We were very impressed particularly with the animation opportunities, both at SVA and in terms of internships and post-graduate career opportunities offered by the school. Our primary reservations about SVA were geography and academics. Re the former, the school basically spans 23rd Street from the far East Side of Manhattan all the way to the West Side. Depending on your major you can very well find yourself commuting cross-town every day to your classes and studios. Check out where the animation classes and studios are.
From our experience and from what we gathered from both the students and professors with whom we spoke, academics outside of studio art are not emphasized at all. They don’t really care about your high school transcript or standardized tests and pay only lip service to freshman writing and a few other core liberal arts classes. Of course, our negative reaction to this relates to personal circumstances. Our daughter was very concerned about being totally out of the mainstream when it came to her undergraduate academic experience. She wanted to know that at least some substantive liberal arts courses would be available. This is not a strong suit for SVA.
Very helpful. Thank you all. For anyone else that has a perspective, my D’s main focus is illustration. She is also waiting to hear back from MICA and RISD before we schedule our visits…again, we haven’t seen any of them. Any idea as to when we will hear back from the other two schools? Also, the only “accepted” students day I’ve seen from her 5 targeted schools is at SVA in April, so we are planning to do the tours vs. the information sessions in February to help her make her decision. Thanks again.
We did a triple accepted students day driving from Baltimore to Brooklyn to Providence in a 72-hour period. It was eye-opening for our daughter to not only see these schools as an accepted student, but to see them back to back to back. There was no loss of memory between visits which helped cast the differences among the schools in sharp relief.
mtmom2014 keep in mind that a great top rated elite art school like VCUARTS is truly unique and offers a starting tuition of aprox 33% less than similarly ranked private art schools like RISD. So even OOS with the merit aid(they do offer based on merit) makes it much more reasonable and a great option. What we found was at the end of the day with all the merit aid offers across the board the differences were basically minimal (meaning within 2-6,000 of each other).
Starting tuition is like the sticker price of a new car. It’s pretty meaningless. For those of us juggling to pay multiple college tutions, it’s the actual COA where the rubber meets the road. The fact of the matter, whether at dedicated art schools or at mainstream colleges, is that public schools very often have less resources to provide any kind of aid to OOS students. It’s simple fiscal math. These schools are required, often by State law, to admit a floor number of in-state residence. This is done at a pretty low in-state rate. In order to maintain resources and standards, the schools must make up any shortfall resulting from extending discounted in-state rates by charging a much higher rate to OOS students. There are public schools, as have been cited earlier in this thread, that will extend themselves to attract OOS students. UMass Amherst does a great job of this for one. In our experience, as well as what appears to be true for several other posters on this thread, VCU was not one of these schools. This is clearly not true 100% of the time, as some at least appear to indicate their child did indeed receive at least some merit or other aid from the school. However, taking into account the substantial monies offered by top schools such as Pratt, SCAD, RISD, MICA, and many others, I would say it’s a much more level playing field (if not a distinctly tilted one), then sticker price indicates.
I’m so thankful for this thread bceause we are starting our visits. My daughter is a junior and wants a BFA in animation. We live in NYC so we’ve visited SVA, PRATT and FIT. A member from SCAD visited her school and she was really impressed. I want to take her to see MICA too but she’s heard the area isn’t great…but I’m trying to get her to not listen to what others have said and we should see for ourselves. RIT and RISD are on our list to look into. Any other east coast schools for animation that I left out? Any Boston schools? Thanks for the info. So happy to read so many of your children’s got into many places with lots of aid. Congrats to them all
as stated its simple math. If a school starts out 33% higher “sticker price” they have to offer better incentives to be competitive with equally elite schools that may offer less aid but a 33% lower tuition(though it is a fact that VCUARTS and others do offer merit aid for in state AND OSS students if the student qualifies for merit aid). As said previously, at the end of the day we found little NET difference from all the schools our D was accepted to (which was just about all the schools mentioned) such that the difference made it a non-deciding factor at all.
That was our experience I recognize it may be different for others. Good luck all the schools mentioned are good schools.
Most take most of the applicants, but the applicants getting merit aid are going to be a smaller group. Also, some schools only admit to a particular program or major so admit rates might vary significantly within the school. Unfortunately, schools don’t publish all the stats that we really need to assess selectivity properly. You might have to ask them directly what percentage gets merit money, what percentage admitted to which program, etc.
Finally, keep in mind that the parents of cc are a select group unto themselves. They are heavily invested in their kids’ education (financially, time commitment, emotional support, etc.) and you will see better outcomes among those kids as a result. This is a great support group, but it’s not exactly representative. I have yet to find another parent in my daily life who has a clue what College Confidential even is, although I know a whole lot of parents who have sent or are sending their kids off to college. I’m sure I’m not unique.
Public schools such as VCU can indeed provide parity when it comes to COA. However, the top VCU merit aid awards are reserved for only a handful of the very top student-applicants and are capped at $13k/year. Merit and other forms of aid at private colleges, where there is no OOS filter, was much larger than this and much more available. Our daughter averaged more than double the top merit aid offered by VCU. Even if she had received a top offer from VCU, bringing it’s tuition down to about $30-35k, it would still have been significantly greater than the COA offered from other elite art schools.
So happy to find this thread. My senior daughter is going for illustration and has applied to 8 schools on the east coast: MICA, UofArts, SVA, FIT, Parsons, SUNY Purchase, UHartford, and MassArt. (Wish she would’ve applied to Pratt but she did not like it when she visited and we have to pick and choose her battles). She is putting her finishing touches on her portfolio to submit to in slideroom for all. We were given the advice not to apply early action/decision to give ample time for portfolio development, so we took that advice. She was accepted at SVA already based on an in-person portfolio review. She would really like to go to FIT (and, hey, the price is right), having taken precollege courses there. She likes SVA and SUNY Purchase too. Anyone else have an illustration kid on this thread?
@pinkmomagain my daughter was originally planning on illustration as her major but after visiting and loving Tyler which only has illustration under the graphic and interactive design major, she went that route instead.
She was also considering UArts and Pratt. Didn’t like Hartford after visiting (but they were the most generous in terms of merit aid) and considered New Hampshire Institute of Art (which also gave great aid) but they were too small a school.
Ultimately it was the accepted students day visits that sealed the deal for her. Talking to the other art students and seeing the facilities was a huge help in deciding. We also did a few at a time to keep them fresh in her mind.
Daughter attended MICA precollege. Very much liked and enjoyed the school and its resources. Was very unhappy with the area around the school. Said she felt as if she was living in a goldfish bowl. It’s really a shame. Baltimore is a nice city, but like many cities they have just not fully tackled urban blight and crime. Johns Hopkins is a couple of miles away but it might as well be acres considering the ‘war zone’ that thrives between the schools. It’s unfortunate, but as a parent, it was a major deterrent.