This is anecdotal but I know a young man who is the son of a close friend of mine from Washington who attended Western Washington and studied graphic design. He has been able to support himself living in San Francisco first through his own company and now he is working for Open Table. He has never been without work since graduating from WWU. It’s worth a look at their fine arts dept at least. I would think that a school with the reputation of UW would have a reputable art dept. and she has strong stats for getting into a school like that.
A small $1000 scholarship would get you in-state tuition at Texas A&M. They have an amazing Visual Engineering program…their graduates are working for Disney and Pixar. Is that something she would consider?
At the graduate level, U Washington has a top 20 fine arts department…
Virginia Commonwealth is a top public program - out of state tuition is about 30K
Temple is another strong public fine arts program - out of state tuition is about 25K
CUNY Hunter is another strong public fine arts program - out of state tuition is about 16K
Hunter is in Manhattan (lots of jobs in advertising industry, but high cost of living) and is predominantly commuter students (not traditional college experience)
RIT might provide some merit
Cool portfolio with a decided style. Reminded me of one of my favorite illustrators, Gahan Wilson (although he is better known for his cartooning). Good luck to her. I am one of those naive idealists who believes talent always succeeds!
PS if you visit RISD check out the museum, I was just there and it is great and was not very crowded on a weekday morning.
There are subfields of art that translate more readily into a job, such as photography or digital media. Definitely check out Western Washington for either art or design. Both are competitive programs where you must pass a portfolio review to be in the major and both have BFA options. Design is much more career-focused which you will pick up on as soon as you visit their website. They do field trips to Seattle and San Francisco to visit design firms and help kids make career connections. What you might not pick up on from a website is how team-focused design classes can be, which may not fit a kid with aspie tendencies.
I would also look at possible hands-on majors in the community college system. Things like digital media, film, sound production engineering, fashion design, etc. These can offer affordable and career-oriented training for artistically minded kids. Seattle Central has apparel design (not New York, but one of the best on the west coast), graphic design, wood arts/cabinetmaking, and is in the arts district in Seattle.
My daughter is starting as an art major at a four-year school. The main difference between art majors and art school students is the level of focus the art school students have. They are ready to be done with history, foreign language, and other classes and just do art. My daughter loves art, but unlike some of her art-focused friends, she’s not ready to be done with all the other subjects that interest her. That might help you figure out whether she is better off in a community college career-focused program or in a school like Western where you have to take more distribution requirements, etc.
I’m a working artist, and I’ve also returned to college (at 46) to get my BA in Studio Art. I originally went to Carnegie Mellon University as a freshman, so I know what a stellar art department looks like.
Currently, I’m in a VERY small art department in a local directional uni in the deep south-not a place where you would think decent art could be made or taught. Surprisingly, the faculty are amazing for the most part. Talented, dedicated, really involved in their students’ academic life.
The low level art classes are pretty much all the same, no matter where you go.
Not a lot has changed in the last 500 years with regards to drawing naked people. The fundamentals of art are fairly simple, and pretty much the same in every university I’ve seen. No shortcuts, and it’s not easy. You spend a LOT of time in studio.
Once you get to the graduate level or you look at some of the newer art-related majors, there is some significant differentiation within schools, but really, a solid undergraduate BFA or BA (I chose BA because I wanted to have a more generalized base-it’ll mean more core math, engl, etc courses).
The biggest difference I see between a top ten school and a “not even on the art radar” school is the level of kids sitting next to you doing art. Some of the kids can’t draw their way out of a paper box, and they spend four years trying and their senior shows are, frankly, just bad.
BUT, this sword cuts both ways. If you DO have talent, and you’re in a small art program, my goodness, the teachers LOVE YOU. They will do everything to find you those great internships and wonderful connections, which are out there.
Artists with degrees carry some of the highest debt in the country, and this extra sucks because it’s harder to make a living as an artist. Not impossible, but a lot of times you have to choose between a job that pays decently and a job that informs you as an artist if you have debt. The school I’m at is super affordable, and I can attend full time without pillaging my kids’ college fund (they go in one and two years), and I still feel like I’m getting an excellent education.
