Hello! Today I went to visit Pratt MWP in Utica, NY. (Also my opinions could be different then yours because I lived in Northeast all my life so I am used to weather and I prefer woods and nature.) I took a 3hr 30 min trip to PRATTMWP. At first glance it looked so small but after the tour I saw how big it actually was! My tour guide said it is ten acre long campus and many houses the classes and dorms and offices are in were made in 1800s. Every building had a unique Victorian style architecture! The beautiful ceramic and sculpture building is a beautiful cottage and the studios for fine arts and Illustration where amazing!! They had many equipment the students can use for class or for leisure and the classes had small class sizes. The teachers were super friendly and gave me a example of each work and actually went around each student to help them! I can feel a community bound within the students due to small class sizes. The meals looked amazing, they even had ice cream and cakes! What’s cool is you can request special foods to be made for you! The dorms were huge for freshman dorms. The Hart dorms had a couch, 4 drawing tables, 4 bunk beds, 4 closest, a full fridge and a private bathroom! They had a campus store full of art supplies and cool PRATTMWP merch. They have events and galleries and each year a student is chosen for best artist of class and given awards and scholarships! I really love the calm nature of the campus, the green spaces, the birds singing and the art! The students at Prattmwp make artwork like pros and are taught everything and I mean everything! From animation to 4D design to metal workshop! Yes it’s cold but I’m from PA and personally love cold! They have a free shutter bus each Saturday for the students! 
I personally think Prattmwp could be the school for me! Tell me if you have any questions!
Did I mention that the campus has a dance studio, a game room in student center, students can join clubs and activities at Utica Campus for free, the gym is free! The guide told us that famous art schools such as Pratt, MICA,RISD and many more come to Pratt mwp during sophomore year and recruit students and sometimes offering huge scholarships! The guide also told me that 98 percents students are employed 6 months after graduation and many are employed before graduation!
Good morning. Congratulations to all students heading to college this Fall. D has been accepted to Pratt MWP for the Fall 2019 semester in Comm. Design as an international student. Thank you for sharing information about the college campus and housing for freshmen. Did you get any information on veg food ( we are Indian vegetarian) and campus security? I am especially concerned about the crime statistics in Utica and specifically within the campus. It is my main concern when sending D to school abroad.
Have paid the deposit. Has anyone received the onekey and can guide towards i20? Appreciate your time and response.
My daughter and I visited Pratt MWP the same day you did, and we did not get a good impression of the school. Should I post my observations here or start a new thread? I’m new to this forum. I spent a lot of time online earlier in the spring (before we visited and before the May 1 deposit deadline) looking for information about Pratt MWP, and there was almost nothing to be found – which is why I wanted to provide some info for others who are researching in the future, but not sure the best way to do that.
@Karlapr I am pretty sure you can post in this thread. It will show up with a PrattMWP search
Hello, all! I just wanted to post some information about Pratt MWP for future prospective students and parents. When my daughter and I were trying to learn more about the school, there was hardly any information online. It was actually kind of mysterious! So, here goes: When my daughter applied to Pratt Institute, she checked a box that automatically submitted her application to Pratt MWP, as well. She was accepted to Pratt MWP and wait-listed at Pratt in Brooklyn. The scholarship and financial aid amounts from Pratt MWP were really good. It ended up being by far the most affordable option of all the art schools my daughter was accepted to. We went to visit on April 13, 2019, for admitted students day. I really wanted to like the school – and for my daughter to like it. But she did not like it at all, and I really couldn’t argue with her. Our observations: 1) Overall, the atmosphere at the school lacked vitality and energy. 2) Studio facilities we saw were OK, but not super impressive. E.g. The ceramics studio was filled with shelf after shelf of really generic pottery. Both my kids have made more interesting, creative things in their high school ceramics class. In the sculpture studio, the guides talked about everyone having their own “shelf” to store their work, like it was a big deal, but the shelves were very small. 3) Everything was very small scale (physically). 4) The residence hall we saw had three people living in a very cramped “suite”. 5) We saw nothing interesting in the area of Utica around the campus. It was a seemingly depressed, run-down residential neighborhood, with little houses with paint peeling off them and small, sad yards. 6) During the entire day of events, not a single word was said about non-art, academic classes. When I asked about this fairly early on, I was told we would get more information about that later, but we never did. It seemed really strange, and my daughter noticed that, too. Despite the fact that all students automatically transfer to Brooklyn Pratt as juniors, it just felt as though there were not a lot of opportunities at Pratt MWP, and my daughter perceived it as a two year holding area while you waited to go to Brooklyn. She also did not like the head of the studio arts program who kind of lectured the students in this very pompous way during the introductory session. Other odd things, they fed us a lot, but the reception was very awkward, like they really didn’t know what they were doing. Initially, there were no napkins put out and other odd little things like that. (This seems trivial, but honestly, the whole day had a really weird feel to it.) The students who gave the tour were very sweet and enthusiastic, but not the best tour guides in terms of conveying information in a succinct, interesting way that made you excited to be at that place. The tour ran way over the scheduled time and became very tedious. My daughter and I left without even seeing the painting studios (her area of interest) because it was taking so long. I believe the tour guide was saying something like, “Here’s a place where you can borrow a stapler if you need one,” when we slipped away. : ( It was disappointing. For context, my daughter was accepted to SAIC, MICA, PrattMWP, and VCU Arts. We live in North Carolina. She is going to go to VCU Arts.
