Planning a 2028 Filmmaking Bachelor Abroad After a 2023 DAE Grade B: What We’ve Learned
It’s 9:15 on a Tuesday night, I’m folding socks on the kitchen counter, and my 21-year-old son slams his laptop down next to my basket, the steam from his half-eaten tom yum instant noodles fogging the screen. He got his DAE back in 2023, a solid Grade B, and for the last year and a half he’s been tossing around the idea of a bachelor’s in filmmaking abroad, starting in 2028. Tonight he finally got around to reading the fine print on 10 different school websites, and he looks up at me and says, “I know I have time, but I have no clue if I’m doing the right things right now.”
I was one of those parents who initially pushed him to apply for 2025 or 2026. Why wait five whole years? A lot of people told me he’d lose momentum, that taking that much time off after DAE would make him never go back. But he was firm: straight out of DAE, he had three student shorts, all shot on a borrowed phone, and a Grade B that most top international film programs don’t accept as sufficient pre-university preparation anyway. Rushing to apply would just mean wasting money on application fees for programs he’d never get into, so he mapped out a five-year timeline to get ready. We’ve been working through it step by step, and it’s been a lot less scary than I thought it would be, even with all the uncertainty.
He works 25 hours a week at the small independent cinema downtown, which he took because it lets him watch 10 new release films a month for free, and his manager knows he needs flexible time for filming. On weekends, he edits highlight reels for local high school sports teams and b-roll for small business social media accounts to earn extra cash. Once a year, he and a group of friends from his DAE media cohort block out one full week to shoot a new short film, which they edit over the next six months. Last year their short about a retired projectionist got third place at our city’s small independent film festival, and he still has the crumpled participation certificate taped to the front of his fridge.
The first concrete thing we did that I’d recommend to anyone in this spot was map out entry requirements for three tiers of schools, instead of just fixating on the top dream program. We have a printed sheet taped to the inside of his closet door: reach schools (like the UK’s National Film and Television School and NYU’s Tisch in the US), target schools that are a good fit for his current skill level, and one safety school in Canada that accepts DAE Grade B directly with no extra foundation course required. For each, we wrote down exactly what they need: how many portfolio pieces, what pre-university extra credits they accept, even the average tuition and cost of living for the first year. No vague “I want to go to film school” – every requirement is written down in black and white, so he can check things off as he goes.
Second, instead of telling him he needs to quit work to focus on filmmaking full-time, we worked around his existing schedule. He saves up one full week of paid time off every six months specifically for filming, which lines up perfectly with his goal of one short a year for five years. By 2028, he’ll have five complete projects to pull from, so he can pick his strongest four for his portfolio – which is exactly what most programs ask for. He also started applying for small local arts grants a year ago: our county arts council gives out £500 to £2,000 grants for new filmmakers working on short projects, and he’s gotten two so far. The money covers new lenses for his camera and festival entry fees, and the grants also look great on applications, way better than unrecognized student projects.
A lot of parents ask me how we keep him on track when the end goal is five years away. The answer is we don’t check in every week. We sit down for an hour once every three months, over coffee, to update the spreadsheet and adjust the plan if something changed. Last year he decided he didn’t want to go to film school in London anymore, because he visited for a student workshop and said the cost of living was way out of our budget, so we crossed those off the list and added two programs in Melbourne instead. Once a year he plans a long weekend to visit one school he’s interested in, emails admissions ahead to ask if he can sit in on a student workshop, and almost all of them let him do that for free. It keeps him connected to the goal, and he gets way better info than he can get from a glossy website.
I was worried for a long time that his Grade B was a dead end, that waiting five years was a mistake. But almost every admissions officer we’ve emailed has said the same thing: for filmmaking, your portfolio matters way more than your pre-university grades. A B on your DAE is more than enough to qualify, as long as you have the work to back it up.
Right now, he’s halfway through editing his second short for the 2024 local festival. We still don’t know if he’ll get into his top reach school, or if he’ll even still want to go abroad by 2028. He might meet people, get a full-time job in local production here, and decide he doesn’t need a bachelor’s at all. But right now, the plan is working. He’s gaining experience, saving money, building the work he needs, and he’s not rushing just because everyone else goes to university straight after DAE. That’s enough for us for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Planning a 2028 Filmmaking Bachelor Abroad After a 2023 DAE Grade B: What We’ve Learned