<p>I'll be applying for a Masters in Interaction Design, and my applications essentially boil down to this: the Tisch ITP program at NYU, RISD's Digital+Media program, and Carnegie Mellon's program. I got a Fulbright scholarship so cost is no issue.</p>
<p>I've heard a lot of good and bad things about NYU (the PhD prof I'm currently working under told me absolutely NOT to go there, but then he taught in Theatre), but I really want to live in or around NYC. The opinion on their ITP program is generally positive, as are the rankings, but then people say that NYU is generally a cookie cutter institute mostly coasting on its prior repute.</p>
<p>The problem with RISD is that it's a pure Art\Design school - I don't know how it ranks overall, and I was looking forward to taking courses from disciplines other than Design. Since I'm ultimately seeking to pursue a PhD later in Media Sciences\Visual Culture, I don't know how an art school degree (even from a top tier one like RISD), will help me get there.</p>
<p>CMU is great rankings wise, excellent academics and campus, but then Pittsburgh isn't exactly the city for me (very dull). I would really appreciate any information\insights into the above schools and their programs. </p>
<p>Thanks, Mathmom, for putting in a good word for Pittsburgh. I was going to comment earlier but then I decided that anyone who would write off Pittsburgh that easily was probably not a good candidate for CMU. Unless your only interest is baseball, and I will admit that our Pirates are not worth talking about, the rest of the city has a lot to offer.</p>
<p>My bad…I didn’t mean to diss Pittsburgh or anything…what really matters to me more than anything is the quality of the program and the faculty teaching there, the location is really more of an afterthought. I intend to work in design for sustainability for a couple of years after graduating, and then ultimately go for a PhD. In the long run I want to be an academic.</p>
<p>I have no idea what any of these programs are, but I would note that the universities and schools they are housed in are very, very different, and will probably come at interactive design from different perspectives. </p>
<p>NYU is a comprehensive university, but Tisch is its art school. Tisch has a very, very strong reputation in performing arts (acting, dance, not so much music?) and film; I have the impression that it either doesn’t address visual art or it’s invisible in that world. RISD is one of the premier visual art schools in the country. RISD is not a comprehensive university, but it is physically adjacent to Brown, which is. Carnegie-Mellon is a comprehensive university that is somewhat weighted to the technical side. It happens to have an excellent theater conservatory, too, but its computer science program is generally considered one of the very strongest in the world.</p>
<p>I’m sure all of these institutions have designed their programs intelligently and lined up appropriate faculty. But it’s hard not to believe that Tisch approaches Interactive Design from a theater/film perspective, RISD from a visual/spatial design perspective, and CMU from a technical perspective, and that each will tend to draw students with corresponding interests. That could be wrong, but I would check hard before concluding it was.</p>
<p>Also – in looking at RISD, you should look into whether you could do some coursework at Brown. I know there is cross-registration for undergraduates, but I’m not at all certain about grad students in funky masters’ programs.</p>
<p>And – Everyone else is right, and you are wrong, about Pittsburgh. People love it there, and CMU is located in a great, vibrant part of the city, along with the University of Pittsburgh, so there are students galore.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about NYU’s program, but I do know quite a bit about both CMU and RISD, especially in the area of industrial design. They are both excellent schools, but JHS is absolutely right about each having a different approach/emphasis. (And by the way, an MFA from RISD will not hold you back at all in pursuing a PhD. In fact, it might help you stand out from the general applicant pool.)</p>
<p>USN&WR ranks the graduate programs at CMU #1 and RISD #3 in multimedia/visual communications. </p>
<p>I personally prefer Providence (but the fact that I travel there frequently and am much more familiar with the area may have a lot to do with that), but I also found that Pittsburgh has lots to offer in terms of culture, recreation, and job opportunities. </p>
<p>OP, one thing you should investigate is just how much flexibility you will have to take classes outside your major discipline, since this seems to be important to you. It has been my experience that at the master’s level, unlike your undergraduate years, you are focusing on one particular area – going for depth rather than breadth. And of course, you’ll be spending much of your time working on your project/thesis, so you may well be restricted in terms of taking more than just one or two electives outside your field, no matter where you go to graduate school.</p>