D25 is a current Junior in H.S. with very different interests in Visual Arts (drawing, acrylics, oils, etc.) and Engineering. She does have a portfolio but because she is not confident in career options and isn’t purely passionate just for Art, she also has this tinkerer, engineer-type personality and interest to her. She has worked longer in Art (since 9th grade) and only started demonstrating interest in Engineering by doing a summer program in Engineering & Design in Summer 2023 and starting a Robotics club at her small private school which is not very well STEM-resourced both in curriculum or EC opportunities (which is why she had to found the Robotics club). However, in light of her lack of experience and exposure to hardcore Engineering, I am not convinced she is really dedicated to this career track either. She is a very good student (UW 4.0) and has a decent SAT score (1510) so she could succeed in a lot of areas. But my question is how should she position these two very different unrelated interests into her applications this coming Fall? Should she “pick” one and apply with that has the primary major or apply as “Undecided” and go into these two interests and her desire to explore them further in college? Appreciate your advice, experiences, and insights!
Has she considered industrial design?
https://daap.uc.edu/academic-programs/school-of-design/industrial-design/curriculum.html
Depends what you mean by “art.” Like a BFA? Art history?
Lots of LACs really encourage this kind of exploration. Lafayette, for instance, has strong engineering and arts.
I’d apply in engineering and consider an art minor. The BFA makes it hard to double major.
PS: In what universe is a 1510 “decent”? It’s 98th to 99th percentile. I know people fret about not being in the 75th percentile for Stanford. But 1510 is a freaking great score. Elite performance.
Yes - she’s looked into this and, for some reason, it’s not that appealing to her. interesting that when we is in Engineering mode, she is not so much in “Art-mode” which is why i am not sure she is really passionate about it…but maybe this can be nurtured or developed in some way.
at yale there’s a CS and art combination major!! hope this helps. I think interdisciplinary stuff is best. you can also dm me if there’s any questions. ^^
Like ik friends w art and mech E , art and pre med, etc.
What about a combined/dual degree program? That’s what we encouraged D24 to look for as a compromise (she wanted to attend an art school, we wanted her to have more career flexibilty). Cornell, U Mich, Tufts, and Brown/Risd were at the top of her list. We also looked at schools that had good art departments, but didn’t offer a dual degree: Dartmouth, Wash U, Duke, Georgetown, Vassar, Wesleyan, Hamilton, and Clark. i believe Northeastern and BU also have combined degree programs but those never made it on her list. Lots of options for kids who have two vastly different interests!
“art” is meant to be the practical creation of visual art (primarily drawing thru different modalities like oil, acrylics, graphite, etc.) so not Art history, or appreciation, or sculpting/pottery, etc. Her portfolio is made up for 11+ pieces but i don’t think she wants to just apply as an Art major because of her other interests.
as an LAC alum myself, i have tried to cultivate an appreciation for these types of schools and i think she is open to applying but a little worried they will not offer enough “Engineering” support like coursework, research, internships, and most are not ABET accredited programs (there are some exceptions). Also since she attends a small school, i think she is leaning towards a more medium-sized school (1000+ per class year) but not sure these are dealbreakers.
RE: SAT - sorry, i think having frequented this forum so much, i have seen so many 1550+ scores that my mind has been warped. Yes, we are very grateful that she has scored well!
If she thinks she wants to pursue an engineering degree it is usually better to apply and begin with the engineering. There can be long pre-requisite course sequences and at some schools it can be hard to transfer into engineering because of capacity constraints.
I’m not sure where you live, but how about another summer engineering program to test the waters a bit more? Maybe something more intense and college like. WPI has a great program. The nice thing is they pick both an engineering focus and a humanities focus. There may be an art section offered.
Would she be interested in Media Arts? WPI offers a minor and it’s designed for those majoring in engineering. https://www.wpi.edu/academics/study
My kid also has a lot of interests: engineering, political science, history, literature, and film. He targeted engineering departments within liberal arts universities that encouraged interdisciplinary learning. He applied directly to engineering because it is easier to start in engineering than to try and transfer later. Penn was his top choice and where he attends but Stanford, Michigan, Northwestern, Lehigh, and BU were also on his list.
