I have no idea what to major in. Please help me.

College Majors
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Initially I thought I wanted to study Art. At a public school the degree would just be called fine arts or studio arts. At an arts school it’d be more specific so Illustration or Drawing for me. Then my dad brought up business - Marketing in specific and I thought it was a great idea. It sounded like something I might enjoy and promised more job security and more money than being an artist. Basically for art my career interests were story boarding, character design, concept art, and illustration. For Marketing I was interested mostly in creating advertisements and organizing campaigns (so, I create a flyer for XYZ Company and get clients to check out XYZ Company’s new ABC product). For art and business combined I thought of starting a company that draws or photographs advertisements for people (so an ad agency). I want a masters degree at some point but I don’t know what in in order to reach my career goals…whatever of these they may be.

Possible opposition I am trying to sift through but just don’t have the information for include the following:

  1. Go to an arts school (Pratt, RISD, SAIC, etc) and get the best arts education undergrad that I can. Then get a MFA (master of the arts) called Art Business or Business of Art and Design (dep on the school). Cons - expensive and I would not be able to study just business (they’re all art degrees).
    2.Go to a public school and dual degree or Major minor for Art and Business. Then immediately go to grad school for MBA. Cons: Will take longer, cost more, and art degree won’t be from an art school.
  2. Go to art school, get BA. Then work for 2-5 years. Go to grad school and get MBA. Cons: I will have to wait before I can work in business, art school is still expensive, will I even get in to grad school with no prior experience in business and no STEM degree?
  3. Study Art BA. Get a job with said BA and take night classes for a business masters. Cons: can I handle night classes and a job? Will I get in to Grad school?
  4. Other (if you have a better idea)

So…what should I do? Please help me or at least let me know of someone/somewhere that can help me because I have no one to go to on all this. My art teacher knows about art and pushes art whereas my dad knows about business, thinks art = starving artist, and shoves business down my throat. My mom is clueless on both ends. I just need some unbiased(ish) help T.T

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  1. Apply to and attend a top-ranked nationally known art and design school. Make sure you get plenty of scholarship money (good grades, good test scores, great portfolio) so that you don't graduate with a lot of debt ($5,500 per year at most for 4 years). Major in Communication design or graphic design or ad art or whatever will help open doors into the world of branding and advertising. Work for a few years in that area (for a company, for an ad agency, for a design firm, whatever is the best fit and don't be afraid to change jobs if it helps you career-wise). Make sure you work hard and are looking for opportunities to show leadership (helping to manage a project, etc.). Have a good relationship with your bosses - they will be helping you with Part Two. Pay off your loans as best you can and live frugally so that you can start to build a little reserve. You'll know when to move on and go back to school. When you do, apply to B-School and go to the BEST ONE (not the least expensive one) that you can get into that is known for marketing (all the top ones have a good reputation in that). Get great recommendations from your bosses to help increase your chances. Take out additional debt as needed but the amount should depend on the quality of the program because the better the program, the better the starting salary and promotional opportunities. Major in marketing (and maybe finance as well) and take plenty of quantitative and analytical courses to help round out your skill set. Interview for positions in brand management and advertising and highlight your creative background as well as your managerial experience. Believe me they will LOVE you - how many BFA's go to B-School? Everyone is looking for creatives because they think outside the box. Who would make a better brand manager than an analytically trained creative with industry experience and an MBA from a top program? You will be golden.

You are welcome, get going, and Good Luck. :wink:

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@Mamelot thank you so much! Those are actually some good points. Not trying to discredit you, you seem to know what you’re talking about, I’m just curious - What is your career now and/or what did you do in college?

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@mssunnymuffins I was an economics major in college and have a MA in Economics and an MBA in finance and accounting. I worked in corporate financial advisory for a number of years. Therefore, I am obviously highly qualified to advise other people regarding their creative careers. LOL!

My daughter is in her first year at Pratt. She and my D2 are the creatives in the household. (my 2nd one is heading to SCAD this fall). D1 will major in communications design and concentrate in graphic. She wants to pursue a career in branding or advertising upon graduation. The career path I suggested is one that I’ve advised her to consider as well. Your choices above reminded me a bit of the options that she had in high school.

