<p>I wish that I had discovered this site before I spent way too much money on the Parsons Paris summer program. Anyway, I know that a lot of us have posted about our children's experiences at pre-college programs in various threads; but it seems like a good idea to have information posted in one place for the newbies.</p>
<p>Parsons Paris:</p>
<p>Not really worth the money! My daughter went from three years experience in working with oils to working with watercolors. The program was very traditional and completely lacked a conceptual contemporary approach. It gave her no exposure to an "art school" experience and most kids attending were not so much interested in art as they were interested in shopping in Paris and spending much more money than she had to spend on eating out. The "dorm" that they were housed in was used as hostel in the summer with many of the residents being European males in the 20's. As a result, it was very noisy all hours of the night and getting a good night's sleep was very difficult. They, also, let homeless people in to use the showers and facilities. She felt pretty unsafe much of the time she was there, but didn't tell us till she was back home. You have to remember that most of these programs are run by colleges and often there is too much freedom given to high schoolers that might not be quite ready for it.</p>
<p>Below is a link to a new summer art program for high schoolers that is at my daughter's private arts high school. They have alot of experience providing nurturing environments to that age group as they have run a summer theatre and a summer ballet program for years.</p>
<p>Wow! That's definately one to avoid! Anyone else have specific feedback on any of these programs, especially on the west coast? I've now got quite good list of website of "possibles", and would love to hear about experiences at Calif. College of the Arts, Cornish, Pacific NW College of Art, InnerSpark at Cal Arts, AAU, or Idlyllwild. UCLA isn't quite the right curriculum for my daughter, although it looks good for things they do. If SF Art Institute is like Seattle AI, they only offer pre-college to rising seniors, and she's a soph now. My thinking is this: if an intensive summer art experience shows her that she doesns't really want all art, all the time, then we have the junior year to explore colleges with good art departments. If she doesn't find that out until summer of the junior year, it's a scramble in fall of senior year to find candidate schools.</p>
<p>SFAI is not the same school Art Institute of San Francisco. SFAI's pre-college program is for ages 16-18. That being said, we visited SFAI during the whole college decision process and while she loved the idea of SFAI and was extremely impressed with the admissions rep that came to visit her high school; she ultimately decided that SFAI was too far from being a traditional college experience for even my very untraditional daughter. They are known as a transfer school and a school for older students.</p>
<p>WHS's summer program is both at the school near Boston and in Florence. They do the same thing with their summer writing program.</p>
<p>Numerous art schools have summer programs, on their own campuses. Perhaps we could start a big list like the one on the Musical Theatre Majors thread. Actually there are two there. One for listing the programs and websites, and one for discussing the programs.</p>
<p>I'll post my experience. I went to Pratt PreCollege the summer before my senior year (summer 04). My "major" was drawing and painting. The quality of both students and instruction varies a lot. With the exception of the architects (I don't really know what they did :)) my section deffinitely had the most work and I'm very thankful for that because I learned so much. My painting class worked in oils, it was all observational with a big emphasis on technique and developing series. My foundation class was really, truly excellent but sort of a figure, perspective and color boot camp, a lot of work, if I never see Color Aid paper again it will be too soon. Although you do have to apply for the program we all kind of had the feeling that if you could pay you got in. I had one friend who was honestly there because her mother didn't want her home, she left our class after the first three days and switched to an exploratory style class where she had a great time. I had another friend who had spent the summer before at MICA and I fully expect to see her work in the Whitney Biennial before we're 30. The non-credit Art history and portfolio development classes are hit or miss. My portfolio class was taught by a bitter grad student but I did learn how to shoot slides but we had a portfolio review over at admissions towards the end of the program and that was incredibly valuable, mine lasted about an hour. Art History was just nice guided tours of the Brooklyn Museum, MoMa and the Met.</p>
<p>Pratt made sure we knew we were not actually in college. I think our curfew was 11 sun-thurs and 12 fri-sat. We had to check in and out with security between dusk and 11 if we even wanted to go out on the lawn to draw. Once my RA found me in my room @ 11:05 where I had been doing homework since 5:00 and he still had to send a letter to my parents that I "missed curfew" because I forgot to sign in. But other than that the only complaints I had were the same ones my friends who are now in their freshman year at Pratt have. The billing/administrative stuff is kind of crazy, the elevators will never work, its not the greatest neighborhood (however I never really felt unsafe), and bring your own trashcan and broom, but it was a really great experience.</p>
<p>My oldest son went to the Idyllwild program last summer for Jazz. I really know nothing about the art program there. What I can speak to is the level of supervision is good. The kids don't have much to do off campus because it's a very small mountain town. Also, important to note that the school has no air conditioning. Probably okay for those used to the heat and humidity, but for the West Coast crowd used to air conditioning, it's a tough environment. With 85-90 degree temperatures, my son really wanted to come home because he couldn't sleep. Ended up okay because we got him a fan.</p>
<p>My daughter attended Pratt's Pre-College program in the summer of 2003. At the time they offered scholarships that were merit based and she received a nice one. Wangergirl's post was excellent so I won't bother repeating. It was a great opportunity for my daughter to experience art school, and she did decide on attending art school...just not Pratt.</p>