How do you evaluate an art school or college art department?

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
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<p>My daughter is a rising senior in high school who wants to do a BFA at either an art school or LAC with a strong art department. How does she determine a "good" school? Currently, she is looking at college websites and this fall we will visit a short list of schools. What makes a good art school or liberal arts college art department? Is it the number of faculty or other art majors? Is it a faculty member who makes art that you find interesting? When you visit, how do you get information about the art department. On tours, we often see empty studio rooms. Where do you plug into the "vibe" that I've heard people mention?</p>

<p>Please help!</p>

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<p>That’s a good question. Although we are in the same boat, I think the answer is probably different for everyone. </p>

<p>So far we have visited 7 art schools and 4 LACs with plans for 5 more this summer. The more we visit, the more she seems to hone in on what she’s looking for and what feels right. We have heard that she will know which is the right one, hopefully that’s true and hopefully she’s accepted. In the meantime, more info, more trips, more research on schools/faculty/student work…</p>

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<p>I (unsurprisingly) thought the kind of alumni schools produce tends to be a good indicator but you’d have to be fairly interested in contemporary art land to notice those kinds of things. Some schools may have good facilities and decent faculty but just might not be the right kind of intellectual environment for artists.</p>

<p>I think Bard and Wesleyan have shown to be particularly good places for art
Brown and Oberlin are also supposed to be fairly good.
WUSTL and UCLA are hardly liberal arts colleges but they’re both known
for their art programs. </p>

<p>Ultimately though it depends on which environment feels best for her.</p>

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<p>Make sure the art schools are accredited, and not one of the for-profit ones that are advertised on the back of buses. Many of those take your money (or sign you up for loans) and run. </p>

<p>Try visiting during the school year. We went to some during the spring break and some during the summer. The ones that had the best vibe for us were the ones where the students were there. D was invited to sit in on a poetry class by the liberal arts dean at KCAI, which was a great experience. At MCAD she stopped to talk to a teacher who was holding class in the adjacent museum, and she attended the NHIA pre-college workshop. These ended up in her top 3 choices. </p>

<p>Past alumni weren’t a factor in her choice. She sees the schools as what she can learn from them and how they can help her attain her goals, not their prestige. She looked at student work on line, and if she liked what they were doing, then she was interested.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your thoughts. You all suggest a personal visit as the best way to evaluate a school. </p>

<p>Although I agree, we do not have enough time or money to visit all of the 15 schools that are on her list, because they are all a plane ride away from our home. So again, what specifically do you look for on the college’s website that will indicate the quality of their art program? And once we do visit, what questions do you ask yourself or the college representatives while you are there looking around? What would be your art checklist?</p>

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<p>graffiti on the lockers and in the bathrooms.
If you see something tween would do and left there for all visitors to see, you might start wondering students’ intellectual abilities or the schools’ priorities. also good place to judge kids’ drawing skill, noone would be doing observational human body parts ( maybe?) in the bathroom stalls or urinals. just how bad are those from top of their head pen, marker, pencil drawings? Would you pay 50K/ year for that sort of classmates?
Do not forget faculty’s bathrooms if there are any. Pretend you are visiting artist or something and go stride in. move fancy bench and check behind and underneath. peek in trash bins.
What do you find???</p>

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<p>My daughter and I looked at one big thing: THE ART. We did look at other factors: the library, the teachers and their backgrounds (what schools they came from), and my daughter had several things that were important to her personally.</p>

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<p>THE ART of those bikes…ummmm… I wish I haven’t seen them</p>

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<p>Weird coincidence. I’m in an art school now, in a BFA program and one of the people working on the school website. So I should have some idea - but I don’t. The website is window dressing, and some schools are smart enough to make great windows while others aren’t, but unfortunately that’s not a reflection of what’s going on inside.</p>

<p>The real question for me would be whose teaching? I would research the faculty both through google to see if I could see their work, and through ratemyprofessors.com and yelp to see what the students think (yeah, yeah, standard caveat applies, and yes we students do use rmp as a guide but we also use our friends). Try looking at the catalog for the classes your student most likely will take and then study those profs.</p>

<p>Also see if you can get a rough guess of the student/faculty ratio as well as determine if students are teaching students. Petersons might help here.</p>

<p>Art school is taught primarily through studio work. A studio with one prof and thirty students is way different from one prof and fifteen students, which is different than one faculty instructor and six student helpers.</p>