I have a kid who was determined to be an artist. All her activities were art-related. She painted all the time. The spring of junior year she told us she wanted to be an engineer. We were a bit shocked, but she had the grades, coursework in math and science, and test scores for it, if not a single engineering-related EC. She ended up with full tuition at Illinois Tech ( our college search strategy was to target big merit). Admissions without engineering EC’s were not a problem (the college engineering coursework also wasn’t a problem). It was her choice to attend a college without an art major, and she did have choices where she could have taken art classes or a minor.
Her degrees are in architectural engineering and structural engineering, she works as a structural engineer (often on historic buildings), and still paints all the time. She has a mini art studio in a room in her house.
As a strategy, other than listening to your daughter and letting her articulate what she wants to pursue and why, I’d apply to engineering, as it’s often harder to switch into engineering than out of it, but look at schools with art options as well. My kid just decided she didn’t want to do art as work (and also said she wanted a college degree where the name of the degree matched the career, lol!).
Had a friend with those interests who thrived at Case Western.
RIT would be another to consider.
One aspect to Case Western that might be appealing to an artsy engineer / engineering artist would be the presence of the Sears think[box], the largest makerspace in the US. I’m not sure if the majors at CWRU will have what she’s looking for, but it could be worth a look.
To combine art, design and aspects of engineering, a career in user experience (UX) design might be especially appealing to your daughter. This article describes a pathway to this field from a liberal arts college:
One daughter was very interested in art as a child. At one point she won an award in a Boston Globe contest, so we went into Boston and got her award, attended a pleasant reception, and got to see all of the other art work that had also won awards. There were quite a few winners (maybe 100 or so?) and a lot of very, very good art, all by high school students. My daughters reaction was pretty much “Wow, how could I compete will all of these excellent artists, and why would I even want to”. She continued to paint and draw, but started focusing on other potential career interests (and is currently doing well with a very different career direction).
When I was in university at one point I asked a professor about a dual major in mathematics and art. This was before I figured out how bad I was at art. What the art professor told me: There is no point. Whatever you can do with two degrees (one in math and one in art) you can do with one degree in math and having just taken the art classes as electives.
I did not ask about art and engineering, but I cannot imagine that the answer would have been any different.
A similar issue frequently comes up between engineering/math/computer science versus music. I know quite a few people who work in high tech and who also play an instrument (frequently at a level where they perform in public, less often but sometimes at a level where they make money and go on tours). I think that it is wonderful to have multiple interests. I do not think that one needs a double major in these cases.
DD is a MechE major with a DPA minor; both subjects actually use artistic and mathematical/CS skills. She uses programs like Matlab, CAD, and Procreate. Her DPA classes included a lot of drawing/sketching both on paper and on a tablet. Her MechE classes require an artistic/creative mind for their projects; the end result just happens to be a machine or parts instead of a painting. She uses a lot of the same skills in both MechE and DPA, one of them being coding in Python, C & C++. She’s also in a Film club which is another creative outlet. Her dream career would be doing special effects (practical, not digital) for movies. It requires an engineering background including robotics, hydraulics, sensors, electrical, CS, etc for the type of work she’s considering. All that to say Engineering and art can go hand-in-hand. We always say MechE feeds her mind, DPA feeds her soul. I second the summer university engineering camps; they can give students an insight into what the major may be like. I think DD did ones at two different colleges to explore careers and the schools. Which math (calc), physics and CS classes has she taken? Did she enjoy enjoy them. It’s a lot of calculus, if you ask DD what her classes were last year she’d say calculus for heat, calculus for fluids, calculus for materials 
I have encountered people working in computing, while doing some sort of performing art as an “extracurricular” (e.g. community theater productions). Probably because any kind of arts is very hard to earn a living from unless one is elite, while someone who is merely good at computing, engineering, etc. can earn a living.
I would definitely check out RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology). They require a major and then an immersion and also can minor. Great tech and art related school. Very unique offering of majors.
Another alternative could be a blended art/design+tech degree like one of these:
UMiami: Innovation, Technology and Design
Purdue: Studio Arts & Technology
Would this kind of program resonate more with your child than a formal Industrial Design program?
I agree with checking out RIT.
You might also want to check out the EA program at CMU:
I would also look at the University of Rochester–the way they do things you can easily combine Engineering and something Art-related at whatever level makes sense (cluster, minor, or second major). You can start by searching for Art clusters here:
Finally, Wake Forest also has an interesting Engineering program that is more easily combinable with other things than many. It is relatively new but now ABET accredited: