Rtwoneday

Has anyone heard from VCU Sculpture? I hate to post this random specific question but I've been following this thread pretty closely and haven't seen anyone mention VCU sculpture for about a month.

I visited a school last week during all the chaos. While I was there they decided to close down schools. It sucked I didn't get to sit in on classes, but I do feel as though I was able to see the rest of the school because people were still around. I think my suggestion would be to ask how that school is dealing with it. I visited Tyler which is a two year MFA and all of the grad students were essentially kicked out of their studios for the rest of the semester. Therefore making it a 3 semester program. I agree that I don't believe this should affect decision times or next years program, but if you're at all paying for school and they shut it down during, I would have a hard time justifying going.

Real quick-- as something we can all do to help each other out with the decision process, as we're hearing back from multiple schools, try and keep your name on as little as possible. What I mean by that is that some of us have been accepted to multiple programs, and in some cases there's no way to tell which is the best fit and make a decisions. But in a lot of others if you can narrow it down from 5 to 3 or even down to 4, that frees up room for other applicants to know and start making decisions. So as soon as you know if something isn't a good fit, let the office know to take your name off the list and focus on the other schools you still have.

I'm pretty positive they do not. Depends on discipline though

I have no idea about painting specifically, but I work at Tulane, and my friend who got her MFA there was saying that you should absolutely reach out if you haven't heard anything. (sadly enough they've lost grad students because they've forgotten to tell them they're accepted)

To continue the conversation of emailing schools to check in, who are people emailing? Waiting to hear from schools like UGA which you don't have to apply to a discipline and they don't have a graduate admissions counselor specifically. Who would you reach out to? If it was discipline specific, I'd message the professors, but alas, not quite sure.

Discipline?

It's only one school in particular, I believe Columbia

You said you didn't choose Tyler sculpture, was it because of the funding?

I was in communications specifically with Sculpture. He did say they're having all of the finalists over to interview the weekend of the 23rd, but didn't say if it was only sculpture or if it was others as well.

I talked to VCU sculpture. They said they make decisions at the end of the month

For anyone who is still just waiting to hear back from schools, I just got an interview request from Tyler. They sent out the first round of interview requests mid January, so there is hope.

Pros: Incredible funding (tuition wavier + stipend), great state for funding and grants (second only to New York), large and beautiful city, large cohort inside of a large school, Printmaking facilities amazing, Jenny Schmid is amazing (Corinne Teed joined the semester left) Cons: Cold, department can be only focused on capital A Art (loves installation/performance/interdisciplinary does not like abstract work/conventional painting/pottery/craft), can be hard to connect with professors and get their time. One con I'd like to elaborate on is that Minneapolis, and UMN even more so, can be a really difficult places to make friends. It's hard to stress how important/difficult this is but it's very similar to Seattle Freeze. I had one friend who regretted his whole 3 years and his work subsequently became about his home state entirely becuase he couldn't find his community and social circle. It can also be hard to connect with some professors because of this as well. Overall definitely worth it, but when visiting try and go out/ go to bars/ do what you'd normally do in your city and try and feel out the atmosphere.

If you have any questions about the program let me know. I did my Undergrad there and have friends in the grad program

I'm no professor, but short answer no. A lot of times schools don't send it out at the same time, each department may send it out at different times. Secondly a school might not have notified you yet, because they might be keeping you on a waitlist. Nothing wrong in emailing and checking that the application process is going well, but I would suggest that they'll let you know soon enough what they're thinking