Hey guys I am a first time poster and need some help deciding what college to attend. I am sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but I feel like this section would help aid in my decision making the most. So long story short I finished my first year of foundation at Pratt Institute but was an undecided major. I planned to major in Industrial Design but sadly did not make the cut for it. Because of this I realized I would either have to transfer or take a year off to try again for the industrial design program. I decided to take the year off and work on a portfolio to help me transfer to other art schools. My main goal was to get into either Art Center or RISD. However, I started to wonder if I should just go back to Pratt and try again. I am still a student at Pratt technically and all my friends are still there. But I feel like I would be taking the easy route out and my pride would take a pretty big hit. Overall, I guess I just need some advice on whether it would be more sound to just go back to Pratt or continue aiming for RISD or Art Center.
Also, does anyone have any personal experience with the ID programs at RISD and Art Center? Name value doesn't really matter to me but the people and environment does. I have a very clear idea of what I want my future to look like and was wondering what school I would benefit from the most with this kind of mentality. Any help would be appreciated and is very much needed.
I suggest you might want to widen your search beyond RISD and AI. In our college visits (for animation but we got comprehensive tours of all the programs at most of the schools we visited) we were very impressed with the ID program at RIT. It sounds to me like you feel even if you get admitted eventually at Pratt, you would do better with a fresh start elsewhere. I think RISD is probably pretty hard to transfer into and likely would not accept your foundation classes from Pratt because their foundation program is unique. It’s also very expensive. But you should visit a few schools if you can, talk to faculty and look at examples of student work before you decide.
Thanks for the reply honestmom! I actually have a lot of schools I looked into but I just have RISD and Art Center as my reach. I don’t think I will be able to visit a lot of the schools though honesty but what I really did like about RISD is the facilities they had. Moreover, I would love to hear more about RIT. Do you happen to know more about the specifics of the program at RIT as well as the facilities available?
I don’t have a lot of specifics on the ID program at RIT, but we did tour the facility and saw lots of student work that was fantastic, enough so that I even mentioned to my D that it might be a major she would want to think about. One of the ID professors recently won an award for great teaching, and he was in the lab working with a student on a Saturday when we visited. That impressed me. They have all the tools you could want for designing and making things. RIT is also a very tech-oriented university, and I think that is an advantage in ID when so much design work is related to technology. The website is pretty good and the viewbook from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences also gives you some insight and examples of student and graduate work. RIT is also fairly reasonably priced, about $10k less than RISD.
My son was accepted to RIT for illustration but I remember when we toured being very impressed with their ID dept. He’s now at Tyler which does not have an ID major.