<p>Thanks so much for keeping this thread going. I am learning a lot. It is hard to figure out – esp as a non-art person. </p>
<p>All I am sure of is that S will want to be a long-term student. He could teach potentially, or do some kind of art-related law, or get into curating / museum. He used to be fascinated with architecture but he has not talked about actally becoming an architect (yet).</p>
<p>I guess we keep coming back to the LAC vs. university question. The art dept wherever he goes should be big enough to provide challenge. That is my worry with LACs. If there are four profs and one is on sabbatical and another cannot relate to S’s work and the other already has favorite students…and the last is involved in completely other media…?</p>
<p>On teh other hand universities with all the resources may overlook undergrads, undergrads can get lost in the black hole of course reg without good advising, students may get lost in the shuffle, etc., etc.</p>
<p>Point well taken. If Yale does not require a BFA for entrance to its MFA then back to the original goal, a great studio experience in a great art dept in a great school. Big or small, LAC or university. Thanks very very much for this.</p>
<p>Looking at MIT I am not sure there is enough studio goin’ on.</p>
<p>PS Smith (my alma mater!) has great art. And you would be surprised at how quickly the “I don’t want to go to a girls’ school” mentality fades once young women get a sense of how empowering a women’s college can be.</p>
I think the first question is BFA vs BA. My inclination from the way you’ve described your son is toward the BA, but no reason why he couldn’t apply to both.</p>
<p>Then narrowing in on the BA, the question is full-service university or LAC? Again, no reason why he couldn’t apply to both. </p>
<p>Perhaps at some LACs he might encounter a too-small department that limits his ability to pursue his interests. That wasn’t my son’s experience at Williams, but he was also filling up his schedule with art history and many other courses unrelated to his major, like religion, English, anthropology and the math/science courses required for architecture.</p>
<p>Of course he liked some professors better than others, but they were for the most part all excellent teachers, not exactly interchangeable, but certainly not indispensable.</p>
<p>Again, I can only speak to my son’s experience, but he found that he would take at the most 2 studio courses per semester. Studio is very time intensive so you can’t overload, just as you would limit the number of lab courses or reading heavy courses.</p>
<p>All of the ultimate careers that you speculate for your son sound feasible at this point. As he goes along his undergrad path he’ll make connections, get direction from instructors, try out internships all of which will point him to a job and/or graduate school. Don’t worry about the final destination yet. </p>
<p>I’d concentrate on finding an academically rigorous school that fits his personality, that has good art and math and that allows him room to experiment. Kind of where you started. :)</p>
<p>As always very thoughtful and helpful post, momrath. And Marvin, thanks for the further affirmation of Williams. S LOVED Math Camp there. I think what discouraged his was that the math students assistants did not know anything about studio art on campus (other than that it exists). He LOVED the Clark, loved riding around onhis bike, loved the challenge. I think we will go back and see the studios and meet profs in art and his perception will change. It is of course at the top of the list. I went to an info session and was blown away by the tutorials.</p>
<p>There is a Window on Williams visiting program (I guess they are called “fly-ins”) in fall of senior year. He can apply in July for a weekend in Sept or Oct and it includes an interview. Does it seem kind of long to wait?</p>
<p>Am stil questioning whether Cornell and Carnegie would be overwhelming. With MIT I don’t even need to ask :)</p>
<p>Two studio classes sounds about right to me – it will be interesting to hear how it sounds to him. Art history and math are also essential to him. </p>
<p>Our upcoming trips to Vassar and Wes’s art depts (as part of Open Houses) should start to give us some ideas what to look for, how to gauge, what he likes, etc. </p>
<p>I keep re-reading the posts, they are so helpful!</p>
<p>I’d fold your “match” and “low reach” lists into one category as it may be based on old data; Williams (17%), Tufts (19%) and Wesleyan (20%) all finished within a point or two of each other in terms of selectivity this year. Pomona (13%) iand Swarthmore (14%) are certainly hot schools these days, but , as someone said upstream, no one really goes to Pomona or Swat for their art offerings.</p>
<p>Thanks for pointing this out. It keeps me up at night. Once percentages get below 25% it means only one in four stuents is admitted, thus – how can any of them be considered a match, even if stats are right up there?</p>
<p>When I first looked at depts I counted faculty but now I realize I lumped art and art history together. Williams has an incredible 40 people in the dept! The museum curator and an admin coordinator are also on there. A closer look will tell more about studio and art history and interdisipinary stuff. But it already looks impressive.</p>
<p>Looking at LAC depts:
Swat has 7 studio profs, 5 art hist
Haverford runs the fine arts dept shared with Bryn Mawr, 8 profs
BMC carries the art hist dept shared with Haverford, 9 profs
Cross registering is much much easier between Haverford and BMC because of closer distance. Haverford seems strongest in photograhy (not son’s pref)</p>
<p>There are numbers and then there is the intangible. S loved coming on campus and seeing the giant adirondack chair at Swat. Apparently it was a prank: just appeared there on the lawn one morning, with the smaller adirondack chairs which are emblematic of Swat’s campus all turned over as if bowing down to it. S turned to me and said,“I want to be at a place where things like that happen.”</p>
<p>Another thing I never looked at was fulltime and adjunct and all that.
