<p>Our tour guide at SAIC transferred in from a comm college, so she wasn’t able to answer any questions on the foundations courses. I do know studio courses are long (9-5 with a one hour break for lunch), but I guess that’s typical for an art school.</p>
<p>Upsides to SAIC: great city and facilities. Security seemed really good too.
Downsides: no meal plan, buildings located far apart (not good during Chicago winters), I am not comfortable with the pass/fail system.</p>
<p>It’s a shame that SAIC doesn’t pair up with one of the universities in Chicago to offer liberal arts courses, because these courses do appear to be an afterthought just to meet BFA requirements. On the bright side, you won’t have to buy books because they typically don’t use them.</p>
<p>Comments I’ve heard about SAIC are “too conceptual”, “you have to be very self-motivated”, “great grad school, but not so great undergrad”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we saw very little student work while we were there. This may have been due to the timing (late summer). I hope what we saw was stuff left behind by younger kids in summer camps, and not the SAIC students.</p>