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I prefer the idea of having business involved in your education from the beginning.

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The ideas of double major and sequential degrees have been discussed here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visual-arts-film-majors/512482-double-major-art-business.html.

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@jjwinkie why do you like the idea? And thanks for posting that discussion but in it they’re torn on going for an MBA or undergrad business so I’d like to hear your insight as well.

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What are your stats? How good are you at art? Finances? Home state?

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@Dunboyne My art is good I suppose. My teacher predicts I’ll get a 4 or 5 on the AP test. My instagram (has somewhat old/unfinshed pieces but still) is artsinspired if that helps. I usually get a B in math and I’m in gifted accel. classes. They’re hard for me but I can’t drop down to non accelerated because of my school. Home state Georgia. Finances are slim. I’m not going to get aid because my parents make good money but I have two other siblings and they’re cutting me off sophomore year so I’d like a lot of scholarship money from the school (for public schools in GA I’m good. My GPA gets me a full tuition scholarship). GPA 3.8 or 3.7 just academic (that’s out of 4.0, you can’t go above that at my school even with AP classes). SAT 1720 but going to take it again.

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Why do I like having business involved from the beginning?

  1. I think people may not get around to the second part of their original plan. (I was thinking of doing an MBA after my bachelor’s, but I was tired of school when I finished my bachelor’s.)

  2. I think it’s helpful to have the whole picture of your ultimate career - and the identity you want to achieve - with you all along the way.

  3. It will give you more time to assimilate the business information. (Would it be good for people to learn reading and writing, but not math, in grades 1-3 and then math, but not reading and writing, in grades 4-5? No.)

  4. With the two studies running in parallel, you’re more likely to think of the integration of them.

I would say, though, doing them serially you can achieve a deeper level of involvement in each one. Also, I was impressed with the assertion of someone on the cited thread that an MBA was recommended over a bachelor’s in business.

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It sounds like the private art schools will be hard to pull off financially unless you earn some monster scholarships. You can still apply and see what the aid is like. There’s no reason to set off down one path right now.

UGA is a sensible option. You have the BBA in Marketing, ABJ in Advertising, the BFA or AB in Studio Art. Different colleges/degrees, though, so you would likely “dual-degree” if allowed, which can take more than four years to complete. The value of the dual-degree might not be there versus doing a minor and just adding ECs/internships/networking where needed. There seems to be a formal minor in Studio Art, but I’m not sure if you can minor in Marketing or Advertising or take enough courses in those schools to approximate a minor.

Reach out to a faculty member at your schools of interest and discuss your situation.

Try the ACT.

At which school do you receive a full-tuition scholarship for your GPA?

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@dunboyne 1. I know. art school is EXPENSIVE. I’m just going to look at the aid but I don’t know yet which ones I should apply to other than SCAD (and also still if I want to study business undergrad ;D) so there’s the issue there. I also don’t know how much aid I would get…I’m not the best artist on the planet but i THINK I could get into some decent art schools. I just don’t know if I’d be barely busting in or if they’d want to offer me a little extra cash to attend. What do you think (if you know anything about art and art schools)
2. You can dual degree and you can also minor in Marketing at UGA. I’ve looked at that one a lot (considering most other schools in GA are way above or way below my ability level).
3. The scholarship is full tuition to any public school in Georgia. A bit of tuition (1-5k) to a private school in Georgia. Nothing out of state.
4.Did you take ACT? I know it has a science section and I just can’t study all of science (or even all of one specific subject like bio or physics) for that test so it scares me away from it. Plus my parents think a 1720 SAT is really good and don’t understand why I’m taking it again - almost didn’t pay for it. I don’t know that I could convince them to pay for an ACT as well if I’m gonna do worse.

Thanks for the help thus far…to you and everyone replying. :slight_smile:

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@mssunnymuffins you know that the SAT is now the redesigned one, correct? It’s a lot more straightforward than the old SAT. If you need to prep just go to the Kahn Academy prep site - it’s very good. Check out collegeboard.org to get the link.