Vassar has 12 art hist profs and their art hist looks good. However it has only 7 studio profs, and most of them are adjuncts. Compare Wesleyan: 15 art hist and 10 studio.</p>
<p>Of course when I majored in a small dept – only 4 profs! – I got lots of attention so numbers are not foolproof. Then again I did not go to grad school for my undergrad discipline. It seems like you need a critical mass for the arts to be integrated into the student body, and a decent number of faculty in the hopes of mentoring.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for listening to my rambling.</p>
<p>Since he’s already (I think) decided to apply to Williams then attending WOW in September/October is fine. It’s a reach, but he sounds like the kind of student they like.</p>
<p>Along with the Clark, be sure to visit Williams College Museum of Art and Mass MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in nearby North Adams. Among these three there are many opportunities for students to get involved in museum work, even if they are not art history majors. Look at the Museum Associate program at WCMA, other in-school internships at the Clark and Mass MoCA. Many of my son’s classmates had summer internships at museums in New York, Washington and Boston.</p>
<p>
Do you mean academically overwhelming? I wouldn’t say that these colleges are any more rigorous than Williams or Wesleyan, though the environment is entirely different. And the BFA programs at the first two is a factor. MITs art department is heavily focuses toward computer aided design which doesn’t sound like your son’s interest.</p>
<p>If he was attracted to Swarthmore, then he should apply to Swarthmore. While it’s not known for studio art or art history it has a respectable art department and access to the Philadelphia Museum.</p>
<p>LACs are very visceral in appeal and sometimes you have to follow your instincts. Even though Williams, Swarthmore and Wesleyan are very different in character, there’s a lot of overlap in students. I’m sure my son could have been happy at any of the three.</p>
<p>I think adjunct and visiting professors are common in studio art as many are practicing artists who are not looking for tenure track positions or to relocate to places like Williamstown or Poughkeepsie.</p>
<p>So what does his list look like now? I think the next big decision after he’s done all his visiting and narrowed in on his top choices will be if he can risk applying early decision because of your aid situation. Well, you have a few months to think it over.</p>
<p>momrath, I don’t mean academically overwhelming as much as overwhelming in general, including academics but also residential life, less contact with profs because of sheer number of students, transportation back and forth, and the unwieldy bureaucracies that can make the thouands of opportunites which are available difficult to access.</p>
<p>Cornell and Carnegie sound similar in these ways, different from LACs.</p>
<p>Going over it all again he assures me that if he had to choose bw a BFA and a BA it would be the BA. And I learned through this thread that Yale’s MFA for expmple does not require a BFA. So a dual degree would be great but a BA from a great school would be just as good. He would like to do 2 art classes a semester or in other words half the courseload, with the other half being “math and more math, econ, political science.” So that sounds like liberal arts.</p>
<p>As for early decision, he is a junior this year. So we are still trying to do visits. Priority is getting into studios now. This means a second visit to Haverford adn Swat, Williams (I think we will do it this year instead of waiting for WOW, then do WOW as well), and Wesleyan. First visits (only visits?) to others but not to all of them! Over Christmas I am asking him to read guidebooks and study up on college websites. Oberlin, Cornell, Carnegie, Hamilton, Conn College. Of these only Oberlin is a QB school. Hamilton and Cornell however participate in the state opportunity program (and have their own financial aid, both quite ood if their net price calcs are true). The big school/small school decision would impact whether we spend time looking at Cornell and Carnegie or Hamilton, Oberlin and Conn. I hope the trips to Wesleyan and Vassar this month will clarify that basic decision on his part. The PSAT results for the test he will take this month will probably also help. We will also meet RISD at Portfolio Day at his art school and then visit Brown and RISD in Nov. RISD without Brown’s dual degree program is not an option because of fin aid.</p>
<p>Questbridge’s early decision process is quite different from individual schools’ EDs. We are not ready to form the final strategy but we still have time.</p>
<p>Oops forgot to mention that visiting Pomona we got a sense of how integrated the Claremont colleges are. The websites confirm this – Scripps lists Pomona profs in their art hist dept. Scripps has a decent number of studio profs and it is literally in the same neighborhood, no need for a shuttle. When we visited Pomona an art dept prof showed us the plans for their new studio building, already under construction. He was very supportive and gave S his card.</p>
<p>Yes, your son still has plenty of time to better understand what he wants and what his options are. He’s likely to go through a continuing evolution in the next year. Questbridge is a wonderful organization for students, families and schools. </p>
