<p>How much does a good art portfolio weigh in top uni/lac admission for a fine arts major? Are there good academic institutions with fine arts department that give significant or primary consideration to art portfolio? How about Wustl/Cooper/CMU/Cornell/Brown/BC/Wellesley/Williams/Wesleyan? Any other?</p>
<p>My rising senior D is interested in universities/lacs with good fine arts school/department. Her current interests are drawing/painting, economics and biological sciences and would like the flexibility to pursue them in college, but she hasnt ruled out pure fine arts yet. </p>
<p>Shes working on her art portfolio (drawings & paintings) now and will have a very good one by application time. She just had a portfolio review at a pretty good art school and was told that her work was great (as in better than most of the applicants) and that she will definitely get a merit scholarship even with her incomplete portfolio. She was encouraged to complete her portfolio if she wants to be at the very top of the applicant pool. </p>
<p>We are working on her college list now and would like to find good reasons to exclude or include some reaches.</p>
<p>Most of the LAC/uni admissions folks i spoke to during my application rounds, (including a few on your list) told me pretty much the same thing: traditional admissions criteria have the most weight and it’s more like a good portfolio can can give you a competitive advantage. A great portfolio however is unlikely to compensate for an otherwise wanting application.</p>
<p>The exceptions would be WUSTL since they have a direct entry application to the school of art’s program and portfolios count just as much as everything else. Cooper isn’t exactly an art school but you apply directly to the art program. There your portfolio and hometest are the most important things. I think cooper cares very little about art applicants grades, extra curriculars or most traditional admissions criteria for that matter.</p>
<p>Would you say WUSTL’s exception is due to having a separate “school” of art rather than just a department of art within a liberal art college? If so, would the same apply to similarly structured unis like CMU, USC and NYU?</p>
<p>pretty much. For CMU and WUSTL you have to apply directly to art school so admission is portfolio based. Admission to the tisch school of arts at nyu is also portfolio based but the studio art/fine art program is actually in another school (the steinhardt) so i dunno how much weight they put on portfolios there. There was some technicality at WUSTL where you could enter through one of the other schools and still do the BFA program but direct entry into the art school is also portfolio based. As you may imagine though, all of these schools, tend to have slightly higher academic requirements than your regular independent art school. But this is all quite vague in my memory, would suggest you find out from the schools themselves.</p>
<p>oh you also have to apply directly to the school of art at cornell as well with portfolio etc. Not sure what the academic requirements are like there as opposed to their other departments</p>
<p>Since everyone knows RISD asks for a drawing of bicycle in its hometest, is it a problem to include the RISD bike drawing in your portfolio for other schools? In general, is it okay to include hometest drawings in your portfolio for other schools?</p>
<p>Oooh, do not put the bicycle drawing into a portfolio for another school. I was talking to an admission officer at Cornish College and he told me that it was frowned upon there.</p>
<p>Could this be just Cornish and a few other schools? D just completed portfolio reviews with a few schools. The reviewers undoubtedly assumed (and in one case even hinted) that the bicycle drawing was for RISD, but we did not sense anything negative about it; in fact, D received great reviews and follow-ups.</p>