Admissions Standards
Many of you have asked questions about the standards for admission to Art Center. Below is a response from Kit Baron, Vice President of Admissions, which should address many of your concerns, including quality of applicants, the admissions process and acceptance rates.
1. Quality of our Applicants
First, Art Center’s applicant pool cannot be compared to RISD’s, Otis’s, Pratt’s or any other art school applicant pool. We require that students apply directly to one of our majors, and therefore, applicants must already have developed a specialized portfolio for one of our majors. This is not easy. The other major design schools accept generic portfolios because students enter a general foundation program. This means that every high school student who has done a bit of drawing can apply. I was previously Director of Admissions at Parsons in NY, where we had thousands of these generic applications and therefore, declined a good number of them. We attend National Portfolio Days at which every major art school is in attendance, and other schools accept the type of beginning student who is not in the running at Art Center. Admissions staff at the major art schools acknowledge that our applicants are in another league, and that our “freshmen” here are like junior level students at their schools.
Students who apply to ACCD have already had to pass a higher bar by presenting a specialized portfolio. This in itself brings the numbers of applicants down, and also means that students who are applying are pretty qualified for admission here. We spend a lot of time discouraging students from applying who haven’t committed to a major yet. Our acceptance rate has not changed significantly in the past 20 years.
IF WE OPENED THE FLOODGATES AND DROPPED OUR SPECIALIZED ADMISSIONS REQUIREMENTS, I CAN GUARANTEE WE WOULD HAVE THOUSANDS OF APPLICATIONS AND WOULD HAVE AN ACCEPTANCE RATE OF 33% JUST LIKE RISD. If we chose to up our statistics by letting students do this, just so that we could “look” more selective, we could do it.
Rejecting students is not fun for us or for the students. We prefer to work with a smaller number of highly qualified applicants, not with a large pool of unqualified applicants. Would we like more applicants from around the world and who meet our level of requirements? Of course. This is our central mission. But be assured that the quality of our entering student portfolios is the envy of every other admissions office in the country. It is about quality not quantity for our admissions process.
It is in the nature of every campus and its alums to believe that its students “aren’t what they used to be.” I’m in a unique position to comment on this at ACCD. I have seen every portfolio from every applicant that has come through Art Center’s Admissions office in the past 23 years. I do know what I see – and that is that not only is the work as strong as ever, but probably stronger. Have there been other changes in the general preparedness for academic study? Yes. And this is a topic that just about every school in the country acknowledges – and is a product of the failure of our public education systems.
2. Re-looking at students who were declined.
This Spring the College declined twice as many students as in the past….. and many students who had great potential to succeed here may have been reviewed too quickly due to a different process. The College wanted to give these students another chance, and asked if they would like to submit extra work. No rejected students were summarily accepted. They were asked to show us more, and if that “more” was strong, they were admitted. If not, they continued to be declined.
The Admissions process is about potential. There is risk in every single student we admit, but we do have a 78% completion rate at Art Center. We are extremely proud of this fact in the Admissions Office. It means that students are succeeding and completing the program. It reflects how selective the process really is… in spite of how one may interpret the numbers. In the process of calling our accepted students who had not yet committed to attending, our Department Chairs were surprised to find that students we considered “marginal” for acceptance were considered top ranked students at other schools.
This work is very personal for us in Admissions. We care about the experience of the students we admit. The idea of “lowering the bar” and admitting students who can’t handle our programs and who would quickly wash out is an idea that is deeply upsetting to us. And it’s not what we do or will do. Do we continue to look for “potential” in students? Absolutely. And sometimes that student with work that’s a bit “iffy” who writes an essay that blows our socks off ends up being the strongest in the class. Sometimes the student with the brilliant portfolio has no work ethic. We spend a lot of time on this process - looking, reading, and evaluating the individual potential of each student. This is very important work, and it’s a charge that we take very very seriously as we collaborate with the Department Chairs to bring in the best possible students to this College.
3. Numbers of Applications.
College website statistics include Fall entering classes only since most colleges only bring in students in the Fall. Art Center brings in students three times a year. The website statistics are a bit misleading since they are only our Fall numbers. Following are application statistics for the past calendar year that represent our total applications, not just Fall:
Applications for 2007: 1304 Accepted students: 904 Enrolled new students: 612
If you want to make a quick interpretation of these numbers, we don’t look very selective. But if you are williing to take the time to evaluate what’s behind the numbers, you will understand that in themselves they don’t have a lot of meaning.