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You don’t have to try to plan out your whole career or graduate education now. You can make decisions about what graduate degrees you may want or need once you get closer to college graduation or have worked a few years. Right now, the only decision you need to make is about where you want to go to college.

If your family’s finances are tight and you need lots of merit aid, private art schools are probably not really an option for you. They tend not to give much non-repayable aid. Fortunately, you can get a great education in art (and business) at lots of places that aren’t only focused on art. Your art degree doesn’t have to be from an art school to make it matter. Also, you can work in business with a degree in art. If you chose to major in art (either at a university or an art school), for example, and then work for a couple years before getting an MBA, you could still potentially work in marketing or advertising in between. Your major doesn’t rigidly confine you to only a certain set of jobs.

There are lots of great public universities in Georgia where you can pursue both interests:

-University of Georgia has already been covered
-Georgia State University has a regionally well-respected business school with a major in marketing; they also have a major in art at their school of art and design - you can get either a BA or a BFA in one of several artistic areas. Another interesting major may be media entrepreneurship in the Creative Media Industries Institute.
-Georgia Tech has an excellent undergrad BBA program but also majors in computational media and industrial design. Computational media is like a combination of art and computer science, and industrial design combines art and engineering with influences from business. Check 'em out.
-Georgia Southern has majors in art, marketing, public relations, and multimedia communication.
-Georgia College & State University has a BBA in marketing and an art BA with a concentration in studio art. There’s also a major in mass communication.
-Valdosta State has a major in marketing and a minor in advertising and promotions. The College of the Arts also offers a BFA and a BA in art as well as a BFA in mass media and an MA in communication art.
-Columbus State offers both a BA and a BFA in art and a BBA in marketing. There’s also a communications major with an integrated media track.
-Augusta University (which used to be named Georgia Regents University, which used to be two separate universities that were named Georgia Health Sciences University and Augusta State University, and the first used to be named Medical College of Georgia*) has a BBA in marketing and a major in art.
-Kennesaw State offers a BFA in art and a BBA in marketing.
-The University of North Georgia offers a BFA in art with a concentration in studio art or digital arts or graphic design. There’s a BBA in marketing. There’s also a B.A. in communication with a concentration in Film & Digital Media Production

So you have lots of options in your home state. UGA, GSU, Tech and Southern are obviously more the flagship campuses of the system; GCSU, Valdosta State, and Columbus state are the stronger regional offerings (and GCSU is a public liberal arts college). Augusta, Kennesaw State and UNG are now products of mergers so it remains to be seen how good they turn out to be - Augusta is the merger of a mediocre regional campus with an excellent medical university; Kennesaw State is the merger of a really good regional engineering school with a pretty good regional campus; UNG was the merger of a really good regional campus and a college that was a community college before it was rapidly promoted to four year status.

They are doing screwy things with our state university system down in Georgia, y’all.

This is slightly off topic but the name change with Augusta University has been really amusing to me. First they changed Medical College of Georgia to Georgia Health Sciences University to reflect the broader nature of GHSU beyond just MD training; not only the MDs but everyone was understandably upset, since MCG had some name cachet in the medical field and nobody knew what the heck GHSU was. Then the University System of Georgia decided to merge Augusta State and GHSU simply because they were in the same city - Augusta. So they polled people, especially the residents of Augusta, what they wanted to name the university. The top choices were all things that had the name of the city in the title - I think University of Augusta won. Then the regents completely ignored the voting and decided to name the university Georgia Regents University, after themselves. Their argument was that they wanted to be a successful top-ranked research university and no successful research universities have the name of a city in their name.* Except that now, less than a year later, they have changed the name again, to Augusta University.

It’s estimated that they spent over $150K just on this name change alone - not counting all the other ones.

**Conveniently forgetting about Berkeley, UCLA, all of the other UCs really, University of Pittsburgh, Rochester, Boston U, Boston College, University of Miami, UT-Austin…not to mention international versions like Cambridge, Oxford, UCL…lol.

