@cag60093, my D is graduating from Pratt this spring (ComD - Graphic Design) and spent all four years in Pratt housing. First year in Pantas, then years 2 - 4 in Willoughby (single room this year). She found Foundation Year to be challenging but not overwhelming - they really spend quite a lot of time “getting it right” rather than rushing the concepts. The pace really picks up starting in Year 2, but that’s not uncommon at all for a BFA program.
Pratt is probably one of the lesser generous art colleges about AP - seem to recall MICA and MCAD (her other two dedicated art college choices) as being more generous. None of the art schools will accept AP credit for studio, of course. Pratt accepts up to 9 credits (so approximately 3 courses) with a 4/5 in the following: AP lang/comp (NOT AP lit/comp), AP Art History, AP Math/Science (incl. Stats) and AP F/L. My D came in with AP B/C Calc. and got one of her required Math/Science courses waived. Unfortunately, her other AP included APUSH, Euro, and Gov - none of which was accepted at Pratt (but was at other schools). We didn’t care all that much because for her it was about the 4-year experience, and the academic side of Pratt really ensures a broad exposure to the liberal arts. And, as it turned out, she ended up taking at least two Psych. courses for her Soc. Sci. requirement and doing well in them. Psych. is a great sideline interest if you are in communication design, since Advertising Art is part of the interdisciplinary training for that major.
If you’d like your kid to be able to apply lots of AP, it’s best to check with each school of interest. Here’s the info. for Pratt:
@ArtAngst Thanks for RISD info. I’m in the camp that AP Drawing exam is not necessary since schools like Pratt and RISD have foundation courses that are required. My D currently has 5’s in AP Econ-Macro and Micro and APUSH. She’ll hopefully get 4 or 5’s in the other AP exams she’ll take in May. If so, she can then take the max of 9 credits like your junior. My goal of my original question is to figure out how to minimize her work load this semester, even if it’s just one AP exam.
My D’s AP art teacher is strongly recommending that she should really do the AP exam. I googled each of her perspective colleges and the greater majority has Drawing I as a foundation course. Am I not understanding the benefits of the AP Drawing exam?
My D was unable to attend an accepted students day at Pratt but we made appointments to speak with the head of the animation department as well as another faculty member. They were extremely generous with their time and insight. Paying the big bucks for art school is scary but they made you comfortable with their process and confident in the employability of their students.
My D takes 5 classes/semester for her foundation year: English, Art History, 2D, 3D and 4D art (though the art courses have fancier names than that). She’s had Mondays off both semesters. Because she placed out of English I and therefore took English II first semester, she was able to take an elective this semester (Gender Studies, and loves it).
She’s found a group of friends she adores. Her roommate moved out during the Thanksgiving break (no bad blood, she just wanted an apartment off-campus) and she’s been in a single since. She’s in a suite (2 rooms with 2 girls each sharing a bathroom in between, no cleaning service) in Stabile this year and while it’s pretty institutional it has that art school vibe. She’s also on a Healthy Choices Community floor. Pratt has some interesting housing options to choose from like community service communities, students all in the same art history class communities, etc.
I worried that the default meal plan (14 meals/week) would not be enough but it’s been more than enough. Luckily, she’s found ways to spend her Pratt bucks in other ways as they don’t reimburse if you go under but you can always add $ to your card.
We watched some youtube videos of Pratt students giving an inside look and that was helpful before she went in terms of what to buy for the dorm and what the social life was like. It doesn’t seem to be a big party scene even if you were not in the Healthy Choices community. Students tend to go into Manhattan or find other things to do locally in Brooklyn. The student activities office also offers lots to do. She’s gone to a Broadway show with them during orientation and is going to the Meet the Breeds this weekend prior to the Westminster Dog Show.
My only concern for my D was that there wouldn’t be enough extracurriculars. (It seemed to me that MICA had the art school with the most liberal arts type experience with lots of clubs, study abroad, etc.) She was very active in music and theater in high school. They don’t really have those options there but she found a women’s choir in Park Slope that she joined and takes the subway to for rehearsal once a week.
Feel free to message me if you have further questions. I’m happy to help! @JBStillFlying was there for me last year and we should all be paying it forward, it was much appreciated.
@cag60093 A sizable majority of, if not all, NASAD-accredited (and even many non-accredited) will offer drawing during Foundation Year and AP - even if useful - is simply no substitute. Why can’t your D just take the exam and bomb it? My D17 tried to get out of a couple of AP exams that she knew she wouldn’t pass with a 5, but the school really doesn’t allow that. Yes, you can “opt out” but then you have a huge amount of work thrust on you and your grade is in jeopardy. Better to get an A in the class and a 1 or 2 on the AP Test - seriously!
My D at Pratt was in the same boat as your daughter - she had a heavy academic load including AP Calc. B/C . . . and then she had AP Art which was a great course but wouldn’t have a tangible benefit. She opted to substitute in a bunch of her pre-college work in the portfolio! LOL. Ended up with a 3 - her lowest AP score. But it was a rational decision because she was simply too busy with her academic coursework. And from our viewpoint, high school was going to be her last purely academic experience so those courses were important. As for her artwork, she made more improvement during her six weeks at precollege (RISD in this case) than she did once she returned to high school and enrolled in AP art. It was a good course - for high school. We knew that the real improvement would come in college. So from my end, it wasn’t a big deal that she not do well on the AP art exam.
