Advice on Researching Faculty/Programs?

[SilverSunbeam]

Longtime lurker, first time poster - I'm planning to apply for fall 2017, and I'm having a bit of difficulty narrowing down my (pretty long) list of programs. I'm looking at cost and faculty to start crossing programs off the list, but very few schools have good online galleries of faculty work, or profiles for that matter. Since I have so much time, I'm thinking of contacting individual faculty members and asking about their practice, school facilities, etc. in order to narrow the list down. The problem has become finding which faculty to contact!

What did you do to narrow down your first list of programs? Did you look at faculty work, or something else? Did you contact the program at all?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[nongfuspring1]

Google them first; if an academic/artist doesn't have a website, reviews, or a publication listing online they don't have a career.

Maybe not a bad idea to email about facilities though. Re: costs, I wouldn't necessarily discount a program based on their advertised fees - a lot of programs inflate their fees artificially to seem "extra generous" with their financial support as a means of appearing more attractive to the prospective students they really want (and squeezing the ones that don't but can afford it). 

[SilverSunbeam]

Thanks for your advice! I'm currently going down the list of programs and looking at the faculty page - it's pretty frustrating when faculty only have a list of publications or exhibitions instead of work images. You'd think the art would be the most important thing!

With costs, I'm taking the unadjusted tuition (at 2015-16 rates) for the entire 2-3 years and then calculating what 30% of that value is, because realistically if I'm not offered at least a 70% tuition waiver I don't think it would be possible to attend. It's a sort of artificial 'maximum cost' that hopefully won't reflect the actual cost!

[ElizaMFA]

I would not go by what one finds on the faculty pages.  The faculty with the most productive art careers will either have their own sites or will present most of their work through their gallery/ies.  The school's site alone will not tell you everything you will want to know about faculty work.  Also, I wouldn't expect much of an email response from faculty unless they are in charge of recruitment.  

I agree with nongfuspring that if faculty don't have an independent website they probably don't have much of an art career.

[YouArt_Amazing]

Even if you don't plan to apply until next year, you can still visit schools this year. Meet the faculty in person. See the schools in person. Talk candidly with students. Online just isn't going to give you that feel. Do some research on when your top choices have Open Houses and go see!