My suggestion to your daughter is to absolutely major in art, but to come at it from picking the schools that are affordable, then looking at each one’s art department. Talk to the dean. Talk to the professors. Look at the art up on the walls (it’s ok if it’s not so good-it doesn’t mean the teachers aren’t good-you’re looking to see what they’re drawing, not how well they’re doing it).
See if the art department protects enrollment in art classes for art majors. This is a big deal-you don’t want a bio major taking your spot in Painting 3 because they felt like taking a painting class.
Also, look at what the class requirements are for graduation, and see how often they offer the classes. You should be able to talk to the teachers and find out what their projects are every semester. If it’s a small department in a large uni, they are typically thrilled to talk to you.
About leadership-artists are not so big into this. If you want to look good to a university’s art department, have her start entering competitions RIGHT NOW. Like crazy. For every application she gets out, have her enter her work in a local competition. Once you start googling them, they are everywhere. Some pay a pretty good amount for winning, and sometimes the competition is pretty easy. Being able to say she won xyz art competition shows the colleges that she is serious and committed to making art. It is not typical in my experience for artists to be rah rah leaders.
She will have to learn to stand up in front of the class and explain and critique her work-I’m an extrovert and I still found this very challenging, but necessary. They’ll teach her how to do it, and it’s an excellent skill to learn.
Have her HS art teacher help her put together a good interview portfolio. There are tons of videos and websites online for high schoolers about creating good portfolios for colleges.
This is just my experience, take it for what it’s worth, and good luck to your daughter! She may find she’s happier about applying once she has a clear focus on finding the best hidden diamond art department. 
Absolutely agree with @MotherOfDragons on great art teachers in unexpected places.
Please note those costs in post # 22 were for tuition. Add room and board on top of that (particularly for CUNY Hunter in NYC).
“The thought of DD graduating 50-100K in debt with a Fine Arts degree is simply not smart in my book and as her parent I can’t support that type of decision even if she could get a co-signer for the loans.”
Yes, yes, yes!
Best wishes to your D! I understand, I also hate the college application process. I hate things that are unfair. Subjective non-transparent “holistic” approach is inherently unfair. How could you play “by the rules” if rules are not known?
- Colleges use GPA calculations, but don't publish the formulas, used to calculate GPA. Thus, GPAs is meaningless.
- ACT/SAT - looks like a simple measure, but colleges manages to screw it as well, by using super scores. The distribution of SAT/.ACT scores for accepted and rejected students overlaps, dramatically. Why get a good SAT score if it is not appreciated?
- Apparently, AP classes are not valued. (Why???? because it is a transparent measure, and colleges hate transparency). Kids told to take the most difficult classes (APs?), but not to take APs, because it looks like grade-grabbing. I am still trying to resolve this conflict, internally. How could you take the most challenging classes without taking APs? Transfer to a school without APs? Either a rural school or some expensive private, with its own curriculum.
IMHO, college admission is a lottery. The game is rigged in favor of personalities like Donald Trump: flamboyant, articulate, bigger-than-life. He is an Ivy league legacy, all his children are Ivys, and he is fitting a profile of an ideal student. Luckily, my children have very different temperament (I consider myself very, very lucky). I don’t expect my kids to be accepted to Ivys: they can get perfect-perfect scores, but they are not the Ivy material.
The college application experience is very enlightening for me. As an employer, I am getting a better understanding what “Ivy graduates” really mean and whether I need these superstars in my office (I don’t).
Your D is very talented !
You D may donate her work to some local charity and get some nice support letter from them. Lots of charities would appreciate it and maybe help her with EC and volunteer hours.
I would encourage her to pursue her interest in Art for her own fulfillment and because, pragmatically, “creative careers” are hot and getting hotter in our increasingly web/graphic world.
