SilverSunbeam

I think I'm roughly in the same boat as you right now. I've only just started looking at programs, but some that might fit into what you're looking into are Washington State University and Alfred College in NY. WSU is studio-oriented and only has 1 photo faculty (from what I can tell) and Alfred has a "digital integrated program" (or something to that effect) that's photo- and digital-art based. I've also heard that Linda Connor at SFAI is quite accessible. I'm also looking at a few of the schools on your list - I'm closest geographically to U of Washington (I currently live in Seattle). It's pretty conceptual - they just hired a new Assistant Professor for the photomedia program who is extremely conceptual-art oriented. Could be looking into, especially if you're leaning towards the photo-specific side of things. There's one 'clear cut' photo faculty, the new conceptual art faculty, and an installation-based faculty member. Video/performance seems to be a core component of their curriculum.

Thanks for your advice! I'm currently going down the list of programs and looking at the faculty page - it's pretty frustrating when faculty only have a list of publications or exhibitions instead of work images. You'd think the art would be the most important thing! With costs, I'm taking the unadjusted tuition (at 2015-16 rates) for the entire 2-3 years and then calculating what 30% of that value is, because realistically if I'm not offered at least a 70% tuition waiver I don't think it would be possible to attend. It's a sort of artificial 'maximum cost' that hopefully won't reflect the actual cost!

Longtime lurker, first time poster - I'm planning to apply for fall 2017, and I'm having a bit of difficulty narrowing down my (pretty long) list of programs. I'm looking at cost and faculty to start crossing programs off the list, but very few schools have good online galleries of faculty work, or profiles for that matter. Since I have so much time, I'm thinking of contacting individual faculty members and asking about their practice, school facilities, etc. in order to narrow the list down. The problem has become finding which faculty to contact! What did you do to narrow down your first list of programs? Did you look at faculty work, or something else? Did you contact the program at all? Thanks in advance for your suggestions!