<p>I'm starting to help my daughter who is a senior get ready for college. She wants to go to RISD and went to pre-college there this summer and last fall when we were in NYC we came up and went to the information meeting/tour of the school etc. RISD is her first choice.
Tomorrow (September 24) we are going to the NPD here in Denver. I will post and let you know how that was.
She is a very good student, has about 5 to 7 AP tests done, has traveled extensively, has been playing the flute and in music programs/band since she was 7, she chose to go to an arts focus school for middle school and she has been taking art classes as much as she can in high school (and in Art club too). For her 18th birthday, she asked for studio space, so she has her own shared studio to paint in/use now.
As a mom, I am worried she won't get in to RISD. I don't know what they look at, how they make their decisions. Right now, she doesn't have a 2nd or 3rd or 4th choice for a college but is determined to go to a straight art college even if that means no music, no english, no psyc classes.<br>
Does the portfolio, submission drawings make the difference between admission or not?
I'm just not sure how colleges select who gets to attend and who doesn't. Will it help that she went to the pre-college program and got A's and B+'s in it?
(I had a huge post written and it dissappeared when I hit submit thread so this is my second writing of the same thing - this time I'm copying it before I hit the button - grr).</p>
<p>I'm not an expert at getting into RISD , but I do have a daughter that is just beginning her freshman year there. From what you've posted ,I would say that your daughter should have a good chance to get in to RISD. Anything that she has done from pre-college to AP classes will improve her chances at getting in. I understand that the portfolio and submission drawings do make a big difference, but seeing as she's been doing advanced art coursework, she should be alright.</p>
<p>We were thrilled that my daughter was accepted, but less than thrilled that she was not offered any financial aid which was a big surprise for us. My other children have gone to colleges where one's financial "need" was met, as determined by the FAFSA etc. so it came as a big shock to be accepted with no offer of financial aid. With that said, we came up with a plan for ourselves which included loans, asking grandparents and sweating profusely. :)</p>
<p>By all means, your daughter should apply to some safety schools as backups. This thread is full of people who know about lots of art schools and programs so read as much as you can and pick up lots of brochures at the NPD tables. Its fun just to see the breadth of schools out there that you may have never heard of. Honestly, my daughter did not get a very good feeling from the RISD people at NPD so don't get discouraged if this happens to your daughter. They don't make admissions decisions anyway!</p>
<p>Good luck going through the process! Your D will be admitted , but you'll feel like you did half the work!</p>
<p>kathismom, Welcome. I can't give you advice on RISD, but I just want to say congratulations on having focused, talented daughter. My son chose the art major at a liberal arts college route, so I don't know much about art school admissions, but, for sure, whether her #1 school is RISD, Harvard or State U, she needs a balanced list of reach/match/safety. </p>
<p>I hope you can prevail on her to develop a Plan B at the same time that she pursues her dream. RISD's a great school and she CAN take those English, Music and Psych classes at Brown if she likes.</p>
<p>Good luck and let us know how it goes at NPD.</p>
<p>hello! </p>
<p>I never attended RISD, but did attend MICA and then transfered to KCAI. MICA and RISD are extremely similar in there admissions processes. Your daughter should be fine with getting in to RISD, while it is an extemely competive school to get in to pre-college only helped her chances of getting in, because the professors will already know her, and already understand her work processes.
A portfolio should contain about 12-15 slides of her best work, 5 of them should probably be from observational drawing, the rest showing her skills and breadth.
