Pratt is much more diverse than you seem to have experienced in your visit. Actually there are more black and Latino students at Pratt (14.4%) than SVA (11.2%). Plus, Brooklyn is extremely diverse and the area around Pratt is certainly more of a diverse “melting pot” than the area around SVA on 23rd Street.
PS–I lived in Brooklyn for half my life and now have an apartment on 23rd Street.
To those with acceptances and merit aid offers, did you or your student also receive any institutional need aid? I think the majority of the art schools listed in @pastelrain’s post are FAFSA only schools. Please correct me if I am wrong. RISD is the only CSS Profile school if I recall correctly.
Last year, my older son’s acceptances from FAFSA only schools (non-art schools for engineering majors) did not offer any merit or need aid. However, he was offered merit aid from CSS Profiles schools, and Northwestern was the only school that offered need aid. I’m trying to figure out if my daughter may get some need aid in addition to merit aid since we will have 2 in college when she enters fall of 2019.
When d15 was considering her choices we found that MICA and MCAD seemed to be pretty good about accepting stuff like history or math/science AP’s in addition to English lang or lit. Pratt was pretty poor and, IIRC, so was RISD. AP Art History might also be accepted (though not AP Studio).
As for diversity - I’m shocked that anyone would find Pratt not to be diverse. A lot depends on who is giving the tours or showing up for accepted student days. But my D15 has been the only caucasion among her group of friends for awhile, not to mention her roomies. Her first year roomates were Chinese, Asian-American, and Iranian. Her friends for the past several years have been Indian, African-French (but born in Chicago) and Phillapina. And those are just the ones I can recall!
AP Calc. (no extra credit for B/C ) and Lang and Comp. only (not Lit.) - 4 or 5. AP Art History - a 3+ might get you higher placement but not actual course credit.
One of the reasons my D15 and I liked Pratt was they offer decent academics for an art/design school. They actually have an experimental physicist in the science department (got her PhD at UMN which isn’t bad at all!) - she teaches astronomy and has the students do interesting projects involving physics and design. D’s world civ. instructor was excellent and she’s currently taking two Psych. courses (why I don’t know). We’ve been pretty happy with her academic courses. Even her philosophy through Film course had them reading Philosophy. Boy, did that one throw her off! She had to work pretty hard to stay on top of what the instructor was teaching them!
@pastelrain --Congrats! You’ve certainly covered the gamut! It’s been educational for everyone and much appreciated. Hoping to hear your continuing story as you start Ringling!
You should have some Ringling credits already from taking pre-college which hopefully gives you breathing room before you even embark on your journey.
@gouf78 Yep! Looked at my Ringling self service thing this morning and saw they already transferred my precollege credits, which is great.
And I was thinking about starting a blog as I go forth on my Ringling journey I’ll for sure share a link if that happens so prospective students can read it!
Long time lurker here. My D did not apply to any safety and/or State schools. FIT was shunned and she missed the deadline for Purchase. The list includes 3 reach schools. This will not end well. (my thoughts that I kept to myself)
@uskoolfish Thank you for the links. College Factual isn’t actually all that “factual” but I took the liberty of looking at the SVA 2017 student profile which comes from the official website of the school. http://www.sva.edu/about/consumer-information/fall-2017-enrollment-report
Its funny looking at the statistics that apparently “Non-Resident Alien” counts as a race. What? But just by looking at the numbers you will see, at Pratt the dominant race is white, while at SVA the dominant race is the “non resident alien” category. Which is INCREDIBLE! This is rare that there is such a strong presence of foreign students in a school like this. Just looking at the Pratt profile and the SVA profile it’s all there. Percentage of Non resident aliens at SVA is 43% while at Pratt it is 29%. And the hispanic+black percentage at SVA is larger then Pratt, but only by a little, 15.5% to 14.4%, merely 1.1%. By looking at the numbers, it is evident that SVA is more diverse than Pratt. Not to say that it isn’t diverse at all, it is still pretty good. Either way, Statistics are numbers that do not tell the full story. What I saw at the open house is what I saw, and that was my experience. Of course an open house is no means to make an assumption on anything but there is a visible difference between the two schools. I think Accepted Students day is a much better indicator since then I will actually see what my future peers will look like and the distribution will be noticed then. This is 3 weeks from now. So I will update on whether the image is a lot different from what I saw at the open house, and maybe there’s some unknown factor as to why there weren’t a lot of minorities present that day. I couldn’t really explain it but anything is possible.
@artmummy similar thing has happened to one of my best friends. she’ll go to community college for her first year and transfer to another university. it’s not the worst thing, really!
“Non-Resident Alien” is an IPEDS designation - many US colleges consider the internationals to be a separate pool (fin. aid. works differently, etc.). Not sure about SVA specifically, but a good number of internationals in general tend to be East Asian, and art and design schools are no exception in experiencing this sizable representation from abroad. This is hardly news, except perhaps to indicate that as far as these high-achieving and hard working students are concerned - many having researched their selections quite carefully and apply despite facing significantly poorer admission odds - art and design is a growing and successful field. By the way, that’s good news!
@pastelrain did you get a chance to visit Art Center? if you did, what do you think of the campus? is housing an issue to you? i have heard Art Center has a very strong program in illustration.
@AskExperts I never visited ArtCenter but yeah the lack of housing was an issue for me. Also, I did view some pictures of the campus and it never really appealed to me.
@bsue913 SVA is very diverse. There are so many international students! SVA will give her credit for AP classes 4 or above. She still had to take freshman drawing, which initially she was upset about since she got 5’s in AP art, but now she is really glad. She loves the class, and has grown so much! The studio credits can be used for other classes and give her the ability to add a minor, and take classes she is interested in later! @pastelrain I’m so very excited for you!!! Congratulations. To the others who asked about Pratt and AP @JBStillFlying gave a great response above. I don’t remember the specifics, but my girl had the same attitude “why did I work so hard for nothing?” At once point she had hoped to do the Brown/RISD dual enrollment program, but did not get accepted, which is part of why she took so many AP’s. Her GPA was great, but only got a 30 on the ACT, so we were not shocked when she didn’t get into it. Water under the bridge now! Also, if any of you seniors want to ask her questions from a student perspective, PM me and I will give you her contact info!
@bsue913 I think the bottom line is that you will find both Pratt and SVA to be diverse. As for neighborhoods, definitely a different experience, but again, not because of diversity. Pratt is in extremely diverse neighborhood. SVA less so, but it will feel very diverse too.
I would focus on other factors to make my decision–fit, programs, teaching philosophy, etc. But I would not judge Pratt as less diverse than SVA or vis versa.
@artmummy has your daughter considered New Paltz or SUNY? Not sure the specific major you’re looking for but they may still be accepting admissions. Other NYS schools which might also be worth looking at are St Rose (which I think has rolling admissions) and The Sage Colleges for their art departments.
Also! If any of your younger children have any questions about the art admission process I had with any of the schools I applied to, I do not mind reaching out to them and helping in any way I can
) and Lang and Comp. only (not Lit.) - 4 or 5. AP Art History - a 3+ might get you higher placement but not actual course credit.
I’ll for sure share a link if that happens so prospective students can read it!