<p>If a school accepts both, which should be submitted? Or both? A CD seems are lot more convenient and inexpensive but there must be a reason why slide portfolios are so popular.</p>
<p>Slides are old fashioned. It's how portfolios were done in the past and some schools still prefer it that way. But with the age of technology, many schools are moving over to electronic means of submitting everything. I would say when in doubt, call up someone from the school and ask which they prefer. Some schools are more picky than others. I've seen some say "well, we won't penalize you either way, but we really prefer..." but then I've seen others say something like "It's really just the art that matters, we don't care what format it's in. You could even just send us a link to your deviantART account."</p>
<p>So yeah. There's my 2 cents. Find out what schools prefer what and make your best decision based on that.</p>
<p>Most schools say what they prefer but would accept either. There are more potential problems with CDs (compatability issues, that kind of thing) so many prefer old-fashioned slides. If in doubt, send both. My daughter also made a proof sheet of her portfolio to enclose as kind of a cover page.</p>
<p>It's best to have a portfolio review with the actual art. Some schools will not even require slides or CDs if the actual portfolio was found acceptable.</p>
<p>If you send a CD, be sure to pop that cd into a few different computers of varying types and ages to be sure that it will read. The big advantage to slides used to be that they could project the slides for the whole admissions committee to see at once, but now of course they can do that with computers too. Unfortunately, many places choose not to project from either source, in which case CD is better than slides, because the computer screen offers a better view than slides viewed through a lupe. So if they don't declare a preference, ask them whether they project the slides or not.</p>