to 9 on THR's list. This month trustee and alum Vin Di Bona (America's Funniest Home Videos) kicked off the fund-raising campaign for Emerson's new $85 million campus tower on Sunset Boulevard. It opens in 2014, and the glamour can't be bad for current students' career prospects.

TUITION: $33,568
DEGREES: B.A. and BFA in media production, B.A. in media studies, MFA in media art
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Denis Leary, Doug Herzog, Seth Grahame-Smith, Norman Lear, Jay Leno

Columbia University School of the Arts

Cofounded by Milos Forman, Columbia still looms large under new chair Ira Deutchman, Fine Line's founder. Alum Antonio Mendez Esparza won at Cannes, Oscar nom Lisa Cholodenko joined the Academy board of governors, and Mark Raso won a Student Academy Award. And besides the famous MFA program, there's Annette Insdorf's brilliant undergrad film studies program, with teachers James Schamus and Richard Pena, whose students also make great movies (Half Nelson, Murderball).

TUITION: $49,448 MFA, $42,584 M.A. (not including fees)
DEGREES: MFA in film; M.A. in film
NOTABLE ALUMNI: Kathryn Bigelow, James Mangold, Simon Kinberg, Courtney Hun

Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

Where can you study film with European living legends if you speak only English or Czech? Prague's FAMU, where classes are taught in both Czech and English. Previous students include Forman, Vaclav Havel, Milan Kundera and 2012 Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland. FAMU directors revolutionized world cinema in the '60s, and this year graduate films went to Cannes and the Berlinale. Insiders say important program changes will be announced next year.

TUITION $20,655 English language MFA (with fees), Czech program free for all.
DEGREES MFA in cinema and digital media
NOTABLE ALUMNI Jiri Menzel (Closely Watched Trains), Emir Kusturica (Black Cat, White Cat)

University of Texas at Austin

UT's Department of Radio-Television-Film has been sending talent to Los Angeles and New York for 40 years, but it was Richard Linklater's 1991 Slacker that made Austin's film scene famous (and his 1993 Dazed and Confused that made Matthew McConaughey famous). Now Austin regularly sends films to Sundance and Venice, and big names descend on Austin for the SXSW film (and music) festival.

TUITION $4,832 undergraduate in state ($16,331 out of state); $4,528 graduate ($8,524 out of state)
DEGREES B.S. in radio-television-film, MFA in film and media production, MFA in screenwriting
NOTABLE ALUMNI Robert Rodriguez, Thomas Schlamme

Chapman University

To attract guests and filmmakers in residence like Bong Joon-ho, Robert Zemeckis and Bryan Singer to Orange County, Chapman's Dodge College of Film & Media Arts has to be good, and Chapman soared up nine slots on THR's list this year. "Chapman is quickly becoming the place for industry kids to attend," says Sony Pictures TV president Steve Mosko, who sent two sons there and rchool for interns. Big names attend new marketing professor Dawn Taubin's Women in Focus panel.

TUITION $20,520 undergad, $16,050 to $20,680 graduate
DEGREES B.A., MFA, MBA/MFA, J.D./MFA in screenwriting, film production, screen acting, PR, digital arts and broadcasting,
NOTABLE ALUMNI Ben York Jones (Like Crazy)

National Film and Television School

The only U.K. film school with its own film and TV studios, the NFTS, 25 miles from London, has the leading lights of British cinema as teachers and links with financiers for development deals. Sean O'Riordan's graduate project Newton's Law won a development deal and entry into the 2012 New York Television Festival in a new program with Warner Bros. International Television Production. Seventy percent of grads find jobs in the industry.

TUITION $15,176 ($32,000 for foreigners).
DEGREES M.A. in film and TV
NOTABLE ALUMNI David Yates (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit)

Rhode Island School of Design

For a school founded in Providence in 1877, RISD produces some pretty au courant filmmakers in its Film, Animation and Video program. Grad Seth MacFarlane (Ted) subversively applied VFX to crude comedy. Robert Richardson (who went to AFI after RISD) won his third Oscar for Hugo, a film steeped in the imagery of another era. At RISD, film is seen in the context of an art college, and many students resist the idea of show business as usual.

TUITION $41,022
DEGREES BFA in film, animation, video
NOTABLE ALUMNI Gus Van Sant, David Byrne

University of Television and Film of Munich

Munich's University of Television and Film opened in 1967, training such directors as New German Cinema founder Wim Wenders. Avant-garde and arty, Munich also prides itself on solid technical training in its new campus in Germany's big film town. Courses are in German, though visiting professors sometimes lecture in English.

TUITION $425 (€342) per semester.
DEGREES M.A. equivalent in directing, cinematography, screenwriting and producing.
NOTABLE ALUMNI Roland Emmerich, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), Bernd Eichinger (Downfall)

Florida State University

FSU's College of Motion Picture Arts in Tallahassee is huge news in Hollywood, thanks to its collaboration with VFX titan Digital Domain (Transformers), which gives students actual experience making blockbusters at its West Palm Beach facility. VFX professionals are screaming about the competition from unpaid — in fact, tuition-paying — young rivals, but in a down job market, this may be just the ticket for hungry talent trying to break in. FSU students have won as many Student Academy Awards as AFI's have: eight.

