Photos & text by Vivian Cromwell
California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts is in a quiet part of San Francisco. Two years of campus dorms are guaranteed, and there is additional housing for juniors and seniors.
About 900 out of 1500 students live on campus. The three most popular majors are Industrial Design, Graphic Design, and 2D/3D animation, which is the most popular major.
There is a shop where students can grab various chips to make things such as wearable tech or make robotic toys, etc.
Other departments include illustration and comics, which are smaller compared to Industrial Design.
New York University
NYU has about 260 art students (both graduate and undergraduate) under Steinhardt.
Each year 50-60 students are accepted, so the class sizes are quite small. One entire building is dedicated to the art education.
NYU doesn’t have majors like Animation or Illustration, but a general fine art education including Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, 3D, and 4D.
There is a photography class and darkroom in the art building that is separate from the Tisch School.
On the first floor, they are renovating the gallery space which rotates every three months with new exhibitions.
NYU has an annual open house in October; this is when you can get your portfolio reviewed.
Unlike other art schools, NYU wants portfolios to have a common theme to define who you are across different mediums, and less about the techniques, but conceptual and uniqueness.
Parsons School of Design
Fashion design, Communication Design and Illustrations are popular majors at Parsons. The program is more design focused than fine arts.
Parsons has more than 5000 students, with two buildings dedicated to Parson. The student faculty ratio is 26 to 1.
Parsons has separate programs in Communication Design and Illustration, By comparison, at Pratt it is called Communication Design – Illustration.
Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts
Tufts SMFA is School of the Museum of Fine Arts. SMFA used to be a separate entity that is affiliated with Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but now it is combined with Tufts.
The Tufts main campus is in Medford. (about 10 miles away) The SMFA campus is in the Fenway neighborhood, across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and down the street from Northeastern University on Huntington Ave.
The first year students stay in a dorm on Beacon Street about a 20 minute walk from the Tufts Medford campus. Second year students stay on the Tufts Medford campus. 3rd and 4th year students live off campus.
There is a shuttle service for art students going back and forth between the SMFA Fenway campus and the Tufts Medford campus.
Many students try to do all their Medford campus classes in one day and SMFA Fenway classes for another day due to the travel distance.
Tufts is a small-medium private research university. Overall the art student population is 800, with a faculty and student ratio of 10 to 1.
SMFA does not have a foundation year, instead if offers areas of study.
