Hello all! I am hoping to find some school to look into that would fit me well. If there’s any colleges that might be a good fit for me that would be AMAZINGLY helpful.
My stats:
Demographics: Asian male
State: California
Grade: 12
GPA: 4.0 Unweighted 4.029 weighted 4.0 UC – school does not rank
SAT II: Might take Math 1 700+ Literature 700+
ACT: 32 (E 36; M 29; R 31; S 32; W pending)
AP Classes: AP Stats, AP Lit, AP psych, AP studio art, community college (dual enrollment) English class
Extracurriculars/Leadership:
Literary/art magazine (head art editor) – grade 11/12
Community Help Club (secretary) – grade 12
School’s Varsity/Elite Acapella Choir – grade 12
A separate acapella club – grade 12
My current list of my IDEAL colleges I’m thinking about in the order that I prefer them at this point (do you think these matches my preferences?):
1 Dartmouth College
2 Yale
3 Brown University (dual degree with RISD)
4 University of California Los Angeles
5 Rhode Island School of Design
6 Carnegie Mellon
7 University of California Berkeley
8 Savannah College of Art and Design
9 University of California San Diego
10 Pomona College
11 Occidental College
12 University of Chicago
What I want in colleges
Tuition: My family’s economic status is lower middle class but we will probably qualify for financial aid
Undecided on major, I’m looking into a variety of music majors, digital/graphic design, fine art, psychology and philosophy
Because my interests are varied, I’d like a school where I could satisfy all/most of my interests with other visual and performing arts programs
Study Abroad programs to Japan, Italy, or London (I’d really love to go to these places)
Size: depends on the school
Setting: In or near a big city; public transport is plus (ex: Dartmouth is rural but there is transportation to NY and Boston and I’m okay with that)
Location: I’m pretty open on staying or leaving, but nowhere rural/ in the middle of nowhere! I would prefer staying near home, but if one of those “top” colleges listed above accepts me, I’m willing to move and adapt!
About me (kinda):
In second semester of 9th grade, I started independent study because of some personal family events that threw me “out of the loop” for a few weeks, making me both unwilling and unable to catch up on the make-up work. During this time (from grades 9-11) I went through a lot of self discovery and now, as a senior, I am headed more into a humanistic and artistic, which I enjoy very much. Whereas, without the trauma of previous events, I probably would’ve settle for a more scientific or mathematical area of a profession like a doctor, or even a lawyer (which is something I realized I NEVER want to do).
Please give me many suggestions, I’m really trying to learn more about more schools! I’d love lots of input and advice and possible different paths I could take to get into one of those dream colleges
You seem to be in the thrall of fancy name brands, which you need to get beyond. Though they may present financial challenges, you should consider more LACs (You mention Pomona) where you could be an art major, go on foreign study, and still take a range of courses beyond the arts.
IMO the design schools won’t work. They have little aid available. Just because you are low income and eligible for good financial aid doesn’t mean the school offers it. I agree with looking at some LACs.
Surprised not to see CalArts on this list. Are you preparing an art portfolio for submission?
You should run the Net Price Calculator on each of these schools to make sure you can actually afford them. The fact that a school gives financial aid doesn’t mean that the balance which they expect you to pay would be considered doable by your parents.
Of this list of schools, Dartmouth makes the least sense to me. More rural, isolated and preppier than the others by quite a bit.
As for study abroad, most schools have programs or relationships with programs in London, Japan and Italy these days. It’s not a decision criteria so take it off the list.
Many large state universities like UCs and CSUs (you may want to apply more widely than just UCLA, UCB, and UCSD) should have plenty of visual and performing arts courses as well as plenty of other courses. Many medium size and smaller schools may also offer what you are looking for. You can go to each school’s web site and take a look in its course catalogs and schedules to see if what they offer meets your academic interests.
If you’re fine with Dartmouth then you should definitely be looking at a few more east coast LACs. At the top of the list I would put Wesleyan; it is one of the few small colleges that can boast equal depth in both the performing arts and the hard sciences. Unlike many universities, you would have far fewer problems at a LAC moving from one area of concentration to the other in case you decided to switch majors. The lists of Hollywood movers a shakers with Wesleyan degrees are too numerous for a short reply, so here’s a link to their wikipedia page:
I think you should not look at schools where the arts are part of a BFA program like Carnegie Mellon. If you don’t even know at this point whether you are more interested in visual arts or music they aren’t going to work. I agree with the suggestion of Vassar and Wesleyan. If you are okay with really small and a little easier to get into Bard is also a possibility, though it does not have the easy(ish) access to NYC that Vassar does.
Most schools will allow you to study abroad even if they don’t offer a specific program, though the credits may end up counting only for Gen Ed courses.
One widget you might have fun playing around with is the Dept. of Ed’s college navigator site: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
If you enter the name of a college, click on the resulting college link and then go to “Programs/Majors”, you can get a sense of how much art stuff is happening at a given school by scrolling down to the “Visual and Performing Arts” section. I find it interesting to look at the total number of majors in visual and performing arts relative to the number of majors in all disciplines. I’ve done this for a bunch of LAC’s, and have arrived at the following rough framework:
Under 3% = probably a real jock school, or at least a minimally artsy one; 3-6% = not particularly artsy; 6-10% = pretty artsy; Over 10% = seriously artsy. That’s all just based on feel and playing around, so take it for what it’s worth. @mathmom and @circuitrider are right on target with Vassar, Wesleyan and Bard. I’d add Skidmore to that list as well.
The other nice thing about that site is it has the arts broken down by sub-discipline, so if you’re particularly interested in fine/studio arts, for instance, you can see how many folks majored in that. Bard is off the charts in that department, by the way. Conn College also has a strong studio art department.