I am a international student. I am going to us next year for MFA. I wanna study interior design but im hesitating Pratt or Parsons. Pratt has the best interior design program I know, but the campus and the cafe are not very good, also, its in Brooklyn. Parsons also has a good interior design program, the first in the US, but not as good as Pratt’s. But Parsons is in Manhattan! Incredible resources and environment! and its the one of the 4 best design schools in the world, even better than RISD. can u guys give me some advice? thx a lot!
Neither are CIDA accredited, if that matters to you. You can still take the NCIDQ, but some firms specifically request CIDA schools. You might want to look at the New York School of Interior Design. It’s in a sleepier part of Manhattan (Upper East Side), but personally I think the location is awesome. If you want to just do residential design then accreditation probably isn’t as important; everyone knows Parsons and Pratt are excellent design schools.
Pratt is located about 20 minutes from Manhattan and in a great part of Brooklyn so no worries there. Design Intelligence ranks it very highly at the grad. level but @violaine’s point about accreditation needs to be taken seriously. If the interior design industry is restricting practice to the accredited schools then CIDA becomes an issue. Here is what Pratt has to say about it:
Have you visited the Pratt main campus? Very different from Parson’s which is located in Greenwich Village along 5th Ave. in a busy, bustling part of Manhattan! My D19 opted for Pratt over Parson’s for ComD (bfa) specifically because Pratt had a real campus and a sense of community and she enjoyed the quiet atmosphere of Clinton Hill while still able to get to Manhattan in a pinch (which she does at least once a week, including regular visits to the garment district for supplies in a tailoring studio she just completed). All of these were personal decisions, of course, which may not apply to someone else and esp. not to a graduate student. Importantly, many upper div. undergrads and grad students actually live off campus or opt for apartment-style housing on campus. Neither option requires a meal card (those are reserved primarily for freshman housing). However, you can always opt for a meal card on a semester or full-academic-year basis which is what we did for my D19. She doesn’t care for the dining facilities either, but uses her meal card to purchase food and other supplies (such as TP!) at the C-Store. She tells me they have very reasonable prices compared to the surrounding area for these things so it made sense to use the meal plan for those purchases. (Meal plans are dollar/point systems so it’s like a debit card reserved for food). We found it most economical to purchase her a “bare-bones” plan for about $2100 per year ($1,050 per semester) and she used up her first semester allotment right before the end of the first semester so that was smart budgeting! You can always add more points - they turn to pumpkins at year-end (i.e. don’t carry over to the next year) so it’s a good idea to purchase a little less than you believe you will need.
Finally, don’t rule out the grad student housing at Pratt. My daughter really likes Willoughby which is open to grad students (who are assigned semi-private single rooms, I think) and Grand Ave. is another option. Perhaps the newly-renovated town houses as well? All these are on campus with reasonable rates compared to the surrounding area! (my D19 never thought she could live in NYC for so little). The apartment-style housing options usually include a “full year” option so you don’t have to move out like you do in the undergrad. dorms. And all dorms, even freshman dorms, are open through Winter Break which seems to be unique to Pratt.
Parson’s had very limited housing options for the bfa kids and thinking that might be the same for grad students as well. That’s easily checked online. But Manhattan housing in general tends to be very expensive and scarce. Many NYU students actually live near Pratt and commute every day to campus (NYU is located very near Parson’s). Wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find that Parson’s students live in Clinton Hill, or Bushwick or Williamsburg (all in Brooklyn). Those are things you can look into when you are visiting the campuses.
Finally, you didn’t mention this but have you considered SCAD as well? Located in Savannah but as it’s so highly ranked at both undergrad. and grad. level I’m guessing quite a few of those students end up in NYC. Not sure whether the program is CIDA-accredited.
Good luck with your decision. Good choices!