@SomaRathore I did! I can’t remember if your daughter was considering (or has committed to) Pratt MWP. I hope my comments don’t sound too harsh. We just really did not get a good feeling the school. I have twins (both high school seniors, obviously), so we have visited a lot of different schools this past year and attended a lot of accepted students events, and this was actually the only school that really did not make a good impression.
: (
We also visited PrattMWP during the admitted student day on April 13, 2019. Fortunately, our experience was very positive! As a result, I would like to offer our visitor perspective. For comparison, we also toured Pratt Brooklyn, SCAD, MCAD and KCAI. Obviously PrattMWP is a smaller campus located in a smaller city. Yet, we found the city to be very charming and could clearly see renewal efforts underway in many areas of this small city. We had an excellent hotel stay at the Hilton Doubletree and a wonderful dinner at a nearby seafood restaurant called Ocean Blue that rivaled many restaurant dining experiences in much larger cities. Plus, the train station and nearby bakeries/restaurants in Baggs Square (near the train station) were equally charming and high quality. We arrived a day earlier than the scheduled tour to ensure we had time to explore the city and were pleasantly surprised by the obvious revitalization efforts combined with the old small town upstate NY charm.
As for the PrattMWP design school tour, we met several freshman/sophomore students the day prior to the official admitted student tour. These students were at the museum preparing for their upcoming exhibit. Each student we met had glowing reviews about their experience at this school. Plus, we perused the freshman exhibit of work. It was very impressive! The drawings, paintings and sculpture work were equally impressive and as impressive as work shown at the other design schools visited.
The following day was the formal tour. Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable and shared that the ceramics at the ceramic studio were mainly work being completed by Community Ed students since the PrattMWP students had most of their pieces in the freshman/sophomore scheduled exhibits at the museum. Moreover, the dorms were standard but no more cramped than the older dorms at the Pratt Brooklyn campus. We also were fortunate to meet several of the professors on the tour including the photography, industrial design/jewelry and illustration instructors. Each of these instructors also happened to be in the classroom working with students to answer questions. We were impressed with the collaborative nurturing communication we observed and left the tour with a very positive view of the un-staged interactions we were lucky to view.
The day after the tour, we took the train to Manhattan and than cabbed to Brooklyn to visit the Pratt Brooklyn campus. This visit was equally impressive. Yet, the larger campus did seem to lack the warm nurturing atmosphere of PrattMWP. Yet, since most students would not transfer to the Pratt Brooklyn campus until Junior year, we left excited about the opportunities at each campus. Basically, having the first two years of design school in a small nurturing environment which still has high caliber outcomes (as stated in the tour, many previous graduating valedictorians at Pratt, arrived from PrattMWP).
I definitely understand, that tours can be subjective and also biases can occur depending on the day, mood and guide. As a result, I felt it important to provide our experience, as well.
After touring SCAD, MCAD, KCAI and both Pratt campuses, we are looking forward to the PrattMWP/Pratt experience for our son and he is equally excited about both campus locations. Basically, he is excited to get to experience two unique cities and design school opportunities with the PrattMWP to Pratt Brooklyn pathway.
