Transfer to RISD??

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
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<p>Hi all. First of all, sorry about starting a thread that may not be quite new to everyone here, but its really a personal case, and I need everyone's help.</p>

<p>I'm currently attending a Community College in California as a sophomore. I've finished 30 semester units--21 liberal art units and 9 studio units. I'm applying to the illustration program of RISD as a transfer student for Fall 2011. By June 2011, I'll finished another 30 semester units-- also 21 liberal art units and 9 studio units. I'm an international student, which means my English is not very good.</p>

<p>I've pretty good drawing skills--actully I'm not sure but I'm better than most of my college classmates in the drawing classes in terms of realism. Painting is just okay because I've not put much of my energy and effort into painting, but I took painting classes in high school. Pretty new to design and I'm not a creative person, quite frankly.</p>

<p>Now I'm preparing my portfolio. I've 12 pieces in total. 4 still-life--each in pen, pastel, colored-pencil, and acrylic, a achromatic drawing of a marble head sculpture in pastel, 2 nude figure drawings in graphite pencil, a portrait of my cat in pen, 2 scene drawings in pen--one showing people in a coffee shop and one showing a bunching of people in the student union, a drawing of a woman reading newspaper in pen, a abstract painting in acrylic.</p>

<p>I plan to put another 8 pieces--3 nude figure drawings in charcoal, a landscape and a self-portrait in gouache, an assignment of my color class(painting in acrylic), 2 pieces from my 2-D design class.</p>

<p>I know that RISD is highly competitive. Up to this moment, my college GPA is 3.53. I don't have any idea about the 3 drawings yet. Is it harder to get into RISD as a transfer student than as a freshman? Do the admission folks have higher expectation of foundaiton skills for transfer students than for freshmen? Since my skills are not balanced, how big is the chance for me to get in? Is my portfolio balanced? It doesn't matter if they require me to take foundation training classes but I really want to transfer those liberal arts credit, or I'll feel like wasting my time in the CC that I'm now attending.</p>

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<p>I have moved this thread where I think it will get more and better informed responses. You could also post on the Transfer Students forum or the RISD subforum (under alphabetic list of schools), but transferring to an art school is very different from most transfers, and the RISD forum doesn’t get much traffic.</p>

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<p>From what I’ve seen, the likelihood of getting in as a transfer student depends on the department. The acceptance rate is about the same at about 35%, but some departments have much higher acceptance rates, and some much lower. I don’t think Illustration has a very low acceptance rate. It seems like liberal arts credits are pretty easy to transfer as long as there is an equivalent course at RISD. Studio courses may be harder.
I think transfer students are expected to have foundation skills, but there is a summer program for students who aren’t quite there who RISD thinks should attend.
Hope that helps! I’m also applying to Illustration as a transfer for fall 2011 :D.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your advice, gabbyness. I’m pretty suprised at the 35% you mentioned because I’ve seen people saying something like 15%. 35% is not that low. I’m aiming for other schools as well, like Ringling, but RISD has the lowest acceptance rate among my list of school. :S Good luck~</p>