Parsons vs Pratt vs SVA

<p>My son has been accepted to SVA and Parsons for Illustration and his #1 choice is Parsons. He has not yet applied to Pratt. But my impression from a lot of the threads I've been reading is that Pratt is the more highly rated school of the 3.</p>

<p>We got the impression that Parsons has strong connections for internships and a high graduate employment rate and that has certainly factored quite strongly in his decision to place Parson as his #1 choice.</p>

<p>Any advice or thoughts from anyone on what might be the "better" school of the three? I'm assuming they are all great schools and he cannot really go wrong with any of them but it does seem that perhaps for a major like illustration Pratt may be a better option?</p>

<p>Thanks for any advice!</p>

<p>I can only share what I have heard from respective grads from these schools.</p>

<p>Pratt is very artsy and not commercial. This might seem good, but it does seem to lack practical skills. I do LOVE the Pratt compus. They are the only school among these three to have a campus.</p>

<p>As for internships, both Pratt and SVA have strong connections. Don’t know about Parson’s connections. I would think that Parson’s would have connections with the fashion industry but they would not be as strong for other majors.</p>

<p>SVA is considered to provide the most commercially oriented skills.</p>

<p>Honestly, I would visit each school and speak to the students. It is important to check out student work too and to meet with the career services office and ask what companies recruit there and what their connections are.</p>

<p>SVA doesn’t have as many undergrad major choices at that of Pratt or Parsons. However, what they do have is considered quite good. I would recommend that you check out my visits to both Pratt and SVA in the college visit forums. The Pratt posting was done about 7 years ago, so it could be a bit obsolete. The SVA posting was relatively recently done.</p>

<p>Thanks very much for the really quick reply Taxguy!</p>

<p>I read your post about your Pratt visit, and am still searching for the SVA visit post.</p>

<p>Outside of comments on it’s reputation for Fashion Design there do not seem to be a lot of comments on these forums about the other programs at Parsons and it’s making me nervous that perhaps going to Parsons for something other than Fashion Design could be a mistake. But that may just be me being an overly anxious parent.</p>

<p>It’s interesting to hear that Pratt is very artsy and not commercial because up to this point I’d been assuming the exact opposite, probably because I’d heard that Pratt focuses strongly on technical skills and so assumed, perhaps wrongly, that it was more vocational than other schools.</p>

<p>My son has been screen-printing and selling t-shirts for the last year and he’s interested in getting an internship to one of the NYC street-wear companies to pursue that interest a bit further. This is another reason he was thinking Parsons could be a good choice, that they would have good connections in this area. But I’d personally prefer he went to whichever school will provide him with the best opportunity to develop his technical skills (which I’m assuming is driven by how good the faculty is?) and offer good internship opportunities.</p>

<p>Does this prompt any further thoughts?</p>

<p>Thanks a lot.</p>

<p>britvick, Pratt’s supposed lack of concentration on commercial applications surprised me too. I always thought of Pratt as a practical school of design.</p>

<p>I would be very surprised if Parsons has better connections that SVA in Manhattan or Pratt.</p>

<p>As for my visit of SVA, here is the url for my post: [School</a> of Visual Arts Visit - taxguy](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vibe/school-of-visual-arts/8879688.html?search_scid=school%20of%20visual%20arts&search_text=school%20of%20visual%20arts&search_field]School”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vibe/school-of-visual-arts/8879688.html?search_scid=school%20of%20visual%20arts&search_text=school%20of%20visual%20arts&search_field)=1&sort<em>by=college&search</em>start=201&nsbc=1&is_enabled=1</p>

<p>Taxguy, thanks for the link.</p>

<p>I realize now that it was one of your posts in another thread from earlier this year that gave me the impression that Pratt might be better. You had said “Yes, from everything that I have heard, Pratt is much better than Parsons other than for Fashion Design, and you can even get good training in Fashion Design at Pratt too.” But in your responses above you seem to be more on the fence now? Thanks.</p>

<p>Britvick, yes, I am more on the fence since I met a few Pratt grads and a former Pratt professor who said that Pratt’s program wasn’t that practical.When I reviewed Pratt many years ago, I didn’t have this feedback.</p>

<p>I feel that I should interject to some degree. From what current students of pratt have told me, concerning curriculum and whatnot, pratt appeared to me to be very practical. It is first and foremost a design school. (I should ask, what major do you intend to pursue should you attend? Pratt is very strong in communication design, and very strong in any manifestation of 3d design be it industrial, interiorior or architecture.</p>

<p>I also would like to know, Taxguy, how do you measure practicality vs artsyness? I am always hearing about pratts design program by people who currently attend and always had the impression that it was very commercial. Then again, this is from someone who attends cooper so anything might appear to be very practical from my own perspective.</p>

<p>I went through all this a year ago and my S settled on UArts. That said, he was accepted to all the NYC schools also. For his style of illustration, SVA was ideal. Pratt is a big name so you can’t go wrong necessarily by going there. Parsons is 90% fashion design which was a turn off for a future illustrator.</p>

<p>timkerdes, Admittedly, my information is hearsay. It came from meeting some graduate animation students at Pratt and from information given by one professor who taught at both Pratt and SVA. The students actually said that some other students failed projects because they were “too commercial.” I don’t know personally how true their statement was, and it was given in the context of being graduate students.</p>

<p>As for Parsons, let me be clear that I know little about them. I did meet one Parson’s grad who majored in illustration and was considered the best Matte Painter in my daughter’s graduate computer art class.</p>

<p>All fair and well. My information is basically hearsay as well. Its basically always hearsay until you actually take a class for a semester at the school you expound about. I wouldnt even say campus visits are very informative but only to the extent that you learn what image the school wishes to portray themselves as.</p>

<p>As a Pratt student myself, I agree more with Timkerdes on the subject of the school’s commercial side. Pratt is a design school at heart and my friends who have started their majors tell me of their experiences and it seems their classes seem more technical and business oriented (even illustration students are thoroughly trained on how to market and manage their business). Even the foundation courses have a certain extent of technicality.</p>

<p>On the subject of Illustration, I honestly believe that Parsons should be left out in this field. My friend’s there for communication/graphic design, and he’s considering transferring to SVA because he doesn’t feel like he’s learning anything. I’ve heard the rumor that Parsons extent of capability is its fashion program too. If its gonna be a battle, it should be between Pratt and SVA. Honestly, I would have chosen SVA if I had gone into Illustration; it’s connections are top notch and the school is known for such programs like illustration and graphic design.
On the other hand, once you’re up there in the art school category, especially if they all happen to be in NYC, I don’t think it matters too much which school is ‘better’ than the other for what program. Pick the school in which your son would best be happy with the structure of its program and satisfied spending his next 4 years in within an affordable price range. I suggest you just take a look at each school very carefully and make note of what you are looking for.</p>

<p>Parsons is 80% fashion design.</p>

<p><em>Eyeroll</em> Where do people get this idea that Parsons is 80% Fashion? From Project Runway? </p>

<p>Parsons is a really big school and Fashion realistically takes up 40% of the curriculum taught there. It’s apart of the New School, which also has a large Media Studies Program and a Performance Art Program. I myself am Parsons Alumni and I didn’t study fashion, I graduated from the D+T program, which is arguably one of the biggest graduate programs in the school. Most of the kids I met outside of the program were Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Illustration…There’s a whole range of programs here, and being that it is a university like NYU, both schools even share the same utilities (like the Bobst Library). I also met Architecture kids. There was really only one person I knew who did Fashion Theory during my time there. </p>