You are quoting tuition costs. This student would need to add room and board onto those costs…at $10,000 to $15,000 a year depending on the school. Please quote full cost of attendance. This kid can’t commute to schools in PA, NY or VA. Her family lives on the other side of the country.
As a Washington resident, she’ll qualify for WICHE-WUE and can go to many of the schools in the exchange for a very low tuition. Look for the hidden gem art department. Is it at Utah? Ariz? I think she can find it well within her budget. If she has an interest in a second major or minor, then see which school fits best for that second interest.
My kids also hated the process. Each found the school she wanted to go to and was done. One application each.
Should we guess that you’d prefer that an art major have no debt at all? That would seem like a safe strategy since her early income could be quite modest and may not support a $250+ per month student loan payment.
To get to a $20k per year net cost, she’d either have to go to a VERY low tuition school (about $5-7k per year) or get a large merit award bringing all costs down to $20k per year.
My music major took the full Direct Loan amount. I have to say, if we had said NO to a music major in college…he too would have been less than enthusiastic about the college application process.
Having said that, we didn’t have financial limitations…although he did get a generous performance award annually from his university…and an assistantship in grad school plus some scholarship money there too.
I agree that you need to set your budget with your daughter, but it is possible she will get some merit aid based on the strength of her portfolio.
However arts schools like RISD are unlikely to give enough aid timbering your costs down to $25,000 a year.
You might find some additional information here:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visual-arts-film-majors/
@Nanosour: As a parent of an artist, I’m very sympathetic to your concerns and the issues you and your daughter face. My DD attended art school at RISD, majoring in industrial (product) design. Then she went into the economy, worked for a few years with modest success but the real economy (collapse of 2008) and her work experiences convinced her that she should get another degree. With a strong interest in environmental design and sustainable design, she at first considered earning an MFA; but I persuaded her that if what she really wanted was to speak to industry, not to artists, she should get an MBA. She did that, along with earning a MS in sustainable systems, both at UMich.
That was still no sinecure. Her career is developing gradually and just now, 12 years since her first degree, she appears to be making a breakthrough to full-time employment in her main interest areas. Meantime, she’s been earning income both as an independent consultant and as an adjunct professor teaching courses at two art/design colleges in NYC.
There are many alternative career lines that she could have taken, and with luck and hard work, this one will work out. But it’s not an easy path. Without some sustained financial support from her parents, she might be SOL at this point. But we’re optimistic. It’s one thing to be talented in art and another to make a career using one’s art and design talent. I don’t want to discourage you or your daughter, but just to emphasize the point made by others above that there are many possible outcomes and career lines for someone with art or design talent.
I haven’t seen the National Portfolio Day Association (NPDA) mentioned yet on this thread. Your daughter should plan on attending one or more National Portfolio Days, in particular the ones scheduled for Seattle and Portland this Fall. See this website: http://www.portfolioday.net/ and http://www.portfolioday.net/2016-17-schedule. These offer opportunities (at no cost to the participant) for the high school student to take her portfolio for a review and feedback from representatives from many art and design colleges and programs. My daughter attended two of these during her senior year, and the assessments and advice were very helpful to her in refining her portfolio. (Bring some diverse art pieces AND her sketchbook – which the reviewers love to see as well.)
NPDA’s are not necessarily formal reviews of portfolios but in some cases the student will receive serious encouragement, and in most they will get constructive and sympathetic feedback and advice about preparation of their portfolio for their college application, as well as information about programs.
Have you checked to see if any of the private schools she is looking at give academic or talent scholarships? My daughter received some huge merit awards from some Private schools - of course, when they start expensive those awards need to be huge to even put a dent in it. But the awards did make the schools affordable. Many privates give a lot of money- especially for good grades and test scores (and if the school is not among the most competitive academic schools, they may try to attract good students With good merit offers).
Kenyon has a special Studio Arts scholarship: http://www.kenyon.edu/admissions-aid/financial-aid/types-of-aid/scholarships-and-grants/academic-scholarships/studio-art-scholarship/