My daughter was wait listed for UW Seattle, so we went with her second choice of RIT and accepted there. We traveled up to RIT, visited the school, and were thoroughly impressed. The ID school at RIT does appear to rank slightly higher and has better job placement rates. Faculty to student ratio appears better at RIT. She has a four year scholarship (not the top scholarship but one notch down) at RIT and is already accepted into the ID school at RIT. Our responsibility will likely still be about $25-30K per year (gulp! - but we can do it).
So, here is the hard part. She just got accepted off the wait list last night into UW Seattle. She previously visited UW and fell in love with it, but didn’t really get to talk to ID students or professors on the tour. Our understanding for ID is you have to take the entry design course, get an A in it, have a high GPA, then you might get accepted (sometimes with a portfolio) and there are limited spaces available. We are out of state residents, so I understand she can be a state resident in a year. My understanding is it is about $51K per year total expenses out of state, per year, and $26K in state (collegecalc.org). No clue on the financial aid, yet. So we are looking at about the same expense without aid, if she goes in-state the last 3 years, and our guess is she will get some aid.
So my question is, are there any current or alumni UW Industrial Design students (or staff) out there that can speak from experience about this program and help us make a decision? We unfortunately need to decide within the next two weeks.