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*I could have come up with the name “Augusta University” for 150 bucks and a pair of Hunter green socks.

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I don’t know enough about the talent required to fetch merit awards at the top art schools. Maybe @Mamelot has some input, with daughters at Pratt & SCAD.

You could succeed with either major (art or business). Research the curricula at the schools you want to apply to. It’s not a huge deal if you went in for art at one school and business at another, depending on the curriculum, college strengths, etc. Your major doesn’t necessarily shove you down one path. You have to look at your education as a whole: coursework, yes, but also things like EC work, internships, networking, communication skills.

A GA public would be great value for you then, with free tuition. You could save dough in undergrad and possibly spend it on an MFA or MBA down the road.

Your SAT is near the bottom quartile for RISD and UGA, bottom half for Pratt, so it wouldn’t hurt to try for improvement. Many students perform better on the ACT. That’s why I suggested it.

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There is more money at these art schools than people may realize and when you peruse the visual art major thread you start reading about that. Merit aid is very important for two reasons: 1) it obviously lowers your cost of attendance, making college more affordable; and 2) that art college that gave you merit aid believes you will be a success there - otherwise they wouldn’t have given you anything. (more selective institutions such as RISD of course will signal that just by letting you in). So we figure it’s a signal and an important one. A studio art program is very demanding and not for everyone. Let the school do the communicating about how successful they think you will be! In many cases they know this better than the student does.

We always looked at net price calculators, if the school makes them available. Three that do would be SCAD, Pratt, and MCAD (in Minneapolis) but there have to be others. Those will give you an idea right off the bat what kind of merit aid to expect for a particular quality portfolio, GPA, test scores etc. If you aren’t sure of some of those inputs you need to figure out what amount of aid to shoot for and try to get your stats and portfolio to that goal.

Make use of National Portfolio Days so that you get lots of feedback. Going as a sophomore or junior is great practice for senior year, when your portfolio reviews are really more like admissions interviews. There should be one in your area beginning this fall - check out NASAD website to find a schedule (usually updated in Aug. but you can take a look at last year’s schedule to get an idea of who shows up where).

Take LOTS of art classes if possible to improve your skill and knowledge. The more observational drawing experience, the better (this type of artwork is pretty much required in all portfolios submitted to art/design schools).

SCAD does not require a portfolio; however, D2 submitted one anyway to increase her scholarship chances. So if you apply to SCAD do not hesitate to submit a portfolio. All the better students are going to be doing this and you want to be competitive with them.

Finally, keep in mind this: If it’s NASAD accredited, then it will have a great foundation program so you have lots of choices besides Pratt or SCAD (SCAD is actually not NASAD-accredited but runs its studios very much the same way so hopefully no difference :slight_smile: ). The standards are pretty uniform among those schools, even though each will have it’s own approach, philosophy, type of instruction, etc. By the way many fine state colleges have an NASAD accredited program so definitely don’t rule those out. There are some top-notch BFA programs in those schools!

Good luck!

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@Mamelot - are there any other accreditations I should know about? I see them on college websites sometimes but I never really knew what they were or meant.

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@mssunnymuffins the two big ones are NASAD (which actually IS an accrediting body) and AICAD which is an association but not an accrediting body. They stand for National Assoc. of Schools of Art and Design and Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.

NASAD runs portfolio day and accredits art and design programs which conform to a specific set of criteria. Pretty much all NASAD-accredited art/design schools whether they be on their own (RISD, MICA, Pratt, etc.) or part of a larger university are going to have a foundation year that offers the basics in drawing, design, 3D/4D, etc. They are also going to offer something like a 2:1 ratio for studio:classroom for your coursework.

AICAD is simply the association of stand-alone art schools (so again, RISD, Pratt, MICA, Otis, CalArts, etc.). You can find a list of these on the AICAD website. Many AICAD schools will host Portfolio Day in the fall so that’s a great way to find out what school’s are coming to your area. Check the website of the nearest art college near you to see what they do for Portfolio Day and