<p>larationalist, yes, I should have added Cooper Union to the Architectural list. I must be having a senior moment. I didn't add Harvard to the list because I believe that their program is a graduate program only. Am I mistaken?</p>
<p>Harvard is undergrad and not a bfa. excellent teachers, mostly nyc working artists.</p>
<p>durr, I had a senior moment too! I forgot we were talking about undergrad when I typed that. In that case, I would add Pratt in there, and maybe take off Rice. They're more well known for their grad than undergrad program.</p>
<p>I think the problem here is that everyone has an opinion of what they feel is the best school, and when someone else doesn't know much about that school or doesn't rank it as high personally, its kind of hits hard against the feelings of that person, who might have an admiration for that school, or know people or have family that go or have gone there.</p>
<p>Thats another reason why I think its important to take what you read on this forum with a grain of salt, and why making a ranking based on vague personal research is a bad idea.</p>
<p>Let’s face it! this is the only decent ranking for design schools: [Best</a> Fine Arts Programs | Top Fine Arts Schools | US News Graduate Schools](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/fine-arts-rankings]Best”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/fine-arts-rankings)
RISD is ranked #1, SCAD is ranked # 134. Everything in the top 15 is still ok. Parents and students must look at this data before taking any decision.</p>
<p>Why pay over $ 30,000 to attend Savannah College of Art and design (SCAD) when you can attend Pratt (ranked #15) or Art Center (ranked #11) for a lot less, and live in a safer city. Even better if it’s a state run school (less money, better education). You have many more options with a good public university.</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree with your assessment that US News has the only decent ranking. Design Intelligence ranks design schools as well and it is a more than decent ranking IMO. This is the third thread in 24 hours where you have posted the same information. I think by now we see your perspective.</p>
<p>How about CalArts for animation?</p>
<p>And SVA for photography…</p>
<p>As to the credibility of US News & World Report’s rankings, you need to know HOW they rank and what their guidelines are in order to know whether these rankings are credible. From what I could gather they have increased the weight given to high school college counselors in their rankings which for art schools I would find rather questionable. I’m really not all that convinced that most high school guidance counselors are that informed about art schools and suspect that the usual suspects just keep receiving high marks without any real insightful information being given.</p>
<p>Generally these rankings might be accurate but I would suggest a much more in-depth look at the schools and not eliminating some that aren’t listed. If money is an issue, of course one would be wiser to pick a Pratt but because it has an established good reputation not because some “news” magazine has ranked it high.</p>
<p>When I started investigating US News’s criteria I certainly didn’t find anything in-depth enough to call this “the only in decent ranking system”. And while I won’t argue with a high ranking for RISD this is kind of common knowledge not some great discovery by US News. </p>
<p>Also the graduate school experience and graduate school structure can and often is very different from undergraduate. I would be very cautious about using graduate school rankings as guidelines for undergraduate schools.</p>
<p>I agree with artsmarts, there are a number of different ranking systems and many of them are not very relevant to students. One top indicator I always ask when visiting a university is who is employing your students from last year. I do not want to hear if there has been one student in the last five years that was hired by a top tier firm (such as Pixar, EA, Marvel, etc.) or do these major firms come year after year to recruit students. I feel that the companies know more than any one else (and have the most to lose with poor hires).</p>
<p>OK, here is my question. My daughter was accepted to RISD, Chicago and SCAD. Others as well but these are the three contenders. I like Lyme for the fine art I saw on tour but the school is too small for her. We went up to RISD and was horrified at the art I saw on the tour and in the seniors work spaces. I felt like that at many of the art school we toured. We have yet to visit SAIC, that next week. However we did go see SCAD and I was blown away by the quality of the fine art and displays of the students work. I however do not see them on any of the fine art school rankings. My daughter seemed happier here than at RISD that was not much as far as atmosphere. Why is SCAD not rated as a fine art school? What do these sites like US News base their ranking on? I would just think if a school like Yale is number 3 and my daughter has gone there for a summer session and found it just ok as far as the students art work and she was accepted to the number one and three and not the number 2 after attending and getting two As and has a 4.3 GPA in HS.Well, what are they basing it on? I just dont get it. By the work I see on the tours, most of the work looks as if it is done by high school students. I know there are exercises but one would expect more. My daughter is looking to go into art restoration and like realism and fine art as opposed to modern art so she wants a school to give her a good shot at the best Grad School. This is such a hard decision for her</p>
<p>@LaurieM62: The US News rankings are for graduate schools, not undergraduate. RISD is still well known for their undergrad fine arts program though. But if you daughter enjoyed the work and feel of SCAD more, than maybe that is the school for her. Your school is all what you make of it. I’d talk to the admissions counselors from the schools you mentioned and ask to talk to faculty or ask of their opinion. They can give you a good idea of what each school has to offer specifically for your daughter.</p>
<p>Thank you Bowman. We will speak to them and she still has SAIC yet to see. Her fear is that she will have a harder time getting into a Grad school with a lesser ranked Fine arts school. But I feel as you do and think she should go where she thinks she will enjoy it more. she has worked so hard to get the grades she has that she now worries that she has done this for nothing. Since RISD does not accept any of the college credits she has already gotten and or her AP scores, she would actually only have three years to complete at SCAD.
