<p>My D and I understand that the BS are not Art Conservatory. However, are some schools a lot better than others particularly in Art ? Or are all the BS basically for College Prep that academics should be the most important factor to choose from?
I think this question would apply to the other areas of extracurricular, for instance, ballet, sports, etc.
My D is passionate in Art. particularly in drawing and designing. Plus she is an excellent student academically.( SSAT 95-99)
Now she needs to choose between the Taft , NMH, and the MPS. All of them looks wonderful and my D sighs because its hard to choose only one !
We love the Taft with its academic rigour. NMH and the MPS with its superb education and its emphasis on Art (supposedly.)
Does anyone think the Art Department of the NMH and the MPS are exceptionally better than the Taft that it would be worth to turn down the Taft ?
I am sorry, I don’t mean to discount NMH and the MPS, at all. They all are wonderful schools and my D and I feel fortunate to be accepted by them.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about NMH. What is MPS? As for Taft, it’s a fine school, academically and in the arts. During our tour of Taft we had a peek of the tree house. It’s an amazing little multi level class room for video production. It actually felt like a hidden tree house within one of Taft’s gothic structures. Also the theater dept. is known to be strong. I suggest a revisit day to answer further questions. They will most likely pair your child up with a student with similar interests.</p>
<p>MPS is Miss Porter’s School I think.</p>
<p>I’m a Taft parent. This is our first year. My D is more focused on music and theater but when we interviewed we met the Taft Art Teacher and she was wonderful. My D took the video class and practically lived in the Treehouse while she trained on Maya - a state of the art 3-D modeling software program used by professionals. </p>
<p>So I can vouch that there is a lot of opportunities for an “artist” at Taft between theatre/set design, photography, fine arts (painting, drawing are particularly strong), etc. In fact - there was so much to choose from - even for a non-artist – that my D had a hard time narrowing down her class choices for the first year. I should also mention that a group of the video students travel to different places around the world each summer to work on an independent film project with professional equipment. The school distributed information about other summer opportunities (studying anime drawing in Asia, french cooking in France, etc.)</p>
<p>My husband and I want to do High School over again. Not sure about the other schools - but honestly - they are probably just as strong.</p>
<p>Beacause boarding schools allow their teachers a lot of autonomy in designing their classes and progressions, art programs will vary tremendously from school to school, based on who the teachers are. My guess is that all these schools have programs that could be considered strong, and all have students who benefit greatly, but the day-to-day running of the classes will look very, very different. What kind of experience does your daughter want? </p>
<p>Some teachers will set up their studio classes by assigning problems that the students must figure their own way to solve, others will give detailed and specific assignments that students must adhere to. Some teachers like to get involved in competitions like Scholastics, while other artists find competition anathema to creation. With the arts, it’s about finding a teacher you click with who will challenge and inspire you. I imagine that all those schools have good facilities, but some schools treat the arts like an academic discipline, and others believe that the arts are more of a hobby (which affects how classes are taught, not just what kinds of offerings there are). I bet that if your daughter emails or calls some of the art teachers to ask them about their classes (and often you can get a sense of this just from reading the course catalogue if it’s online) she may find that one really clicks for her. Arts teachers in general love to talk about their philosophies and their work. I don’t know if any of that is helpful to you, but you can’t really go wrong by choosing any of these schools, so you’ve got great choices to make!</p>