<p>There seem to be a lot of questions re: the art supplement, and I've just sent mine in with my art advisor, and we double-checked to make sure we'd done it well, so I figured I would post this as a sort of guideline? Who knows.</p>
<p>I'm applying to Yale as well as some other fine art schools (Yale and NYU are my only liberal arts) so I've been working on my portfolio for the past 4 or 5 years, with summer programs at Parsons. For any portfolio, art reviewers want to see breadth, and an understanding of all the principles of design. For instance, most of my pieces were forms of human observational drawing, but I had two prints (1 color, 1 bw), 3 charcoals that were more moody and sketchy, 1 charcoal that was very intricate, 2 graphite pieces (both very intricate) and 2 sumi ink pieces (1 intricate, 1 emotional).</p>
<p>Total, that's 10 pieces, which is low (most art schools want 12-15), but since Yale gave a huge maximum and no minimum, that's an allusion to the fact that less is more, so we limited mine to the pieces we found most thoughtful. Out of about 200 pieces we picked those 10 and cleaned them up (erased all thumbprints/smears, ironed any wrinkled edges) and sent them to a professional photographer for slidemaking. Slides are, inherantly, always preferred, and that means SEND SLIDES! You should always do what's preferred but especially with slides, CD images are tedious and admissions departments have been using slides forever. Furthermore, you need a professional photographer. Girls in my AP Portfolio Collection class are gifted, incredible photographers, but professional slide photographers are trained to highlight the best parts of your work, and they know exactly how to extract the best look out of each induvidual medium. They're professionals for a reason.</p>
<p>My professor took them a photographer in York, PA, but my boarding school is in the middle of nowhere, so trust me, there is always a photographer nearby somewhere. If you don't have a resource available at your school who has connections to a local pro photographer, call surrounding schools or universities, and try their art departments.</p>
<p>My teacher was delighted with how succinct and straightforward Yale's instructions were: most schools are pretty vague with how they want your slides to be presented to them. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS that Yale lists on their website; they are so clear for a reason!</p>
<p>Finally, we sent my slides out with my official transcripts and my rec. letters, FedEx Priority, so we could keep track of them. Overall, slides, shipping, and supplies probably cost me upwards of $700 (photography came to $600 for 3 sets of slides and 3 cds, plus comp cards) but if your portfolio is strong and helps express your capabilities of abstract thought and logical reasoning, and naturally your creativity, well, personally, I think it's absolutely worth it. If anyone has any questions about submitting their portfolio to Yale or any other school I can probably answer them, I've helped a lot of seniors in the past and helped all of my friends this year with their apps as well as finished mine (finally).</p>
<p>Good luck to everyone!</p>