Trip Report to School of the Art Institute of Chicago

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
1

<p>We recently visited SAIC. I don't see much about it on here, so I thought I would post a trip report.</p>

<p>Facilities - Excellent. Lots of studio space. They even have their own foundry. Buildings are not on a central campus, but are within walking distance of each other in downtown Chicago.</p>

<p>Location - Excellent. Right downtown with the lakefront, Millenium Park, shopping and restaurants on Michigan Ave and State Street, and the art museum. Other museums located nearby. The perfect location for someone wanting an urban environment.</p>

<p>Residence Halls - Excellent. The best I have seen. We saw a double with one bed in the main room, and the second up in a loft above this room. There was also a bathroom and small kitchen with full-size refrigerator, microwave, and stove top. Shared facilities include laundry, studio space in the dorm, lounges, fitness room, and full kitchens.</p>

<p>Dining - SAIC does not have a dining plan. Each academic building does have some sort of cafe where students can use their ID/debit card. We didn't check these out.</p>

<p>Security - Excellent. Students must scan their ID to enter any building. We had to show our driver's licenses and have our pictures taken by security prior to our admissions session. Security will escort students between buildings at night.</p>

<p>Admissions Session and Tour - The admissions sessions are one-on-one and the tours are one guide per one or two families, so you get plenty of attention. Everyone was extremely friendly and helpful. We missed our admissions appointment due to traffic and they made sure someone met with us before we left.</p>

<p>Transportation - We had no trouble finding parking in a garage for our visit, but students should NOT bring a car to campus. There is plenty of public transportation, including trains to the airport.</p>

<p>One quirky thing I will mention is that SAIC does not give grades. They are pass/fail. They will give grades if the student requests them at the start of the semester. This may be an issue if you decide to transfer somewhere else.</p>

<p>We have been told that SAIC is very hard to get accepted to, but the acceptance rate on College Board shows 80%, so I'm not sure what to believe.</p>

<p>If any one has questions, I will try to answer.</p>

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<p>AdvMom,</p>

<p>Thanks for the information! Have you learned anything more about the acceptance rate v. the reputation for being hard to get into?</p>

<p>I've been really curious about that.</p>

3

<p>Visited SAIC with D a couple of years ago. The grad school is very competitive. Undergrad, from what I remember when I asked during the tour, had an acceptance rate of 84%. Also heard the attrition rate after freshman year was about 50%. </p>

<p>D currently attends MICA.</p>

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<p>My daughter is considering SAIC. Why is the attrition rate so high after freshman year?!</p>

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<p>You can get statistics like freshman retention rates and graduation rates for US colleges at the National Center for Education Statistics website. Based on that site, I believe the 50% number was probably the 6 year graduation rate. That seems a little on the low side compared to some other art schools. The freshman retention rate tends to be about 80% for SAIC.</p>

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<p>I am bumping this up since there have been a few questions about SAIC lately from people that cannot visit.</p>

<p>I will add a couple of comments not included in this thread. SAIC is not on contiguous property like most college campuses. It is several different buildings within a few block radius. So you don't walk from building to building on a campus occupied only by college students. You walk from building to building with everyone else in downtown Chicago. </p>

<p>If you choose to live in the residence halls, you will probably cook most of your own food. There are no large grocery stores in the area, so you will have to take public transportation to grocery stores.</p>

<p>If you choose not to live in the residence halls, you will be taking public transportation since I doubt many college students can afford to rent in downtown Chicago. I don't know how safe it is to take public transportation late at night.</p>

<p>One big disappointment in our visit was that we didn't see any student work, but that was probably due to bad timing by us since we visited in late summer.</p>

<p>I will also mention that we heard some very negative things about SAIC's graphic design being "too conceptual" after our visit.</p>

<p>In the end, my daughter decided to apply only to universities, not art schools.</p>

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<p>I am curious to know more. Does anyone know the facts about admission rate? W ehave heard it has an excellent photo department - can anyone tell us more about that?</p>

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<p>SAIC's photo program is hardcore conceptual based. HAAAAARD core.
I met with them at NPD, and while I received a warm reception from other schools, the SAIC representative tore me apart. Haha. But then I got a letter in the mail saying that I had been strongly recommended for admission...SO.</p>

9

<p>I wanted to add a couple of things.</p>

<p>After our visit to SAIC, my daughter seemed set on going there. I think this was primarily due to its location. My husband and I had a few concerns and told her she had to visit two more schools. One was our in-state public safety, and the other was Kansas City Art Institute. My husband and I were far more impressed with KCAI than we were with SAIC. For one thing, it has more of a traditional college campus than SAIC. The buildings were all very nice, with each dedicated to a specific subject area (foundation, liberal arts, photography, graphic design, etc.) I was very impressed with their graphic design building. Had I not known better, I would have thought I had walked into a profesional design office. The way they handled admissions presentations, tours and reviews was more professional than SAIC. At the end, my husband and I felt we would much rather have our daughter attend KCAI than SAIC. However, it was at KCAI that my daughter realized art school was probably not for her. She realized how foundation works and that she would spend virtually every waking hour in the studio. She realized that all social events at the school centered around art. And she realized that the students are a very small group that must work closely together with little opportunity for social interaction outside that group. While this may sound ideal to some people, she realized that she wanted a life and friends outside art. She didn't pick up on these things at SAIC for some reason.</p>

<p>I will also mention that KCAI does not offer graduate degrees. Many of those rankings you see are for grad school, so schools like KCAI are never listed, and rarely discussed. And just because a school has a good graduate program does not necessarily mean their undergrad is just as good.</p>

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<p>most of my friends who attended portfolio days got their ports accepted by SAIC on the spot, idk if says anything about the difficulty of getting in</p>

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<p>I think the acceptance rate is really high, like around 80%.
But then the graduation rate is relatively lower</p>