hope this helps
oh and MICA would be an excellent second choice, the foundations program is one of a kind.</p>
<p>Thanks for your replies. As I'm just starting all this (bad mom, bad mom) I'm not sure what MICA stands for (Michigan? Minneapolis? I'll have to learn on the fly/look at the NPDA.org site and play match the letters). She blew up at me yesterday on the phone and said I was stressing her out so now I'm backing off and explaining to her that if she tells me what is going on, what she is deciding on that is all I want, to know she is making some progress instead of just watching repeats of Law and Order and playing Gameboy. I was horrified to learn that she has NOTHING to take to NPD but she said her teacher told her it was ok not to take anything. I had to bite my tongue on that one. I guess we will see. Right now, as I learned last night, RISD, the art college in Chicago, Parsons, SFran school and the Art college here in Denver are her choices. She said the fact that she could stay here in CO (she is a serious skier and doesn't like humidity) and the classes are supposed to be real small and also they have a children's book illustration speciality are interesting to her. So, I guess we will see after the thing today. Thanks again for the feedback.</p>
<p>MICA= Maryland Institute College of Art,which is a VERY highly regarded art school.</p>
<p>You also ask, "Does the portfolio, submission drawings make the difference between admission or not" for RISD?</p>
<p>Response: Portfolio is very important for most stand alone art schools including RISD. HOWEVER, RISD and MICA have very strong academic requirements. An admission's officer noted that more kids get rejected from RISD for academic reasons then for any other reason. </p>
<p>RISD recomputes your kid's GPA using only math, science, language, english and social studies. If you have a recomputed GPA of around 3.3 and have a very decent portfolio, you're in. What is so strange about what they do is that they don't give much weight to the quality of the courses taken. They only add about a .2 to the recomputed GPA for mostly honors and AP courses, which doesn't even come close to approximating the toughness of these courses. Thus, a student with a recomputed GPA of 3.43 (taking all regular courses)will probably get accepted over another student with a recomputed GPA of 3.2 taking all honors and AP. How's that for dumb! When I approached the admission's officer about this, their response was "we can't tell how hard honors or AP course are at different high schools. Thus, we simply used this recalculated GPA as a standard." </p>
<p>I should note that I have seen some kids get admitted with slightly lower GPA,but they had to have an amazing portfolio.</p>
<p>yeah you need to stay on top of your daughter about national portfolio day, never ever underestamate the power of one of those reviews. not only because it is a good time to have people look at your work but the admissions staff will give tips on areas you can improve upon.</p>
<p>Kathismom, your daughter seems a bit like mine. Her mind was set on attending art school from after sophomore year of high school (and the summer precollege program at the Art Institute of Chicago). We did our best to broaden her perspective, and so she visited some larger schools with good full studio art programs (e.g., Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Syracuse, Boston University). But she ruled out liberal arts colleges or attending our large flagship universities in Michigan. And she ruled in a strong preference for a school located in a "real city" and preferably on the east coast. She looked at a fairly large number of schools, showed her stuff to a few more also at National Portfolio Days (NPD's). She ended up applying to RISD, MICA, CMU, KCAI (Kansas City Art Inst.), and SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design). She was admitted to all and chose RISD, where she majored in industrial design, though RISD offered no financial aid and she turned down merit aid at a couple of the other schools. (She chose not to apply to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, even though she loves Chicago and attended two helpful summer programs there.)</p>
<p>RISD does care about academics but from what you've said your daughter will definitely qualify on that dimension. But artistic talent, as represented by the portfolio, is more important and can override modest academics. Some other art schools offer merit money (not admission per se) on the basis of academics (grades) as opposed to the portfolio.</p>
<p>Regarding attending NPD without any art, that would be a total waste of time, and possibly even counter-productive. All she needs to do is take a half-dozen pieces. Allegedly that's all she's supposed to bring, but almost everyone brings more. And it's recommended that she bring her sketchbooks, too. I think my daughter brought 15-20 and the comments she received helped her to weed out the weaker stuff and stimulated her to produce a few more things that were included ultimately in the portfolio that she submitted. Also, this encouraged her to include a couple of drawings form her sketchbooks in her submitted portfolio.</p>
<p>It's hard to say what you might be able to convince your daughter to look into. But if she's considering staying "west" as well as "midwest," then I would suggest she look into both KCAI (<a href="http://www.kcai.edu%5B/url%5D">www.kcai.edu</a>) and Art Center (<a href="http://www.artcenter.edu%5B/url%5D">www.artcenter.edu</a>) in Pasadena (especially if she's more interested in the design side than the art side; though they tend to attract students who are a bit more experienced "in life" (i.e., older) than the typical art school). If she's more interested in fine arts than design, she should definitely take a look at MICA as well as RISD (these schools are strong in both fine arts and design). Pratt is also very good in both aspects, and offers some programs in other areas that neither of those schools offers, and also is somewhat less demanding on academic credentials than RISD or MICA.</p>
<p>There are many other options, but I just wanted to get my 2 cents in here. Of course if she gets into RISD, and you can afford it, and that's her first choice, no problem! But she shouldn't be casual about NPD -- either go and be serious about it, or don't waste her time. And there are other strong art schools aside from RISD, as well as more down the range of "difficulty of admission" that are also very high quality schools.</p>