To RadRedHead
Re Hunter: I have lived in Brooklyn for 5 years and have many friends who have attended the MFA program at Hunter. I can attest that there are no scholarships and total tuition will run about $30K for the 3 years, pretty cheap. So you get a studio in NY for about $10,000 a year, which is fairly good. However, some of the studios are shared. You also definitely need at least $25K a year to survive in NY without being homeless. So for 3 years of bare bones living expenses in NY city will definitely be $75K of loans. Also, even though Hunter is quite cheap, it is also almost as competetive as Columbia to get accepted. About 1000 applicants per year apply to Hunter. Turning down a full scholarship to UCI to maybe apply to Hunter (and maybe the northeast ?) in the future may turn out to be you getting no MFA.
I would strongly consider the UC Irvine offer, especially if you get free tuition and a stipend! Regardless of being a commuter and 'not liking the feel', you could try it for 1 year and decide after that and you haven't lost a huge amount tuition money. Also, you might 'not like the feel' of Bard when you actually get there, and yet you'd be paying to go to school there. I have contacted Bard and the absolute most amount of funding you can get is 50% tuition, but that is rare. Most get 25% tutition off. Add up living expenses at Bard ($20K a year bare bones for rent and food with no car add a car and $25K a year). As far as making it as a successful artist in NYC goes, Bard is a bit out of the way and I don't personally know anyone who has taken the trip up there. It's a little too far and everything is in NYC regarding galleries, museums, lectures. You might be better off just moving to New York, finding a job, and making art rather than being strapped to a huge loan in grad school.
But the UC Irvine offer would be great if they pay a stipend to cover your apartment cost. The faculty at UCI also is very well connected to the art world not just in LA but also NY and internationally as the artworld is quite global now. Making it in L.A. is basically making it in NY, London, or Shanghai for that matter. A prominent gallery in L.A. often has other branches in NY; things are pretty interchangeable as long as its a powerful urban artworld. The connections at UCI could be just as valuable as Bard, but UCI is free--what's your hang up with accepting the offer and giving it a try there then re-assess school/MFA/artworld after 2017.
