OH HI!!
So last year, I interviewed at SMFA for Photography. Yes, they said 8am-5pm, so I drove from RI, got there early, and got my schedule. So it's 8am and I've got my portfolio in hand, and my interview is at 4pm. 4PM!!!!! WTF. They had us get on a bus and travel all around Boston. We went to this "gallery," where the excuse for it's mess was "there was an opening the night before." I couldn't tell where the art was lol. We went to a couple more galleries, and then back to the school.
Then we had lunch. Half of the applicants do interviews in the morning, half in the afternoon.
HOPE AND PRAY YOU GET A MORNING INTERVIEW, WITH SOMEONE IN YOUR FIELD.
At lunch, everyone who had morning interviews told all about them, and they seemed to all go pretty awesome. Out of all the dozen people I had actual conversations with, 1 was new media, 1 was painting, and the rest were all photo. Everyone who was Photo was being interviewed by a person in the photo department - except for me.
Do you know how frustrating it is to talk to someone who does Earthworks about your Photography portfolio?
At lunch, all of the faculty kept saying the interviews were being moved up. So if your interview was at 4, you;d now have it at 3:30, and this and that. I didn't get my interview until 4:30, and I was the last interview. They took us to the library, and then there was more waiting - maybe about an hour or two.
The woman and grad student I interviewed with were visibly irritated and made it clear to me I was their last interview, and told me when I walked in that they didn't have time to look at my portfolio because their last interview went so long. My interview was about 20 minutes, and it had nothing to do with photography. She looked at my portfolio on the computer (you are required to bring a disc), and I showed her the prints in person. She thought my darkroom prints were digital, and did not comment on the work at all, rather that the images on disc looked like a slightly different size than my printed ones. Yes, really.
After all this, there's a "reception," where I watched the person I interviewed with talk to other applicants she interviewed earlier that day, smiling and laughing. When I had a chance to get over and talk to her, she said she had to go, and literally ran out the door.
The students have a party afterwards. If you want to get in, you better go and bullshit with everyone you possibly can.
They call the people they want the next day. More than 100 applicants are competing for 50 positions.
If you are not really passionate about your field, and think that MAYBE you might want to branch out into PERFORMANCE art, and are willing to jump through all kinds of hoops to get in, SMFA is totally for you. Unfortunately, I realized too late that it was not for me.
GOOD LUCK!
