Comparison of MICA with RISD

taxguy
Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:44:58 +0000

The following is a post that I made on the Art Major forum. I thought it would be useful here:

We looked at both MICA and RISD. I can give you an overview of the pros and cons of each:

a. you can take liberal arts courses at Brown. This certainly competes with anything that MICA offers. However, MICA’s liberal arts are integrated with their art curriculum, which is not necessarily the case with RISD.

I should note at this juncture that MICA is known to have ( and they themselves will tell you this) a strong academic focus compared to other stand alone art programs. One of the vice presidents of MICA is on the board of advisors for the “National Assocation of Schools of Art and Design,” which is the accediting agency for art schools. They also take their liberal arts courses very seriously,unlike other art schoos that simply give lip service to them for accreditation purposes. Thus, if you want strong liberal arts plus a strong art education, you probably won’t go wrong at either school. However, if strong liberal arts courses is not a goal for you, you probably won’t like MICA.
b. I found that Providence is MUCH more charming and liveable than the location of MICA in Baltimore.
c. RISD had 43 buildings compared to MICA’s 7 or 8
d. RISD is pretty inflexible on taking courses outside of your department other than winter session.They do, however, have an unusual 6 week winter session that you are required to participate in and encourged to take courses outside your department. This gives all students some greater outside exposure.

Interdisciplary studies is not really available at RISD. You can, however, change your major and take longer to graduate as a result.
e. MICA prides itself on interdisciplinary studies. You can take courses in many departments and basically design your major and "sculpt "your own education. Flexibility is definitely encouraged at MICA.
f. RISD is in some ways the antithesis of MICA. You specialize after your foundation year in one department. Although you can theoretically take courses outside of your department, it is very tough to do for several reasons: lack of room and many courses have a form of “guild like” system of prerequisites; thus, stopping kids from taking a number of upper level courses because they won’t have the prerequisites. However, when you graduate from RISD in an area, you will be very skilled in that area. I guess the question is, “whether you want to be a master of one area or have some good broad training in a number of areas but not necessarily mastery in any one area?” I should note that another poster, Mackanaw, noted that you can take basic courses in other departments at RISD,but you will have a problem taking advanced courses in other departments for the reasons given herein.

g. Although MICA has both a worldwide reputation and statewide reputation, RISD is probably more world reknown, if that means anything.

h. MICA does have a BFA/MFA combination in some areas such as education that you can acheive in 5 years instead of the usual 6 or 7 years at other art schools. This saves a lot of money if you are planning on achieving a MFA. However, it is not available in many areas of study. You, thus, need to inquire about it.I can say that if you are going into art education, I believe that MICA is the stronger of the two institutions. It has a strong placement area in education and strongly emphasizes it in many ways such as BFA/MFA etc.

i. In Maryland, MICA has a very strong reputation in fine arts, notably painting and in art education. They are not, however, as well known in the design arts. This may change, however, with a new facility solely for the design arts, which is primarily in communcation design, industrial design and animation and new media. MICA is definitely trying hard to beef up their design programs. I should also note that there is no new media or digital design program in RISD. RISD has it as a graduate school option but not in the undergraduate school. MICA does offer this major.

j. MICA is a stand alone art school that will iimit your interactions to other art students, period. At least at RISD, which admittedly is also a stand alone art school, there is a lot of interaction with Brown kids at restaurants, meeting places, dances, jobs, religious institutions etc. I guess you will have to decide whether this is an important factor. For my daughter, this was an important point.

k. MICA does NOT accept any advanced placement credit. Yes, you heard me correctly.Even if you get “5’s” on your AP exams, it won’t be accepted. The reason given is that MICA has an integrated liberal arts program where there is very little comparability with AP courses. RISD does accept AP credits.

l. MICA will tell you that you can also take courses at Hopkins. However, Hopkins is 3 miles away and is not, in my opinion, conducive for this.

MICA students have a bit of a different feel than that of RISD kids. Although I do know that this is subjective, RISD students were very artsy, maybe too much so. Many had colored hair and quirky jewelry. MICA students hit me as a bit more conservative ,but certainly you have the artsy crowd there too.

As for food, I liked the RISD cafeteria food better. In fact, RISD might have served the best food that I have ever had when compared to any other college cafeteria. However, I have to say that my family also liked the MICA food a lot. It was certainly one of the better cafeterias that we had experienced, just not better than that of RISD.

m. RISD has a higher endowment than that of MICA. In fact, RISD is the highest endowned art school in the nation. They had over 200 million as of last year. This means more money for scholarships, endowed chairs for education etc.

n. Although I feel that both institutions are excellent, RISD is probably harder to get into. They have about 50 points higher in SAT and about a .3 higher average in GPA. I can’t speak for portfolio work since I haven’t seen the portfolio submissions for each school.

Hopefully, this will give you a good grounding to ask questions and to further investigate each school.