grad_wannabe

I got an email yesterday also with a link to an online financial package report. It went to a somewhat random email address of mine, so check ALL your inboxes.

I had an interview with CalArts and didn't hear a peep for three weeks. Don't give up hope yet.

I received my funding info from MIT last week: I've been awarded a Graduate Department Fellowship, including 100% tuition waiver and a monthly stipend. It's been agonizing making this decision, but I'm going with MIT. I called Charlie White this morning and relinquished my spot at USC. Possibly the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

CONGRATS JESTEM!!!! Now you have a big choice to make - RISD or Yale??

Anyone get funding info from CalArts yet?

of course it's ok. just send a polite email to the admin secretary or whomever you've had contact with at the school and say, "I was wondering when admissions decisions will be available? thank you!" or something nice like that.

I have to say I disagree completely. Of course you have to worry about money. Are you not an adult who plans to support yourself and pay your own bills? Then yes, you always have to think about the money. This is not some romanticized storybook of the artist starving for their vision. This is your life. In my own humble opinion, NO it is not worth it to take out so much debt, especially for a painting degree. Painters' primary income comes from teaching. The educational system is already glutted with painters scrambling for the few teaching jobs there are, and those are disappearing at a brisk clip. Have you had much interaction with post-MFA students dealing with mountains of debt and a shrinking job market? I have. It's not a pretty picture. The fear and worry in their eyes actually pushed me away from getting an MFA. Even without any loan payments to make at all, a painter would be have to struggle constantly. WITH such loan enormous payments, I ... I just don't know. I plugged your hypothetical debt into a payment calculator: Loan Balance: $70,000.00 Adjusted Loan Balance: $70,000.00 Loan Interest Rate: 6.80% Loan Fees: 0.00% Loan Term: 20 years Minimum Payment: $50.00 Monthly Loan Payment: $534.34 Number of Payments: 240 Cumulative Payments: $128,240.42 Total Interest Paid: $58,240.42 You would have to make a payment of over $500 a month for TWENTY YEARS. 500 bucks a month is no small number. That will have a huge effect on where and how you will be able to live. Do you plan to have children? Buy a house? Save up for emergencies? Travel? That 500 bones coming out of your wallet every month won't make any of that easy. I would recommend finding a compromise: don't enroll at Claremont now. Take a year off, work on your portfolio, and next year apply to more middle-range schools that would be more likely to offer you assistance. Find a happy medium between a good painting program and the price. I know it feels like you're at a precipice now and have to jump, but you don't. A year spent working on your portfolio to get more assistance is a lot easier to handle than two decades paying off a loan you didn't have to take out. This is all, of course, just my humble opinion. If you're okay with all of that, and you WANT to sacrifice for your work, then go for it. No one can tell you what to do. Then again, Obama has enacted a lot of new student-loan legislation, including a bill that would forgive student loan debt if they agreed to teach in under-funded schools for 5 or 10 years. That's an option. Look into that.

This is an excellent point. Use the offer from SD as leverage. If the school wants you, they will fight for you. It's very common. All the top schools fight over the top students. Call or email CalArts and tell them you've been offered a full-ride at UCSD and that, though you've always dreamed of going to CalArts, you're afraid that in these times the economics are going to have a large impact on your decision. Ask if they can match the offer.

Though CalArts has an established reputation as one of the top art schools in the world, UCSD is really on the come up and is quickly gaining recognition right up there with UCLA, UCI and USC . The presence of Allan Kaprow, Lev Manovich and Norman Bryson has heavily bolstered their theory bullpen, and they're pulling a lot of other faculty and graduates from CalArts. In fact, if connections are what you're looking for in grad school (which is a big part of the game) you'll probably make a lot of the same connections here you would at CalArts at a bargain price. I don't know if you've gotten your funding offer from them yet (I haven't) but I heard that CalArts is notoriously stingy with aid on TOP of being outrageously expensive. A guy I knew who got his MFA there had to move back in with his parents for three years after graduating just to make the loan payments. But then again, you're a painter, right kewpies (sorry if i've got that wrong)? From what I've heard (YMMV) UCSD is primarily an interdisciplinary, more tech-based program (they have the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, and the Supercomputer Center) so if you want to stick with painting it might be a richer experience for you to do that at CalArts. A good rule of thumb I've heard about taking out loans is this: don't borrow more than you expect to make your first year out of school. Just my two cents.

I second the post above - very cool work. Where are you headed?

the outpouring of support everybody has for each other here is freakin' awesome. congrats, everybody!!!

