So…
I’ve narrowed down my decisions to two, but they both are so compelling and I am unable to decide ;(
I’d thought, for more than past four years, that I would want to major in art & design, but I’ve figured that I’m not talented enough to compete against all the frenzy artsies at art schools and become successful as an artist. So I decided that I should do engineering, which I like and am good at, and I’m confident that I’ll enjoy it and be successful.
However, the thing is I don’t want to lose art because I’ve dedicated myself into it for my entire life.
So I’ve come up with two best options for me:
Go to UIUC and major engineering. AND go to an graduate school to study art (i.e. Carnegie-design/ Stanford-art/ RISD)
OR
Go to Washington University in St. Louis and double major in art and engineering. If it's too hard, I'll drop whichever is harder into a minor.
What are your insights into this? Which would be a better option for me? What should I do?!
I was looking at the same choice many years ago. It depends on what you want. For me, I really wanted a smaller campus for undergrad, with somewhat more personal experiences. I also wanted a larger urban area compared with a college town.
From my understanding, there’s less flexibility in taking classes between areas at UIUC. For WashU, engineering is pretty rigorous, but you do have engineers doing minors or even second majors in other divisions. WashU tries to be pretty flexible. I think an art and engineering double major would be hard based on the workload (depending on what EN major), but minors are pretty common. I’ve seen art with comp sci and biomed engineering with a dance minor.
I also think St. Louis is better for being immersed in art- Champaign is just a much smaller area. There are a lot of free art museums in the St. Louis area and galleries (St. Louis Art Museum, Pulitzer, Contemporary, SLU Art, and the Kemper at WashU). If you like being able to see art exhibitions, it might be a better place for that.
Illinois Eng is going to be every bit as rigorous as Wash U. Also, I would think the Wash U scenario where you get it done as an undergrad. would be better. Can you minor in Art?
Have you looked at the major requirements at Wash U for art and engineering, and also, have you looked at the breadth requirements? Art is its own school there, with architecture (not in Arts and Sciences)…I don’t know if that would make it more work than double-majoring with something like English or history or not.
Back in the dark ages when I was an undergrad at Wash U (Arts and Sciences), my roommate was a Graphic Design major in the art school. She spent a lot of hours in studio.
Anyway, I don’t want to scare you off. I really like the idea of doing something that you love and something that you know will put food on the table, just make sure you check whether there are enough hours in the day to do it.