@Nyart Thank you for the detail info about your D’s first year. It sounds like she’s really do well and Pratt offers a great deal. I will definitely PM you with more questions.
@JBStillFlying I don’t care if she bombs the AP Drawing exam. My question is why does she have to take the exam, especially since most of her schools will not accept it since students are required to take Drawing 1 as a foundation core class. The other academic class exams seem more applicable to fulfilling general distribution requirements, like humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, etc. Her art teacher wants her to take the exam, but I don’t understand the benefits of it. I don’t understand the logic and wondering what am I not getting. In the big scheme of things, it’s not a huge cost, but it’s another $100 on an exam that may not necessary. Please help me understand.
@cag60093 - I have yet to meet an AP instructor who was fine with allowing one of the students to skip the exam, unless they were woefully unprepared. You might well be up against school or instructor policy, as we were (sorry I wasn’t more clear about that as an example). The reasoning would be fairly simple: it’s an AP course, just like any other AP course, and only students committed to seeing it through should be enrolled. The teacher might even be evaluated by College Board based on this criteria. If she gives your daughter a pass, she’ll need to do that with anyone else who wants to skip.
Others might chime in here with better advice, but I’d advise you to find out whether it’s even possible for your daughter to skip w/o her grade suffering. Tanking the exam won’t affect her college admission or scholarship but flunking a course might.
Depending on the school (or state) policy, the AP teacher may be evaluated and receive bonuses directly tied to how well the students do on the AP exam. You never know when a program or teacher may be cut because kids either don’t take the exams or do poorly on them.
You would have to contact a school directly to see if the AP credit in art can give credit for a general elective. Some do, some don’t. Whatever credit you can get prior college is worth it in my opinion just for the breathing room it allows in a schedule.
@JBStillFlying I didn’t occur to me that the class grade will be impacted by not taking the AP exam. I will contact the school about its policy. In principle, I don’t see why a family has to pay for an AP exam when prospective colleges will not allow using the exam score to opt out of a foundation class. Though drawing is my D’s strong suit, I want her to take Drawing 1 at the college or university she attends so she’s taught at the university level. AP Art is fine class at her HS, but there’s really not enough time do teach/practice drawing techniques in a 40 min or 60 min period. She only had figure drawings for 3 weeks at summer precollege programs and a few drop in drawing sessions at a local art center without instruction.
“Though drawing is my D’s strong suit, I want her to take Drawing 1 at the college or university she attends so she’s taught at the university level.”
That’s very wise. Fortunately, opting out of drawing isn’t even allowed at the majority (if not all) of the nationally-ranked art/design schools. And both my kids (one at Pratt, the other at SCAD) were automatically registered for their foundation courses so they didn’t even have to stress about registration.
“AP Art is fine class at her HS, but there’s really not enough time do teach/practice drawing techniques in a 40 min or 60 min period.”
My daughter found that to be the case as well. She much preferred a six-hour, once a week studio (with a break in the middle) to a 45-60 min. everyday class. However, she really liked the AP art teacher and felt she'd learn more in AP than in her other school art courses (that was the case), plus the top art schools still expect you to take the most rigorous art courses your school offers, even if the AP credits don't count. Finally, if you are involved in something like Art Club or National Art Honors Society you might need to be enrolled in art. My D just made sure to supplement her AP experience by taking a couple of studios at our local art college at the same time.
“She only had figure drawings for 3 weeks at summer precollege programs and a few drop in drawing sessions at a local art center without instruction.”
So she will benefit enormously from Foundation Drawing.
Each art/design school offers unique characteristics; however, all will hopefully include drawing, design (including color theory), spatial and time concepts (ie 3D and 4D) in the foundation program. It’s easy to look up curricula or talk to the school about that. (We also asked about hours in studio during the foundation year). A good art school should be very proud of its foundation year and eager to discuss it. Most decent BFA programs will be about 2/3 focused on studio and 1/3 on academics overall; during the foundation year it might even skew a tad higher to the studio side. Therefore, weekly contact hours (ie total classroom and studio) might be double what a typical BA program offers. Intense, but necessary.
My D’s high school only offered 2 AP classes - Calc AB and AP Studio Design. They way the schedule was structured you could not take both. She elected to take Calc as, if she passed, it would fulfill one of her general education requirements. Studio would provide credits but not eliminate any other classes.
My D chose to skip AP art. She wanted to concentrate on getting her portfolio together for ED and EA schools in the fall. Instead she was able to take art senior year as an Independent Research—she had a faculty advisor and worked alongside the AP students on her own projects.
All AP students in our high school sign a commitment to take AP exams. Parents co-sign the letter. If they do not take the test, they are at risk of failing/ getting an incomplete for the class.
