MFA photo applicant here. Chiming in with my details to support others waiting for answers, and also to help demystify things for anyone who visits this forum in future years. Not seeing any other photo people lurking around here.
Applications and status: RISD -- invited to interview on Feb 17, interviewed Feb 27, admitted March 1 Yale -- invited to interview on Feb 5, interviewed Feb 23, no updates ever since (low confidence on this one) CalArts -- invited to interview Feb 2, interviewed week of Feb 13, notified via email of admission a few day later w/ an official letter arriving Feb 27 UCLA -- complete silence RCA -- offered admission the spot during a portfolio review in February
It's certainly nice to be getting admitted to the top universities (on my first time applying, no less), but I wish that I'd thrown some more state schools in the mix. As reputable and wealthy as all these institutions are, it doesn't sound like any of them (aside from UCLA) have a track record for offering generous funding packages. I don't want to take on debt for this degree, so I may just walk away from all of them if I can't get funded and go to a state school next year. For what it's worth, the schools that admitted me thus far both seemed to have made up their minds already when I walked into the interview. They didn't say that I'd gotten in, but they spoke to me as if I already had.
