AP Studio Art vs private instruction

My daughter (rising Junior) has been taking art classes as electives at her high school, but it’s not until this past summer that she decided to pursue art majors for college. She’s scheduled to take AP Studio Art her junior year. However, a local art teacher suggested our daughter quit AP Studio Art because it will be a lot of HW that she won’t like - this is somewhat true since she working on summer assignments and they are taking a lot of time and not very interesting. He said the art schools don’t care about whether you took AP Art or not. The most important thing is a strong portfolio.

Should my daughter quit AP Art? When do students usually start to create their art portfolio?

My daughter will be starting at Pratt this Fall. Her high school didn’t offer AP Art and her senior year they cancelled all art classes due to COVID and virtual learning. Her only true art class was intro to art freshman year. She attended Ringling pre-college (virtually) the summer before senior year and used some pieces from that in her portfolio. Besides that her portfolio consisted of work she just did on her own. My opinion is it doesn’t matter where the portfolio pieces are created. National Portfolio Days are great for getting feedback on your work to date and learning what different schools want to see as that can vary a lot!

well, we’ve seen both view points.
our D16 took AP studio. while a one-yr class on the books, it was actually a two year class; her jr. year projects were all geared towards that sr. yr class, taught by the same teacher. She did not take credit for the AP class as her undergrad college wouldnt accept AP credit in art for her major. My dad, who has his MFA and taught art didnt agree with the AP studio philosophy and encouraged her not to take it, sort of like your private teacher. But, she took it and liked the class and she’s moving on to grad degree at RISD. We liked the class as it was good for the gpa boost at her HS and basically free instruction. I think your child would do fine either way; calmomto3 is right: portfolio is important. So - consider that part as you consider the class.

My daughter took AP Studio Art, and it did burn her out. She discovered that it was extremely difficult for her to produce the number of art products required for the course at the rate that was required. She was taking art as a minor stream (she was mostly in the STEM stream), and was also taking a few more high intensity APs aside from art.

On the other hand, the kids who were interested in an art career did not find the rate to be overwhelmingly intense.

So I would say that, if your daughter is interested in a career in art, and has the ability to produce the number of projects that are required for the class, projects which will be going into her portfolio anyway, she should go for it.

I would take the individual art lessons with the idea of you making pieces for a portfolio. Talk to them ahead of time. Also look up how to make an Art portfolio. This won’t apply to you but what my daughter used… Find one that applies to your field https://www.routledge.com/Show-Case-Developing-Maintaining-and-Presenting-a-Design-Tech-Portfolio/Jaen/p/book/9780240819266

Also buy a real portfolio…it doesn’t have to be expensive just organized… Do not throw away your doodles on whatever your doing them on. Many want to see them…