I’ve got a college junior and a high school senior and both have taken pretty much the same pack of AP classes. At their school, for the ‘academic’ ones it was required/part of the course expectation that they take the AP exam (including the Art History AP).
HOWEVER, at their high school they have various art tracks etc and senior year they have a “Senior Portfolio” class and the Studio Art APs (2-D, 3-D and drawing) are rolled into that and it’s OPTIONAL.
Both of my kids opted to take it. College kid says she was the only student her year to do so (and admits she didn’t put much effort into it). High school senior says there’s two sessions running now and several classmates are planning to do either 2D or 3D. He’s doing 2D, seems to like the challenge and theme he set for himself. and looks like he’s track for having it finished.
@cag60093 My D is a senior and at this point she is pretty sure she will be going to Pratt (MWP for the first two years for a smaller environment and cheaper options). As a junior she took AP Art Studio Design and Art History (scoring 5 and 4 ). Only the Art History will be accepted at Pratt, not the studio design. However completing the work (all 12 pieces ) did help her with the building of portfolio becoz quite a few of those pieces went in the portfolio she used for application. This year she has AP Drawing and plans to take the AP test knowing it wont go as a credit to Pratt. The reason being if she has worked hard so far why not keep the practice and just submit for the test. The score is not going to affect anything at this point. While its not mandatory to take the exam if she is taking the AP class in her school, her teachers i know will want her to just becoz she is working on it to complete the pieces. And if she does not complete the required number of pieces it WILL affect her class grade becoz its an AP class and the grading is based on how many pieces they would require to complete the class. You might need to talk to her teacher about the class grade but I am pretty sure this is how it works. We are not formally tied in her school to take the AP exam if she is taking an AP class. She took 6 AP classes in her junior year and wrote the exam for all of them, This year she has AP Drawing and AP Stats. She will not be taking the AP Stats exam but will have to complete whatever the class requires in school for her class grade. I feel each High School handles the final AP exam requirement differently, but most schools will have the grading based on completing the AP class requirement which in AP Drawing is completing the 12 pieces. Not sure if this helped, but it would be best to discuss it with your school so her class grades do not suffer with the decision.
D loves her AP art classes and her teachers and she is seeing it as it will help her with the foundation years in college - the more practice she gets the better. The AP drawing is a two block period so she gets almost 2 hours for the class and 10 hours a week which is quite a bit. She also works at home if she is unable to complete in class. She also has been taking art classes outside school (studio art) for the past 4 years. Though colleges do not accept very many AP art classes they will see the rigor the kids went through in HS.
Thanks all for your comments. My D19 will complete all 12 concentration pieces for AP Drawing because that’s is the class requirement. However, we don’t think submitting all her pieces for College Board’s AP Drawing exam is necessary. The HS has confirmed that there is no requirement that students take AP Exams for any of the AP classes and her class grade will not be affected by taking or not taking the AP exam. D19 will double check with the art teacher for classroom policy. Since the greater majority of her prospective colleges will only allow AP credits for elective requirements and not the distribution requirements (ie Drawing 1), I really don’t want to give CB another $100 at this point. To date, we paid for 3 SAT exams, 16 AP exams, 4 Subject Tests, SAT score and Subject Test score sends to over 20 colleges for S17 and D19 over the last 2 years. I also have S22 who will take similar exams in a couple of years. At this point, I need a break from CB
@cag60093 Good decision and completely makes sense. Talk about paying for all these tests!! those $60 and $75 and $100 add up to a finally huge (hiccupping) amount. And we are still not done before college starts - all the AP scores need to be sent in too.
Good Luck!
@SomaRathore My D19 was accepted to Pratt’s Brooklyn Campus. She’s still waiting for decisions from RD application colleges so we are patiently waiting to see what happens. We know a young man, a 2nd year at Pratt MWP, who is loving his experience. I’m sure your D will too. My D has to take 3 AP exams for other academics classes in May so she’ll need to focus her energy on those at this point.
I’m envious that so many of your students can take art classes outside of the school. Due to her involvement in robotics, art & literary magazine, art club, and hockey during the school years, there was no extra time for community art programs except during summer precollege programs. Considering art as possible major in college didn’t surface until entering her junior year.
@cag60093 After my D heard from Pratt she dropped the plan to apply to RISD. That was the last one she was waiting to (14 colleges were done already). Pratt and MICA were on the top of the list and once accepted she didnt want to put in that effort to RISD. Good to know of someone in MWP! We are from a small town and besides the expense we thought it would be an easier transition on her to be there for 2 years and then move to the city. We will go visit during spring break.
D was pretty decided on a BFA since 9th grade so all the extracurricular she decided to do was art based. We were not sure at that time on how serious she was or if she would change her mind but at this time I realize she had already made up her mind and took certain decisions. She planned in a way where she could take all the possible art classes offered in her HS. (except the 3D). With so many AP classes and other activities and school I know how difficult it gets but I am sure this is where the foundation years in college come in to their help. Your D will be fine,
Its a bummer that so many AP classes taken and only 9 credits to be accepted. There were some other schools which offered to take a lot more (and her Dual Credits) but those schools were just back up schools for her.