Kit Baron
Vice President, Admissions
Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Robert:
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:31 pmCan you comment on Richard Halushak’s (sp?) statement that you are letting in 4’s now when the standard used to be 5’s and up?
Paula Cameron:
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:57 pmKit,
Thank you for a thoughtful and thorough reponse from someone who’s been on the ACCD frontlines for 23 years. However, I do need to take issue with one of your (admittedly) minor points: “It is in the nature of every campus and its alums to believe that its students ‘aren’t what they used to be.’” Many alums of UCLA’s and USC’s undergraduate programs from 20 or so years ago, including myself, will tell you that they would not get in to their alma maters today (admission statistics and student profiles bear this out). UCLA and USC have successfully raised their admission standards over the years. I’m sure there are other colleges that have been successful too (perhaps UC Berkeley). Maybe art and design colleges are a whole different animal. The question is, why does the perception persist among many ACCD alums, students and faculty that admission standards have declined?
Community Forum Moderator:
June 24th, 2008 at 4:50 pmKit Baron writes (in response to Paula):
Paula-
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. Yes, there are liberal arts colleges that have very effectively increased their profile of SAT scores and range of difficulty for admission. USC is one of those great success stories. The art and design admissions challenge is a bit different in that we are working with a small applicant pool of only about 3% of the college age population. The liberal arts world has most of the college-bound application pool for whom they can compete – so there is greater potential to make significant changes in the numbers and selectivity of applications. College bound art and design students are a much smaller number, so it is a finite group for which about 25 art and design colleges compete along with other general art and design university programs.
I want to make sure it is clear that we are not feeling fatalistic or unambitious about increasing our applications and our standards. This is what every admissions office wants – to increase quality applications and enroll the very best, most diverse students possible. I think we all agree that students and faculty together make a school great.
I do wish I could tell you why the perception persists that standards have declined. It is a perception that is of great concern to us on the Admissions staff. We can’t point to any indicators within the applications, i.e. student academic records, or the portfolios that could lead one to that conclusion. I can tell you that there has been an increase in SAT scores and in the average entering grade point average of our entering students over the past 10-15 years. Not highly significant, but an increase. Portfolios are the single most important aspect of an application to Art Center, and of course, rating those is pretty subjective. Students meet the portfolio content requirements as we list them in our admissions descriptions but the look and feeling of each portfolio varies… And there is an “art” rather than a science of looking at those. The Department Chairs are at the heart of the selection process since they review the entering portfolios for their majors. Like us, Chairs want stronger and stronger portfolios as well. We have accepted the same percentages of students for many years, so there is no change on that front. The average age of entering students has fallen by about only one year over the past 15 years and is still about 22 years of age. This may account for some changes in student characteristics, but it doesn’t seem like a big enough change to account for this perception – and you would have to buy into younger students being less qualified… which may or not be the case.
We hope to turn our efforts in the near future to asking important questions such as what makes for a great student and how can we measure that in an application. We very much want to respond to faculty and Chair concerns, but we need to get specific. Standards based on portfolios and academic records have not declined, so if the belief is that the level of student has declined perhaps there is something else operating such as attitude toward work and motivation, openness… Perhaps some characteristics that we can find a way to measure more effectively on entry. We hope that there will be an important dialogue concerning this – but one that is based on specifics rather than generalities.
Thanks again for your comments.
Kit Baron
Vice President, Admissions
Community Forum Moderator:
June 24th, 2008 at 4:51 pmKit Baron writes (in response to Robert):
During the Spring months when the majority of Fall applications arrive, some issues arose about how some of the entering portfolios were reviewed. Because of this, the staff felt it would be fair and helpful to students who had been considered “borderline” to give them the opportunity to submit more portfolio work. No students were summarily accepted. If they submitted new work and it was considered favorably, the student was admitted. If the work was not strong, the student was not admitted and continued to be declined. It is very important to understand that this process was not about dropping standards, it was about giving a fair opportunity to some students who the staff felt deserved another look.
