Maxine

Congratulations!!

Thanks Mackenzie88! Did you get an offer?

Has anyone heard from RISD painting?

Thanks so much for this advice lightswitch!!

Does anyone have information on scholarships or grants for MFA Visual Art candidates? I've received a pretty great financial offer from one of the schools but still have some money to come up with. Are most of you planning on taking out loans to cover the costs? I've been researching endlessly online and haven't found any scholarship opportunities to even apply to! I thought there'd be more options for graduate school funding but it seems like the majority of scholarships are for undergraduate work. WTF!

Congratulations!! Can I ask which department this is for?

Hey! I went to the Cornell campus, it's really beautiful - got a real Ivy League school feel (like from the movies) and big gorges with waterfalls tucked away. I'm almost positive I'll be going there next year. Just waiting on hearing from RISD first. They have the Rand Fabrication Hall with 3d printers, laser cutters, a great woodshop & I believe welding. It's huge & I think really geared towards the architecture students. There are one or two kilns in the shop but no real ceramics department. There's a foundry which is temporarily closed for renovations so I didn't see it. I just emailed with Carl & he said they got funding to bring in 6 high profile artists over the next 6 semesters and are also working on hiring 2 new faculty. They're really friendly over there so you might want to email with specific questions about sculpture!

Hi there! I'm a Mass Art grad, for undergrad, I loved my time there. I disagree with Mass Art spitting out their grads, especially since the grad program is so small. SMFA takes 50 students per year, with a total of 100 graduate students. Mass Art has a higher faculty to student ratio and the faculty stays there longer. You could find out who is tenured at each school too. I interviewed at SMFA and both the faculty member and grad student hadn't seen my work before. They asked me questions that were evident from my essay and resume and I felt like it wasn't very personal. Made me hesitant about the school..

How was your interview at RISD? What department did you meet with? I'll be there on Monday for an interview with the painting department..

Just got into Cornell too! Super psyched. Have a couple more interviews then I'll play the waiting game

Hi Vaneiris, I was one of the people with an interview from RISD but it's in painting. Haven't heard about photo yet but would imagine they'd contact you soon. Might be time to give a friendly call to admissions...

I just interviewed at Cornell yesterday. It was a really laid back process. I had prepared a 20 min lecture about my work. I think they were looking for something a little less formal but I made sure to stop and ask if there were questions along the way and they did ask some. It lasted about 45mins in total. I was asked several questions at the end then asked them several. The questions were specific to my work, so just be prepared to talk about your concepts, processes, what drives you and where you see yourself going. They seem to want some openness or willingness to explore other concepts to a degree. I was asked about that because my work is pretty focused in it's concept. Everyone was really nice! Let me know if you have any questions.

Congratulations and Happy Birthday!!!! Go have some fun!

They contacted me on February 15th via email. I responded and said I couldn't interview for a while bc I was on vacation. I'm still waiting for them to get back in touch to schedule the phone interview.

Hi everyone! I can't believe how close everything is coming - interviews, decisions, rejections, etc. It's been quite an obsessive roller coaster ride. I'm interested to find out if anyone knows how many people Cornell is interviewing. Also, I'm going to be speaking to a friend who went to RISD to get the inside scoop on the interview process there and will post what she told me. I've updated my list of schools to show what I've heard back so far - got 3 rejections and 6 interviews (I went a little overboard on applying to schools!) Something that I've been preparing for interviews at my schools is looking at all the grad faculty work, keeping a list of what it looks like and then I project how it relates to my work. I'm going to use this info as an answer for when they ask why I am interested in their program. This forum has been so helpful. Thank you to everyone who's been posting and contributing