Finally heard from NYU: Waitlisted. I'm emailing back to let them know they can take me off the list.

AAH! Congrats!! What an amazing program. A lot of schools talk about "inventing the future" but ITP is a place where you can actually feel it happening.

No word yet on my end. I wouldn't call. I'm going to give them til the end of next week.

I noticed yesterday that I still hadn't heard from a school I'd interviewed with 3 weeks ago. Other people on the forums, though, were getting acceptances. So, I emailed the admit counselor and asked when admissions decisions were going to be available. She responded with, "Are you kidding? You didn't get the letter? You are absolutely accepted! That's weird, we sent out the letter..." So while I definitely concur johndiligent about the timing of such phone calls (usually later in the game) corresponding to likelihood of rejection (also usually later in the game), lightning does strike.

I agree with what most of the previous posters said, especially Littlenova. I don't think representational/figurative painting is dead at all, nor do I think it ever will be. People will always want to look at pictures of people. Elizabeth Peyton, for one, has blown up in the last couple years. If you love painting the figure, stick with it. It can go to beautiful and exciting places. Lucian Freud is a favorite of mine. That being said, I think your conceptual framework could use some reworking. Most of your images are a bit one-note. Technically accomplished and well executed, yes, but intellectually flat. I see the girls, I see the mirrors, okay I get this is about women and their body images, and ... what else? Especially in your piece, "Distortion." It's all laid out right there on the surface. There is no nature of investigative inquiry. This is echoed in your statement, where you use your intro and concluding paragraphs to talk about skinny jeans - not painting. Maybe think about the thrust of your investigations and WHY it is you're concerned and HOW your art is going to deconstruct and reframe those concerns into something higher, something new that no one has ever seen before. What is it, exactly, about body image that excites you to the point that you want to talk about it? Break it down as far as you possibly can, to its barest elements. What NEW point do you have to contribute to the discussion? Lots of women talk about body-image problems - how are you going to uniquely use your work to break down these questions into something awe-inspiring? While, at the same time, contributing to the dialogue that surrounds the practice and function of painting itself, which I don't really see being addressed here and which is (at least to me) of paramount importance. I don't know if you applied here, but the Laguna College of Art and Design also has an MFA in Figurative Painting. Just my $0.02 PS I forgot to mention - I noticed that you listed your extracurriculars. For a painting MFA, they are going to look at one thing: the work. in a graduate adcom meeting, the first thing they do is throw the images up onto a wall or screen and discuss them. They will not proceed to looking at your statement and rec letters until they've decided they like the work, and I'm pretty sure they'll only glance at your extracurriculars list and won't even bother to look at your GPA. Make lots and lots of new work.

I emailed NYU ITP this morning, this is what they said: "Please be patient a bit longer -- we expecting the Tisch Admissions Office to begin notifying our applicants of the decisions this week. They should be going out by email shortly."

I went ahead and emailed NYU, this is what they said: "Please be patient a bit longer -- we expecting the Tisch Admissions Office to begin notifying our applicants of the decisions this week. They should be going out by email shortly." I'm trying to be zen about the whole thing and weigh all the options carefully. MIT is of course my first pick, but there are a couple factors (the distance, the money - I haven't seen their funding offer yet) that are unfortunately making me hesitate...

CONGRATS JESTEM!!! Sounds like that's your pick! Wonderful! ____________________ ps re contacting cal arts: yes I emailed Taryn and just wrote very politely, "hello my name is grad_wannabe, I interviewed with so-n-so on such-n-such date. Do you know when admissions decisions will be available? thank you!" pps Jestem you hear back from ITP yet? I'm on the verge of emailing them...

I started to wonder about CalArts since I'd interviewed with them a few weeks ago and haven't heard anything, so I went ahead and emailed them this morning and they got right back to me: Accepted to the Art & Technology MFA program. For other admits to CalArts: how long did it take to get your funding info? Does it come with the acceptance letter?

It's totally possible - I got an acceptance email at nine o'clock at night on a Sunday, and that was from an east coast school. Hang in there.

Hi everybody - I was accepted to the Master of Science in Visual Studies program at MIT, housed within the Department of Architecture. I was wondering if anyone else accepted to that department has gotten their funding information yet? Thanks.

I had one interview where they actually voiced that as a problem: the fact that I'd just graduated (in May of 09) had been brought up as a negative during discussions of my application. So, yes, they absolutely prefer people a few years out of UG, if only because those applicants are more focused and self-aware in what they're doing.