@HardOREasy, from our extensive experience in researching, applying and now attending a dedicated art school, there seem to be roughly 3 categories of schools when it comes to admissions - First, there are the standalone dedicated art schools, meaning they are not part of a larger university. Assessing difficulty of acceptance and just about everything else for these schools is relatively easier because you are just focusing on the school and its resources. Second, are schools that are part of much larger universities. This includes schools such as VCUArts and Tyler at Temple University in Philadelphia. These are trickier to assess because the application still goes into the larger university and standards for those colleges are substantially lower than for their art schools. It is not so much the academic standards. Neither VCU Arts nor Tyler were particularly concerned with our daughter’s high school transcript. It is almost exclusively focused on the portfolio. This leads to the final category which are the “academic” art schools. These include schools such as Pratt and RISD where there is a greater focus on standardized test scores and high school transcripts. While generally below the academic requirements for elite, liberal arts colleges, they are substantially higher than is typical for non-academically oriented art schools.