<p>As I mentioned before there’s no reason not to apply to different types of schools – large and small – and make the final decision after the acceptances come in. I think it’s possible to develop mentoring relationships with professors at big universities like Cornell, but you have to be more aggressive/assertive about it than you would at a smaller LAC. </p>
<p>He could do the same for visiting – wait to see where he’s accepted before visiting some of his undecided. I would, however, be sure to visit before making any ED choice. Environment can play a big role in the love/hate continuum. I know from my son’s experience that pre-visit top choice fell off the list post-visit. And Williams, which wasn’t even on his original list, rose to top place.</p>
<p>My son has several friends who chose Pomona (not in art though) and they had good experiences. The personality and character of the student body is very similar to Williams, but aside from the consortium, which may or may not be a plus, the physical environment is quite different.</p>
<p>Good luck and please continue to share your impressions.</p>
<p>A note on CMU, where we visited last week - it’s not really than big. Six thousand undergrads in the seven undergraduate colleges. Functionally, the world of the art/math kid would be CFA and MCS, so not very big at all. The concerns for us there are that, as momrath noted above, the BXA program is four years, so necessarily very structured, and it’s interdisciplinary, not just art and math side by side. And the art department is more on the conceptual end of things.</p>
<p>D’s contact with the math department was fabulous. She arranged to attend a class (Freshman seminar, and was delighted to find that she knew some of the material) and the professor had her come to office hours to talk afterward, and suggested that she come back for another visit and he could arrange a day of classes and meetings for her. He was perfectly okay with her being a junior (‘more time to convince you to come here’) and she was thrilled. It was great for her to see that the college thing isn’t all about begging someone to let you in; sometimes they want YOU.</p>
<p>Well it sounds like a great experience at CMU! Thanks so much for sharing it, hs2015mom. Your comment about the interdisciplinary aspect is well taken. Wonderful that D had the chance to sit in on a class, and that already a prof is willing to spend time as an advisor!</p>
<p>Momrath, thanks, maybe we will have to keep the list long. It is hard to get a sense of the big/medium/small schools. But it will be part of what S has to consider. The breakdown of student pops in different programs/colleges is hard to get a handle on – thanks hs2015mom for the CMU figure.</p>
<p>It will be important too for S to get a sense of campus “cultures.” Wes next week! I read a terrible, disturbing article posted somewhere on CC about the senior class graduation party being asked to leave a museum or gallery they had rented because of really appalling activities. Things like that make me shudder. As does the binge drinking at “preppy” or frat dominated schools, so it is NOT a left / right or liberal / conservative or preppy / hippie thing, at least not in my view. That is my concern about Oberlin, too, one guidebook says essentially “don’t come here if you can’t stand to be shocked”?</p>
<p>About Pomona, Scripps is right down the street and it looks like they have great art. Hs2015mom, if I were your D, Scripps, Smith and Bryn Mawr would be on my list!</p>
<p>Pls keep us posted and thanks again for sharing your impressions of CMU!</p>
<p>Now I am a little biased since I have my masters degree in art history from UCLA and later went on to study art conservation in Italy.But since you have expressed that he is interested in becoming a curator, I think he would be well served to figure out the path that most curators have taken. It’s generally not through studio art, but he is welcome to prove me wrong. Art conservation, however, is frequently attractive to those who have a flair for the hands on experience.</p>
<p>Great to know that about UCLA! But OP is looking for Questbridge schools or those that meet full need; I’m guessing that UCLA wouldn’t have much aid available for OOS.</p>
<p>That’s true…but stranger things have happened. I mostly want to get the OP to look at the actual path most curators take.
It’s not for nothing that Williams produces plenty of curatorial staff, but that’s through the art history department.</p>
<p>musicamusica, I actually had heard about UCLA (MFA), since it is currently listed in the top ten for grad art programs! Its math is also great. I even looked into a pre-calc class last summer, since we have relatives in the UCLA neighborhood (he got into a week-long free Math Camp at Williams and for credit, did pre-calc at local comm college instead). Hs2015mom hit the nail on the head, as OOS it is not feasible for undergrad. But it is definitely on the radar, and again, S loves the Getty as much as his other two favorite places, the Met and the Louvre. The Pomona prof impressed us by mentioning a student they placed for an internship at the Getty.</p>
Art conservation, however, is frequently attractive to those who have a flair for the hands on experience.</p>