<p>Any opinions on this? their web site says they have studios, but the courses are not clear to me. My daughter is interested in fine arts but would like to experiment. SL seems like a pretty flexible place. Any experience out there?</p>
<p>If you are looking at Sarah Lawrence, you might also consider Wesleyan, Bennington and Hampshire. All are pretty flexible and tend to attract “arty” students. While they are in no way studio programs like you would get at an art school, a student would be well prepared to move on to a masters program after their BA.</p>
<p>I think you would be well advised to look at the work on the walls and judge for yourself whether you think its demanding enough or not for your daughter. After you have looked at some programs and places you can form your own opinion. The art schools are ~60% studio time and 40% academic time. Universities are usually upside down on that. Does your daughter have a portfolio? For my daughter SLC was too unstructured and their facilities were’t adequate for her, so she applied to large universities and art schools. She was lucky, she had lots of choices.</p>
<p>She is working on the portfolio. She will also apply to art schools and big universities…her counselor at school suggested she try a few small LACs. I agree with you on SL.</p>
<p>I kind of like Skidmore, but it would be a reach for my daughter.</p>
<p>I looked there when applying. It was dreadful. A decent facility but what they were doing was art I was doing in eighth grade. If she’s serious about art, there are lots of better places. Northeastern, for example, has a program with the Museum School in Boston. NYU also has an excellent art school.</p>
<p>Do you mean you were at Skidmore, or Sarah Lawrence?</p>
<p>Oops I got my personal pronouns mixed up. I didn’t visit Skidmore so wasn’t making any comments on it. The work that we saw at SLC was comparable to the stuff my daughter was doing while she was young teenager. </p>
<p>Its hard to know what a reach is when its portfolio driven. The things to think about are – what sort of structure does the school offer, foundation year or not, breadth of majors, studio or design orientation, and how all of that fits with her interests etc. If she going to a pre-college program this summer? I think the precollege work really helps kids accelerate their skill growth and prepares them for art school.</p>
<p>Yes, she is enrolled in a summer program at Mass Art. Although we are looking mostly at BFA programs, I don’t think that D has decided for sure. Her school counselor suggested we look at Skidmore, although D’s GPA isn’t quite up there for Skidmore (the counselor said the portfolio was weighed heavily). Portfolios are such subjective things, it’s hard to know what is reasonable to reach for sometimes.</p>
<p>Anyway, Skidmore has a BS program for studio art, not a BFA.</p>
<p>MassArt has great facilities and a good precollege program. The portflio reviews at the end of the summer program should give you good feed back (or her)… My daughters gpa and sats were not outstanding but her portfolio was strong she got in everywhere but NYU even RISD… So you can’t underestimate the import of the portfolio</p>
<p>Postscript my D went to the MassArt program and got a lot out of it.</p>
<p>Where did your D eventually end up going?</p>
<p>We visited Mass Art last week and we liked it alot.</p>
<p>She applied to SAIC, CCA, Northeastern/Museum School, NYU, MassArt, Pratt, and RISD. She was admitted everywhere except NYU and after revisiting the east coast schools last week picked RISD. MassArt was lovely to her and has the breadth and facilities that she was looking for but it wasn’t her first choice.</p>