beep beep

you can ask for extensions! just send them an email asking if you can have a little more time. i got two myself, it was v easy! 

I would say, do the thing that you know you want to do in your heart, but that you’re afraid of doing. From the short paragraph you wrote, this seems like Emily Carr. I feel like we’re afraid of something because it’s new; it diverges from the thing we’re comfortable with. Is this not the point of grad school? You only get to do it once, and then you can move back to where you live now and pick up your previous life if that’s what you want. I wouldn’t base my decision on where to go on your current employment, because you’ll probably have to drop a lot of your clients/gigs anyways, while you’re in the program, no? And if you wanted to keep freelancing with these clients forever, why even go to grad school. Maybe a new environment will be conducive to making new kinds of work too. Anyways, just my two cents!

at this point have now heard from everyone---i've pretty much narrowed my choices down to a local state school program (sfsu) or an international program (emily carr in vancouver) because i just am not going to go into debt over this. after funding, both are about the same price (6 and 8k a year) but one would basically upend my life to move. i'm also a freelancer full time so i'm concerned about a fuller course load vs. this local school where i wouldn't have to move and is a 3 year program vs 2, so more easy to juggle with my work. however, emily carr is a better school in many regards, and more intellectually stimulating, more creative, and would allow me to teach/TA in my working field of illustration, which is really the endgame reason i applied to grad school (to teach illo, in particular, ideally). sfsu would let me teach as well, but a more general class. 
i'm really conflicted. i feel like emily carr is the better choice but i also hadn't fully anticipated moving. i'm based in a good situation currently. it'd been an abstract concept till now. and of course both of these schools have early april deadlines to inform. lmao. anyone have any advice? 

glad to hear it helped! i'm going to be in portland in a few weeks anyway so i'm going to pop over for a tour and get some more information---will report back!  
i got interview requests from cca and pratt this week---still waiting on risd painting and ucla. anyone heard from them or know anything? i went to risd for undergrad and i know they take more time, but i know next to knowing about ucla's general timeline. 

i interviewed with them this afternoon! also my first one. i'd def say somewhat informal, they only asked a few questions (as opposed to a 15 question list from another school i saw earlier on this thread)---however they also mentioned that they were behind on their schedule (and texted me to let me know beforehand) so things were about 15 min instead of 20. they asked why i wanted to get an MFA, why PNCA, and what i thought/hoped my first year might look like. i think there was another one but it's hard to remember already, lmao. 
they definitely had my stuff on hand because they mentioned my essay and CV and portfolio, and brought up a few elements of their programs that i might like---it was definitely an interview, but less rapid-fire questions and more of a conversational element to it that i appreciated. and i liked what they had to say quite a bit! after that, they wanted to know if i had any questions (i mostly asked about TAing and what kind of facilities were accessible to MFA students because they'd answered my earlier questions about studios and structure) and said there was so much more they wanted to get to, but they had to keep rolling. overall, i think it went well! 
i'm interviewing with emily carr tmrw and SFAI next week....so far those are the only ones i've heard back from! i also applied to UCLA, risd, pratt, and cca. 
if it helps---i went to risd for undergrad and they were the last school to get back to me. it was pretty late, i want to say near the end of march. the process is different for grad because, i think, it's departmental---but i do know they like to take their time! 

i interviewed with them this afternoon! also my first one. i'd def say somewhat informal, they only asked a few questions (as opposed to a 15 question list from another school i saw earlier on this thread)---however they also mentioned that they were behind on their schedule (and texted me to let me know beforehand) so things were about 15 min instead of 20. they asked why i wanted to get an MFA, why PNCA, and what i thought/hoped my first year might look like. i think there was another one but it's hard to remember already, lmao. 
they definitely had my stuff on hand because they mentioned my essay and CV and portfolio, and brought up a few elements of their programs that i might like---it was definitely an interview, but less rapid-fire questions and more of a conversational element to it that i appreciated. and i liked what they had to say quite a bit! after that, they wanted to know if i had any questions (i mostly asked about TAing and what kind of facilities were accessible to MFA students because they'd answered my earlier questions about studios and structure) and said there was so much more they wanted to get to, but they had to keep rolling. overall, i think it went well! 
i'm interviewing with emily carr tmrw and SFAI next week....so far those are the only ones i've heard back from! i also applied to UCLA, risd, pratt, and cca. 
if it helps---i went to risd for undergrad and they were the last school to get back to me. it was pretty late, i want to say near the end of march. the process is different for grad because, i think, it's departmental---but i do know they like to take their time!