TUITION $6,403 bachelor's in state ($21,569 out of state); $18,935 graduate ($47,348 first year out of state)
DEGREES BFA in production, animation, digital arts; MFA in production, writing
NOTABLE ALUMNI Alan Ball

Loyola Marymount University

In the 1920s, Louis B. Mayer and Harry Warner helped raise funds for LMU's Los Angeles campus. They must be smiling now that LMU has opened its new virtual cinematography studio so students can make their own Avatars. Dean Stephen Ujilaki started an Incubator Lab to give grads industry mentors, and expanded LMU's partnership with Film Independent, jointly sponsoring a $10,000 screenwriting fellowship for LMU alums.

TUITION $38,917 undergraduate, graduate $1,020 per unit (plus fees)
DEGREES B.A. in film, TV, animation and recording arts; MFA in film, TV and screenwriting
NOTABLE ALUMNI Barbara Broccoli, Francis Lawrence, James Wong (American Horror Story)

The Polish National Film, Television, and Theater School

The Lodz Film Academy, as the Polish National Film, Television and Theater School is commonly known, produced many of the names you know in Polish cinema. It teaches producing, editing, screenwriting, photography, digital technology and broadcast journalism. Classes are taught in Polish.

TUITION $7,411-$16,058 ($2,471 for Polish-language courses; students of Polish descent get a 30 percent discount)
DEGREES B.A., M.A., Ph.D., D.Sc
NOTABLE ALUMNI Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, Zbigniew Rybczynski

Australian Film Television and Radio School

Australia's preeminent film school for 40 years, AFTRS benefits from its relocation to a campus adjacent to Sydney's Fox Studios Australia in 2008, when its student body grew from 32 to 300-500 students a year.

TUITION $11,700 to $19,000
DEGREES Undergraduate foundation diploma, graduate certificate, M.A.
NOTABLE ALUMNI Philip Noyce, Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings).
 

Columbia College of Chicago

When Oscar-winning cinematographer Mauro Fiore was asked how to get a foot in the door in the movie industry, he said, "You can start by going to Columbia College." It lacks the Ivy League prestige of New York's Columbia University, but in the movie business, it gets respect. CCC graduated its first class in the $21 million Media Production Center. Seventy-five percent of Semester in L.A. students get internships or jobs.

TUITION $21,200
DEGREES B.A. in film and video, with concentrations in everything from animation to sound to postproduction; MFA in directing, creative producing
NOTABLE ALUMNI HBO Films president Len Amato, Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List), Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine), Andy Richter (Conan)

Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica

CCC film school in Mexico City is the nation's most prestigious, sending movies to more than 100 international film events a year, winning two Student Academy Awards and Cannes' Palme d'Or. Classes are taught in Spanish. Only two foreigners are accepted each year.

TUITION $370 enrollment fee, $1,484 annual tuition
DEGREES Bachelor's degree in directing, screenwriting, sound, editing, cinematography and postproduction
NOTABLE ALUMNI Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain), Rodrigo Pla (La Zona), Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro)
 

Art Center College of Design

Pasadena's Art Center is best known as a world-class design school, but its film program makes a mark in indies, and the success of alum Zack Snyder (Man of Steel) broke open doors. Snyder recalled mentor Mike Ahnemann's response to an overambitious pitch: "He said, 'Listen, Snyder, that's not going to work in the real world.' Mike was able to take that ambition and make it into something real." Over 30 instructors teach under 100 students.
TUITION $35,052 undergraduate, $37,044 graduate
DEGREES BFA in film, B.S. in entertainment design, MFA in broadcast cinema
NOTABLE ALUMNI Michael Bay, Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (Mirror, Mirror)

Italian National Film School

Rome's National Film School is almost synonymous with Italian cinema, spawning everyone from Michelangelo Antonioni to Vittorio Storaro to Claudia Cardinale. It boasts one of Europe's vastest film archives and attracts visitors like Scorsese and Wenders. Classes are taught in Italian.

TUITION $2,550 per year
DEGREES Professional certificate
NOTABLE ALUMNI Dino De Laurentiis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

All-Russian State Institute for Cinema

Moscow's great national film school, known by its acronym VGIK, changed cinema with teachers like Sergei Eisenstein and alums like Frank Daniel, who later ran FAMU, AFI, Sundance and the film schools at Columbia and USC. Ten percent of students are foreign. Courses are in Russian except for its English-language summer school.

TUITION $1,210 to $8,670 a year ($1,332 to $9,458 for foreigners)
DEGREES B.A. equivalent in directing, cinematography, screenwriting, producing, acting, set design and film studies
NOTABLE ALUMNI Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris), Alexander Sokurov (Faust), Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun)