Jacque

Did my undergrad there and worked for a few years in the building (albeit for the Architecture school), feel free to PM me with any questions.

Personally, I think in-person interviews are the best way to go. Many times interviews aren't just to learn more about your work, but to judge the character of your person (very important when putting together a great cohort that will work/critique together for the next few years). With that said, admissions committees are generally not unreasonable people, they wouldn't expect you to fork over serious $$$ for international flights just for an interview. For anyone that is geographically far-removed from their institution's location it is basically expected that they will go the Skype route and it wouldn't be held against you.

Don't have an answer for you for your specific case with your POI. I can however tell that when I interviewed at both places that used Slideroom the person(s) interviewing me pulled my work up in the administration side of Slideroom and I could plainly see the titles, descriptions, and images. They then asked me for more detail about projects they were particularly interested in.

You're incorrectly changing the DPI of your images, you need to make sure "Resample Image:" is not selected. Notice then how the physical pixel resolution stays the same while the document size (as it would print) changes. Also, missed the c, and no s.

DPI will not make a difference on how large an image displays on a person's screen, 1000 pixels is still 1000 pixels on anyone's screen. DPI is important in the context of printing. Of course there will be slight differences in display size whether it's viewed on a Macintosh or a Windows machine, as the default PPI for those is 72 and 96 respectively. Now, you will notice that on "retina" displays images appear half as large, but thats because the pixel density is much higher. On the topic of Slideroom... the people that have to review submissions are looking at hundreds of portfolios, they still have classes to teach, and programs to run; they don't want to read an essay about every piece and they certainly don't have time to. And yes, Slideroom doesn't let you show of each of your works just how you'd want to, but the people reviewing them are artists themselves, and they understand that one image and a short sentence description of a piece is not telling/showing them everything that that artwork is about. The initial application review process is to weed out the inferior portfolios. After that, usually they then dig deeper into the quality applications, spending more time reading the descriptions and analyzing the work with more deliberate thought and conversation amongst the reviewers.

Current first-year MICA graphic design MFA student here. Last year I applied to MICA, RISD, Yale, and MIT (media lab). Got rejected from Yale and MIT, but interviewed and accepted at both MICA and RISD. As for what it's like here... both of the GD MFA directors — Ellen Lupton & Jennifer Cole Phillips — are awesome mentors, critics, and people in general. Our studio space is pretty great, taking a big chunk of the Brown Center's 4th floor, and it can get kinda noisy when everyone is in there at the same time though we try and keep the noise and mess to a respectable level. Everyone has their own space and computer so we're generally not stepping on each other's toes. The classes I took this past semester were pretty awesome overall: Design Studio 1 (required), Graduate Typeface Design*, Advanced Publication Design**, and Aesthetics & Critical Theory. Additionally this past semester I was a "graduate student intern" (TA basically) for two classes where I mostly helped out students (undergrad and grad) in class but I did have the opportunity to teach class on occasion as well as run a workshop or two. I wouldn't say we have a bigger focus on print design than the other GD MFA programs out there. Generally for projects each student is able to find their own solution be it print, interactive, or whatever (when applicable at least). When the GD MFA cohort is put together Ellen and Jennifer try very hard to put together a group of individuals that come from varied backgrounds and bring different skills to the table so that everyone can learn from and play off each other, but I'm sure that's the same thing you'll find at a lot of MFA programs out there. In my class (of 15 students), three of us come from web design/dev backgrounds. Comparatively with many other graphic design MFA programs ours is quite young, barely a decade old having been established in 2003, whatever that's worth. If you've got any specific questions, ask away here or PM me. Applying to grad school is definitely a pain, and it feels like just yesterday I was in your shoes; pulling work together, applying, waiting to hear about interviews, etc. *Taught by Tal Leming, TypeSupply (previously of House Industries). **Taught by Kim Walker, Pentagram

2-year, so hopefully you won't have to keep those fingers crossed much longer. Check that inbox.

I finally committed to a grad school and now all those anticipation, nervousness, and freak out feelings have subsided, which is a nice change of pace compared to the last few months. Although, those stresses are now replaced with the stress of finding an apartment in a new state among other moving and expense related concerns. As of last week I turned down RISD's offer, and I am headed to MICA this Fall. I'm pretty interested to see what the make up of my cohort will be.

Got a call from MICA this afternoon following up after the unoffical acceptance email that actual printed acceptance packet was in the mail.

Dude. Seriously. You don't need to reply to a bunch of threads with the same canned message.

MICA Graphic Design acceptances also just dropped today, at least one rolled into my inbox a few hours ago. Tough decision to make now: RISD or MICA?

Got the word last night that I was admitted to the RISD 2-year graphic design program. Pretty psyched after suffering rejections from Yale and MIT. Just waiting to hear from MICA at this point.

I interviewed at RISD yesterday for the 2 year program. They were super mean and made me cry! Not really. The interview was extremely chill. I interviewed with Bethany, Nancy, and Tom. They are all very nice people and have a great energy and excitement for their program (and their students). They had my SoP printed out and asked a few things about sections that had been noted, asked if I knew of the work of so-and-so (and if I didn't, Bethany wrote it down in my little notebook so I could look it up later), and asked what questions I had for them. My slides submitted through Slideroom were pulled up on the computer on the desk be we didn't even talk about it. I took some loose printed things with me and my computer but I never even pulled them out. We talked briefly about the work I do and what faculty I'd line up with well. Both this RISD interview and my MICA interview were less about my work and more about them getting a sense of who I am, my personality, how they think I'd work with other people, and what I could bring to the table for the cohort they're trying to put together.

As I was in my final year of my BFA I considered going straight to an Master's program. I consulted my professors I trusted to tell me like it is, and they all said that working for a few years and then going to grad school is the way to go. And now after working for about 4 years out of school, I definitely agree with everything they said. Working after school helps build that professional work ethic that would serve one well in graduate school. It gets you out of the undergraduate college mindset. Gives you time to really figure out your life goals and priorities. Your worldview can really change after a bit of time in the real world out of the warm enveloping embrace of higher education.