<p>All this said be aware that many schools excel in one or two branches of art so see if you can pin down a couple of potential programs to begin with. A school that graduates fantastic painters might not be hip to modern illustration, a school known for photography perhaps not so good in three dimensional design etc. Sometimes you can discover this by looking at the art you want to make, and then seeing where the artist’s went to school. For the more commercial arts look to the industry giants and see where they come from, and which schools their companies support (can be key for animators for example).</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

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<p>I think there are a number of things to go for, but that they can vary.</p>

<p>The more general things to look for are things like good facilities, intern possibilities, scholarship programs, etc.</p>

<p>Facilities is obviously important, depending on the major. Painting majors don’t need much more than a well ventilated room and easles, while a sculpture major might have to look at facilities more. Look at the size of facilities versus the amount of students that come in. Well kept and spacious facilities can also show the focus of the school, whether the focus is on keeping money in their pockets, or spending it on the students.</p>

<p>Intern possibilities can vary depending on programs, and the major. I’m a design major, and interning is required our senior year. I go to University of Delaware, and we have some really amazing opportunities. Last year we had people intern at Vogue, Details magazine, and even Widen and Kennedy, one of the largest ad agencies in the world (they came up with Just Do It for Nike, and are responsible also for the infamous Old Spice ads on tv at the moment). For fine art majors, this might not be as important, but I have some friends in Fine Art that got to inten at the PMA which was great.</p>

<p>Scholarships programs might go without saying, but there are some programs that can be really useful. For example, UD is involved in the McNair scholar program that helps kids whose parents didn’t go to college. My art major friend was involved in this and got a lot of help, and they even paid for all her grad applications.</p>

<p>Other things to look for are the teachers. Different art programs can have a different vibe. The program here tends to be very conceptual based (think YBA artists) because a lot of the FA teachers graduated from Cranbrook. Research the teachers, also look for which teachers are still involved in making relevant work today. The design teachers in my program are required to take time off every so many years to do “research” for a semester to stay updated on what they’re teacher, and every one of my teachers does design work out in the world as well as teach.</p>

<p>Also, look at student work, even though this can go both ways. You can view techniques and how “complicated” a work is, but it can be argued that to make good art, one doesn’t need to make something aesthetically pleasing or complicated, so I tend to not find this as important sometimes, it depends.</p>

<p>See if you can view a list of graduates from the years past, and research them to see what they’ve gone on to do.</p>

<p>I hope this helps.</p>

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<p>Try to get in contact with admissions officers or other school reps and ask them the hard questions as to whether the philosophy and spirit of the school is in line with your D’s interests. There are a lot of great art schools which you can find just browsing this forum, but whether they’re the best fit for your D is up to you to find out.</p>

<p>For example, Cooper Union is unquestionably a great art school, but it tends to be more fine-artsy, abstract, and radical. If your D is interested in commercial illustration, then, CU might not be the best fit. Or some programs are known for specific programs above all else, like CalArt and character animation. If she’s sure that she wants to do that, CalArts would be the school to shoot for; if not, more general schools with broader foundation years are the best option. School reps should be able to answer honestly about whether the school is more digital, or traditional, or whether it’s particularly known for certain programs.</p>

<p>Look at the school’s structure and ask questions about it. Some art schools admit students to a department before their freshman year begins; others don’t ask the student to declare until later and start with a general “foundation” year. You may decide it’s better to get a full four years in a particular field or you might think your D needs a year to decide and explore what’s out there.</p>

<p>If she’s interested, look at what the school offers in terms of liberal arts. Do they actually employ liberal arts professors with tenure, or are most of the liberal arts professors adjunct or visiting? Do they have an arrangement with a nearby college? The differences can be huge.</p>

<p>If you can, get the admissions office to put you in touch with current students. I never thought of doing that during my own college search, but I wish I had.</p>

<p>Definitely avoid for-profit institutions like the Art Institutes (as distinguished from Art Center) and Full Sail. There are some good Art Institutes but as a whole they’re not worth your time.</p>

<p>This is a monster post but I hope it helps.</p>

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<p>Bears and dogs—“The ART OF THOSE BIKES…wish I hadn’t seen them.” Way to be a pretentious!</p>

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<p>^ mommy, have you ever seen the bike show?
honestly, what do you think?
here is some explanation.
I am still in bit of fogs.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visual-arts-film-majors/977821-photographer-applying-risd.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visual-arts-film-majors/977821-photographer-applying-risd.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;