@Karlapr Thanks for your update. Yes the kid is going to MWP. Our circumstances are diff. so no your honest review does not sound harsh. First of all we visited only PrattMWP. so nothing to compare for my D and us. And this comparison was the reason the D refused to go visit MICA even though financially and other things that stood at the top for her with Pratt. Pratt Brooklyn (and her desire to be in NY) had been her top choice and beyond our budget MWP stood as our top option. She refused to visit MICA saying “I know i will like the campus better and I know I want to go to NY, so I am not visiting only to compare and have that in my mind that it was better”…I guess she feels better now for not considering MICA after she had an email exchange with the counselor in MICA who told her that he is glad she is going to Pratt if not MICA becoz he is a Pratt Alum!
However even before this she somehow moved towards MWP. For the portfolio day she didnt visit Pratt but MWP and had a very long and very detailed portfolio review. We were very impressed with the amount of time and attention she got and the changes she was asked to make. It did seem like they truly cared and knew what they were talking of. This entire time the communication with the school has been A+. Cant say the same with other schools (other than MICA and PARSONS and a couple others and not even Pratt Brooklyn, which we thought was really bad!)
We visited during their Spring break. There were no students and they had arranged the tour just for us. So the most time we actually spend in their classroom and really liked what we saw and the personal attention the students seem to get, D is in Comm Design/Graphic Design and we really liked the product marketing work we saw that the students did. Loved the jewelry and the photography work as well their 3D. The kid is not much in ceramics so I am not sure as that could go as her elective class. Or if she will take it so we spent the least time there! The studio art class (the observational drawing class seemed quite rigorous and well stocked and that is one class D is a bit nervous about with the 4-6 hours class time? But I am assuming this is done in any art school so she has to.
Regarding other classes besides art in Pratt, if you see their curriculum its extremely art heavy. I think MICA would have more options to liberal art classes but D actually prefers more art class. Whatever other academics I saw in the curriculum, she will have it transferred and wont have to take becoz she is already done with them with AP (Art history, english, math/science). The curriculum they follow is the same as the Pratt Brooklyn one I think. They have options for electives but seems like they are all art classes and NOT other academic classes.
Agree all that you have said about the dorm and the town. And that is what I had read and I wanted for her to see it and decide. What we understood is they will not get much time to wander and D is not a very social or party kid so hopefully she will survive the time there. Our biggest issue is the travel back and forth (we are in Texas and no direct flight) and the lack of any big airports and the lack of any transportation other than public transport to these airports. With the weather she is not used to and the public transport options and the travel, these things are our biggest concern as of now and we are hoping it can be figured out…
She somehow feels better to start off with a smaller campus and smaller city and the laid back atmosphere. It probably just fits her personality and will be easy with her transition to a bigger city and the energy. I do hope all of this works out! It seems like a big chance we are taking with the entire decision making where ever she decided.
Good Luck with your daughter! Strange enough our cost with scholarship taken into account for VCU was very close to PrattMWP!
@SomaRathore I’m so glad this is working out well for your daughter! And glad we have both added more up-to-date information on the web for other students who are considering PrattMWP. : )
Karlapr@ congrats on VCUARTS. D will be a senior GD major next year and absolutely loves it and loves Richmond.
Sorry for not replying school has left me no time but now it’s over! I am taking a gap year and attending Pratt MWP for Fall of 2020!
@SomaRathore Had the same impression of Pratt MWP! I loved the jewelry and photography! I was also told the students will learn how to make their own paints and canvas! It’s was a small environment which is perfect for me! Can’t wait to go in Fall 2020! It feels so far yet time flies fast Pratt MWP was the cheapest art school I was accepted to and was closer to regular University prices, which is a huge bonus!
Thank you for the info about your visit! My daughter is applying to Pratt - I thought she was just applying for NYC - why do they have two campuses for the same majors? I love the idea of Pratt in Utica, but we live 45 minutes from NYC. any insight on what the better option is would be appreciated!
@Saileela123, my son is considering Com Design at Pratt for Fall '20. We are in the exact same situation as you were last year. Can you please share how has your daughter’s experience so far? It will really help us in deciding.
My daughter sapiens pretty much like you daughter D. I have been trying to get information from MWP and we are planning to go to the open house this April, I was wondering how it was at the end for your daughter, I hope you are still checking this site 