Comparison of MICA with RISD

mackinaw
Fri, 18 Feb 2005 11:06:12 +0000

When my daughter was looking at art colleges 6-7 years ago, she applied to MICA as well as RISD. I liked MICA’s webpage (how’s that for a thin basis of evaluation? But RISD’s really sucked at that time, and is only a little better now).

More seriously, I recall that MICA was third most selective art school after Cooper Union and RISD – defined by percentage of applications accepted. At that time MICA accepted about 50%, RISD about 37% (Cooper was an estimated 6% but that may include all programs not just art – and I have other reasons to doubt that the true percentage is that low). Last year those rates were reportedly 44% (MICA) and 34% (RISD). Both pretty tough. Of those admitted, MICA’s “yield” was 37%, RISD’s 47%. RISD students have higher test scores and GPA’s. SAT I mean 1218 RISD, 1160 MICA.