I was actually so surprised to find RISD so dirty, the dorms so lacking for a art school and the food terrible. I don’t know how they can charge so much and give so little to the students.</p>
<p>No problem. And don’t worry about grad school. If you going to art school for grad they’ll be looking more at your portfolio, not where you went for undergrad. You portfolio will show what you really have learned. Kara Walker went to ACA (now SCAD) for undergrad and RISD for grad. If she likes SCAD and sees herself there, then that’s where she wants to go. And if she wants to go to RISD for grad you have better chances coming from another school.</p>
<p>And I was told when I was at RISD that they do take AP scores for liberal arts courses if it’s a 4 or 5. AP Art not at all. Is that really what they told you? Maybe I heard wrong. Its been a while.</p>
<p>And I can’t be but a little surprised that your daughter didn’t like the food or dorms. I took precollege there during the summer and I liked the rooms. They were about the same size as the honors dorms USC though I can agree that there bathrooms left more to be desired. And I honestly thought the food wasn’t bad when I was over there. Different taste I guess. </p>
<p>Good luck to your daughter!</p>
<p>Everyone is forgetting tiny MCAD, which wins a ton of illustration awards for its size, Ringling which wins even more and dominates animation. Daughter got in, but felt it was too “macho” would be a good term. If we do this we should go by society of illustrators awards, animation awards, and design awards, divided by number of students in the programs. additionally payscale ranks ROI on undergrad art schools and in the last two years only RISD and Pratt have scored decently, though they flipflopped positions by year. That takes it out of opinion and into math. I ranked the schools using the awards, tuition, reputation(yes that opens doors), and ROI. Pratt, RISD, Ringling, MICA and due to its tiny size and large number of awards MCAD and KCAD did very well. Daughter just chose RISD After visiting all but KCAD, mostly because she was most impressed with student work in two departments. She was not impressed with the furniture work at RISD, and neither of us felt capable of judging architecture. However Cooper while she was impressed with the idea of going there, she didn’t love the emphasis on non-figurative art in the professors CV’s, nor was she happy with the output from a Saturday class there. SVA she loved some of the work, but has 6 friends who go there, with common interests “she helps run some kind of fan club for some odd comic” when she introduced them, they didn’t know each other, even though they were in the same major and many were quite a bit older than her, additionally the dorms were ranked by her as a 1 on a scale of 1-10 and she wants a “college” experience, she felt she got that a lot more taking classes at Parsons, and she wasn’t thrilled with that. So quality of life has to come into play just as quality of art comes in, while Dad was thrilled with idea of applying to Cooper, she was actually bitterly opposed and wouldn’t do it due to her research on the faculty and experience with installation art there. SCAD lost out not because of its accreditation, but because they accept kids without portfolio if they can</p>
<p>By KCAD, do you mean Kansas City or Kendall?</p>
<p>Another thing to be taken into consideration is the internship and job networking availability. Is it better to be at a small school (MCAD, KCAI) in a large city with plenty of opportunities and less competition for those spots or at a large school (RISD) in a small city? My D at MCAD has already had the art director at a major company in Minneapolis look at her work (thru a connection with a professor who showed the director my D’s portfolio) and they are talking about her doing some illustration work, and she is only a sophomore. Everyone is right - it is your portfolio that makes the difference in either jobs or grad school, not the size/prestige of the school.</p>
<p>And by the way, if you want to talk tiny, look at Chester College of New England with 166 students, in small rural Chester, NH. We went to visit there and while it was a beautiful setting, it was so rural. The school is well endowed and have a number of scholarships, but it makes me wonder where those kids find work…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.chestercollege.edu%5B/url%5D”>www.chestercollege.edu</a></p>
<p>Kendall, had a very impressive number of cites in talking to people and reading info on hiring. MCAD, I really don’t know about internships but my D liked it. It made it to top 5 for her but the size and lack of prestige hurt it. Too many folks had never heard of it, too bad. In interviewing recent Pratt and RISD grads, they all had internships every year except for one who took some painting thing in Europe. SCAD, not so much, but their top couple got pushed for all kinds of awards. Ringling and MICA seemed inconsistent for illustration, especially MICA, SVA was hard to judge, a lot of their students were already working or were older, but at least two of the younger ones got great internships, Parsons seemed to do better with Fashion, MCAD seemed to do well locally, but my D wants the internships in NYC. It all depends, but i am surprised by how many people miss great little schools like Alfred, KCAD, MCAD, and base their stuff off of 20 year old lists and lists of grad schools. I tried to find all the awards that students or recent grads got. Animation career review also had good quotes from working directors that helped sort the schools.</p>
<p>I think our problem is that my daughter is into fine arts. She had wanted to go to Yales as she studies there this past summer and received two A+ but they did not accept her. RISD I wonder how many of the students do actually go for fine arts. Illistration is is a whole seperate area. My daughter wants to go into Art Restoration and for that you need a strong fine arts base and to be truthful, I see very few really talented, even at the best of these schools. My worry with RISD is that first year work is amazing and then it seems to meld into a modern craze of smeared mess they call art. I would think we woudl have our breat taken away from the students work on the tours. They all boast museums but we never see the students work. I agree that the rankings are crazy as they are not even for undergraduate work and most are only ranked in certain areas. My daughter could have gotten a free ride from Cooper but when we toured they considered hair glue to the walls , art. I jut wish for the price tags, these schools woudl have real art departments and fine art majors and dorms with painting work space. The doorms we visited at RISD have not been updated since the 60’s and the halls alone with tape for art, disgracefull. I wish we had applied to the dual program with Brown but to late for that now. since they only hake about 12 I doubt her chances woudl have been good, even with a 4.2 GPA. she did not mkae Browns fine arts program</p>
<p>Laurie, I know this is late, but did you look at a place like PAFA in Philadelphia. It is known for its wonderful fine arts.</p>