Which art school should I pick?

cherrycrush021
Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:48:24 +0000

Actually… I would not say that your reasons for Pratt were “bad”.

Location & atmosphere is actually HUGE. Don’t pick a school based largely on reputation, believe me you will regret it. My brother is regretting it. He is not an art student, he goes to Wesleyan, but still this point is valid. Go where you fit in. I cannot stress this enough. I have to say that it is fairly true that with a good reputation comes kids who are quite snobby. It’s one stereotype that I really believe to be true. Hell, I live in Princeton and I see it everyday with the kids who go to the University here. Anyway… any of these schools on your list are great and will get you far, if you do the work that is. No one school will hold your hand to help you “make it” though, it really is all about the effort you put into it. I know that MICA, Pratt, and RISD all have excellent career centers to help you find a job. Anywhere you go you will make connections, so that’s really not an issue.

As for the RISD/Pratt debate…
I went to Pre-college programs at both RISD and Pratt. I liked both for different reasons. RISD had some cool buildings (and wonderful food… mmmm) but some were not exactly up to par. Same with Pratt, but Pratt’s food… not so much (but Bergen Bagels and many of the local eateries around the Clinton-Hill area are fairly cheap and excellent if you really do need some good food once in a while). I majored in Drawing at RISD and Painting & Drawing at Pratt. I can say the same thing for both schools about my teachers: some were good, some were bad. This is true absolutely everywhere… you are ALWAYS going to have some teachers you like and some you dislike. However, that being said the teachers who taught my majors in both pre-college programs were amazing, truly. I learned so much from both of them. Their approaches were both very traditional, but I had a teacher at Pratt for foundation drawing who was very experimental and he encouraged playing around with materials. In contrast, my teachers at RISD were extremely strict and narrow in their approaches to art. They all seemed very OCD. It was all about regimented figure drawing the entire 6 weeks for my foundation class, and my basic design class was a harsh slap in the face every period. The teacher assigned us very strange tasks and only accepted really one way of completing them. She was a big fan of clean, organized lines (which is NOT my strong point). So it depends on the kind of art you like. Both institutions are fairly traditional, but at least in my experience, Pratt encourages stepping outside the box a little more than RISD does. Does this mean if you are incredibly wacky and abstract that you won’t do well at RISD? No, you will probably connect with some professor who loves your work and you will still go far, your type of work just might be in the minority.

Okay onto other issues: I HATED Providence. Okay okay, I didn’t hate it. But after three weeks, I was SO bored. The good news? The train is a short walk away from RISD so if you ever need more excitement, Boston isn’t too far. In contrast, I LOVED Brooklyn. Pratt’s area really is not that dangerous, as long as you’re not stupid. Clinton-Hill is actually becoming a great neighborhood. I talked to a restaurant owner in the neighborhood and he explained just how much the area has grown in the past 4 years, even. It really is tremendous. There are hip clothing stores and boutiques cropping up, and trendy places to eat. It is becoming more of a hipster area, I’m sure to the delight of Pratt students. The subway is so close and with that, you have cheap fare to pretty much anything your heart desires. Just think of all the museums in New York! Really, Providence cannot compete with that. We took field trips to The Met, MOMA, and galleries in Chelsea. Seeing the work in person… I cannot stress enough how much that impacts you as an artist. & I love Manhattan, but I really couldn’t live there I don’t think because it is quite hectic and completely opposite the “traditional” college campus (read: lack of a sense of community), so Pratt’s location in Brooklyn was perfect for me. Pratt has a campus! A real, live campus! Grass and trees!!! That was one thing I despised about RISD… there’s basically ONE patch of grass on the entire campus for students to hang out. It’s nicknamed “The Beach”… but don’t let the name fool you, it is TINY. I mean tiny. I was quite disappointed that there was nowhere to really just chill out outside. Meanwhile, every single day at Pratt there were soccer games going on on campus. It was definitely more of a traditional college campus feel, and I loved that. I also liked how Pratt’s buildings were all so close which made getting to class easy, not to mention having everything contained within the gates made me feel really safe. RISD’s buildings are much more spread out all over Providence (which makes lugging all of your art supplies home a nightmare), and I really did not like walking to classrooms at night if I needed to do extra work. Angel Street (I think it’s called), right behind the Homer dorms at RISD… not a very nice place. There are some sketchballs there at night, we even had some drunkards yelling at us from the street at 3 in the morning… & what some poster on here said is true: people DO get mugged at Providence. It’s really not that picturesque. In fact, Burnside Park, one of the few parks in Providence, is extremely sketchy, and home to many drug dealers/homeless people. My skin crawled if I was there past 5 pm.

Lastly, the people. I really cannot stress this more: what you hear about RISD is true. I had so many annoying snobby kids in my class at RISD, and being the shy person I was at the time, it did not go well for me. They were not even that good coming into the program! During critiques I felt like a lot of kids were B.S.ing everything they were saying, and during art history classes pretentious students talked with the teacher about completely unknown artists in order to sound hip. Totally not my thing. I’m not saying everyone is a jerk there, I actually made some amazing friends on my floor. I loved my experience. But I really did feel a lot more comfortable at Pratt. Everyone is really chill and no one is trying to slit your throat and stab your back… Critiques seemed so much more honest and my classmates weren’t afraid to admit that they didn’t know something; they asked questions so we could all learn. No one really “showed off” and everyone was quite friendly. It really is a laid-back atmosphere. That’s not to say that students aren’t serious about their work, though… I remember at Pratt just as at RISD, many students worked on their pieces until the wee hours of the morning, or even pulled all-nighters. Now, if you are extremely intense about your work and can deal with pretentious, cutthroat people on a daily basis, in addition to loads and loads and loads of stress, RISD will work for you. But if you are like me, and you really have a chill attitude about life, and want to be maybe a LITTLE less stressed throughout college, Pratt might be a better choice.

It’s pretty obvious, but I will state it out here plainly: I actually liked Pratt better than RISD. I think the environment at Pratt will foster me into becoming a much better artist, as well as a better person. I’m applying to both colleges this year, but in all honesty I really think given the choice I’m going to go to Pratt.