<p>Hey there @chickennugets</p>
<p>I just got into the desma program, though I may be a special case and of no real value, I will still tell you my story:</p>
<p>I hadn’t even thought of making visual art until end of summer of senior year: though I have always done it in my past(childhood) for fun, I was more of a musician (jazz). My brother had gotten into the desma program, and I decided I might as well apply as I started to see what he was doing, and also because UCLA is such an awesome school in general. I learned all the programs (illustrator, photoshop, ect…) as I used them to make my portfolio only a month before the dead-line, and I just let out my personality with each piece. I also tried to make each piece differ in purpose and medium (I made t-shirt, a computer game, a website design, a magazine ad, a moving portrait where I video taped myself in the same frame in different costumes and stitched it all togther). I think that helped. I’d say that you may want to show the variety of your talents without forcing yourself to do anything though, as each idea I ended up creating was something I wanted to do anyway. What they really look for is your creativity, because they can teach you all the other cool stuff later. </p>
<p>also, don’t worry about grades or Sat scores or any of that non-art stuff (though you seem to have a handle on the grades).
My score was a 1980 that I sent,
and my grades were 4.0 weighted
I didn’t have a lot of ECs,(they don’t really care about quantity, as long as you do something you like) in fact I never did anything with my school—But did I produced benefit concerts for various causes outside of school, and I rowed for 3.5 years (stopped so I could do my UCLA portfolio). </p>
<p>I don’t know about essays though
they were goodish- It looks like you have a lot of community Service, but I would be careful with writing about that. It can just blend in with the other 80,000 applicants who write about their “summer painting fences in costa rica”. Every other mother-scratcher who knows what their talking about is going to give the same simple advice about essays: write about what you really like to do, and show yourself in the essay so the school can get to know you.</p>
<p>Also—the whole supplement is pretty heafty:</p>
<p>1 writing part about the color X (it changes every year)
-this is really not that big. They let you use enough characters to write a sentence</p>
<p>1 project about the color X
-I made a computer game for this and video taped it as if it were a demo</p>
<p>portrait (up to 30 sec or 1 still image)
-make this count- You my not see it this way at first, but its kind of like a personal essay made of art. This is where I made my video of the different versions of myself all in the same frame in slow-motion set to awesome music.</p>
<p>10 unique pieces (still images)
-make these count too, and make sure they show the full spectrum of your creativity. I actually used a couple pieces from the same project in this and it was fine, so don’t worry to much about varying it.</p>
<p>optional vid
-this can be up to 3 minutes. I just used it to show other work that moved. I also had an exhibition at the time,(it was a series of wooden machines that did different things revolving around the theme of time) and it helped to show people interacting with my project and playing with it and commenting on it in the video.</p>
<p>Also, don’t force yourself to do anything over the summer if you don’t have any ideas. Let it all come out like art should, and if you have an idea, no matter how weird or vague, try it. I did and I found out so many talents through the process that I had never thought I had. I can show you some of my work if you want</p>