<p>When applying to colleges for Visual Arts, how important is it to visit the school before you apply? Does anyone know how much (if any) weight a school places on this with regard to admissions? Some of the schools my daughter is interested in are far from home and it’s hard and expensive to get everywhere!</p>
<p>My kid is sort of senior but still junior (long story) not going to college yet but we’ve done the work.
From our experience it is not going to make much differences in adcom’s eyes if you visited or not, however it helps to show interest.
You can do this by
- Seeing reps at your local NPD
- Ask questions about certain major, special programs they offer, e-mail is better than phone, so you will have paper trail with person’s name and dept etc for later need.
- Apply to pre college with scholarships where your kid is more likely to want to apply for college. This will let you know where your kid’s works place in the whole pack, they’d say scholarships are mostly need based but needs won’t even count if works are not half good. If your kid gets some award but declined to attend their pre college, they have marked you and never forget to recruit when the time comes. At some schools, precollege reps are also college adcom as well. and people moves from one school to the other, in other words, be careful, nice to everyone, do not lie or cheat.
- Art schools are bit easier to figure out than LACs or universities. There are patterns how campuses are laid out, what’s in where, what’s missing. There are certain feel for each schools of course, you’d want to visit as many as possible before deciding for real but if your kid’s interest is solid (fine art? Commercial? Fashion? Animation? ID? Arch? Tech?) There ate obvious strength and weakness you can get from web and just asking around (like, here) some school doesn’t even have the said major, no brainer. Don’t choose school based on name or value if the school does not have or weak on what your kid want.
There ate people done applied and gotten results, they can tell you better.
Anyone?</p>
<p>We visited seven out of the nine schools D applied to prior to actually applying. We also visited some schools that she didn’t end up applying to for various reasons. I would say that it is important to go before applying, or certainly before making a decision, because there are factors that come in to play that you don’t realize before hand. For instance, D took an instant dislike to SVA in NYC though that had originally been one of her top choices because a friend of hers was going there. She also didn’t like Cornell because it was way out in the middle of nowhere. She visited Laguna College of Art and Design after she applied because it was a place that was financially feasible for us and she liked the idea of moving back to California. But when she actually visited the campus, she was disappointed that it was so tiny and there was no on-campus housing. Cleveland Institute of Art sent her a travel grant after she applied (and won a merit scholarship) so that she would be sure to see the campus before she made her decision. I’m really glad that we did go because that moved that college up a few notches on the list. Other factors that came into play were things like studio space and actually talking to professors (like she did at MICA) and other students (RISD). The big open house type visits were not as useful as more individualized visits. Having a sense of the distance between buildings and dorms and dining hall and shopping were important too. Also access to intercity transportation for trips home (train/plane/bus).<br>
Start with the (theoretically, anyway) most likely colleges first. I think that applying to nine colleges was a little excessive, but we were trying to cast a wide net for merit scholarship money… which was necessary for her to be able to go to whichever college in the first place.</p>
<p>We visited 11 schools during 2 trips, first one to the NE, one to the Midwest. D had decided she didn’t like the big university scene, remembering her cousins Missou campus, but I insisted we visit 2 on the first trip, and she was not impressed. Even a small U like University of Maine Orono was too big and impersonal for her - she didn’t care about sports, Greek life, 5 cafeterias, the free gym, etc. Her first “dream” school was MECA, which she ended up not liking that much. Out of that visit, NHIA was the one she liked best. The Midwest trip only consisted of art schools, and while I loved SAIC’s location, the program wasn’t right for her, KCAI and MCAD became tied for first. NHIA had an early application program (Dec), and she already had some merit from them, awarded during pre-college. After she applied and was accepted with nice merit plus a lower tuition than the rest, she didn’t see any point in applying to those schools lower on her list. I would have liked to visit some west coast schools, but the time and money became factors. So she had it narrowed down, and only applied to those 3, accepted and with merit aid at all 3. Saved us bucks in application fees (SAIC’s was $65, more than any of the others) and ACT/SAT score-sending fees. It was a difficult choice, but she ultimately chose MCAD.</p>
<p>This summer we’re taking a trip to Chicago for S’s graduation, and will visit U of Iowa, Coe College and possibly Emerson in Boston, checking out colleges for her friend who doesn’t know where she wants to go, but knows she wants to do creative writing (against her mom’s wishes - like art school discouragers, “How is THAT going to get you a job?”).</p>