Kit Baron
Leonard Marshick:
June 25th, 2008 at 4:54 pmA view from 1965… Reviewing the messages, seeing the work of today’s students, as you, I am nonplussed regarding the sense that the standards aren’t as high, that the students aren’t at the “same level”.
First of all, I was one of those that was asked to re-submit my portfolio. To my delight, I discovered that I was better than I thought. When you’re at the top of your pre-college crowd, you tend to “settle”.
So, speaking from Transportation circa 1961-1965, I observe that the 2D graphic work is at least on a par with my generation. Perhaps we were a tad more, well, “flamboyant”! As for the 3D development in physical models and electronic tools, todays’ work is on par, if not above the level of that era. Yes, new technologies have brought stronger tools, but the sophistication of the design workout is on a
par with the best that I recall. It’s not the tool, it’s the hand that guides it. My heroes such as Dave Stollery, and Gordon Brown would shine as bright in today’s environment. And I believe today’s students would hold up to the instruction, inspection, and cajoling of the Youngkins, Embrodens and Jorgensens of my day. Carry on!
Yvonne:
June 26th, 2008 at 10:54 amThanks for everyone who is making this forum possible. The video is very helpful.
I’m just curious, how many students get accepted each year to ACCD?
There was a drop of enrollment for the last two terms, what’s the number?
Part of the tuition goes to the teachers, what’s the percentage?
How many full time teachers do we have?
How many teachers get paid more than $60/hr ? (this include part time and full time teachers. I’m just talking about people who teach, not administrators)
Jacki:
June 28th, 2008 at 6:09 pmKit-
I have been teaching at Art Center for 25 years and teach students from every department. Here are few of my observations. Ten to fifteen years ago my students were generally better educated by the time they came to Art Center. Far more of them had 4 year degrees, or several years at a university. Now there may be only one or two students with degrees, and many who have had only a couple of classes at a community college, which is often their only previous arts education. I would only occasionally have one straight from high school. Now I have 4-6. So I do think there is a difference in the level of student we have due the point at which they come here. Thus —
1) I would like to know what other criteria and standards are being met besides the portfolio.
2) Who has determined what that criteria should be. And would you be interested in faculty input on that from the HDS view as well as studio.
Thank you.
Community Forum Moderator:
July 1st, 2008 at 10:52 amKit Baron writes:
Dear Jacki-
Yes, there has been a decrease in the number of students with prior degrees. We now have about 17% of students entering with a prior bachelors. As you can imagine, the economy has affected this situation considerably. Students are not now as willing to pay for two bachelor’s degrees as they may have been previously. Other schools accept these students at a higher level with more transfer credit.
Also, there is little financial aid for prior degree students since they are no longer eligible for federal or state grant aid. So there are a number of obstacles – both financial and time spent.
As more art and design high school programs spring up and students take advantage of our own programs like Saturday High, they can develop the level of specialization we require to enter. There are still a relatively small number of high school students at ACCD compared to other schools, but there has been a slight increase in those.
We have never placed age restrictions on our applicants due to our belief that we need to weigh each application individually and not with preconceived notions about what a student’s age may imply (either younger students or students who re-enter from the work force).
We review the application for the following: Academic Record. This includes SAT scores when required and the academic record from high school and/or college. The average GPA of entering students is 3.1 from high school and 3.1 from prior colleges. The average high school rank in class is 59th percentile. The average verbal SAT is 517 and average math SAT is 561. We also require essays from the students that help us understand their experiences and attitudes a bit more than the grades. We look for students who have prior grades in the range of 3.0 or higher, but do try to look at students on an individual basis with all factors weighed. We also consider the difficulty factor of their prior institutions when weighing their academic achievement. The TOEFL is one of our most challenging issues. We require the same level TOEFL score as most liberal arts institutions, and the new iBT, Internet Based TOEFL finally allows us to measure speaking ability in a separate score. However, we know that the TOEFL has limitations and just goes so far in measuring English skills. Until a better instrument is created, we use the TOEFL as the primary standardized test, as do the vast majority of other colleges.
If you have thoughts about essay questions that might reveal student thinking, we would love to hear them. You can see our current essay questions on the Web site under Admissions. We will continue to strive for the most highly prepared students and increase their academic profile wherever possible and much appreciate any of your thoughts or input on academic standards.
Best regards-
Kit Baron