prufrock
August 19th, 2006, 01:19 PM
Here is a little back story on myself. I am currently entering my Junior year at SCAD this fall, where I am majoring in computer animation. To some of you, the choice of my school may validate, or discredit my opinion. Either way, I don't give a damn. The wonderful thing about advice, is that you can choose to listen to it or not.
I started off writing this thing about schools in general, but I think I’m going to compare two big lightening rods in this forum: SCAD and Ringling. I am picking these schools to not really specifically talk about either one of them, but to hopefully provide a little insight to high school students looking to apply to colleges.
Let's talk about SCAD first. While SCAD does have a decent reputation among the industry, a lot of people will have you believe that it’s a crappy school. This stigma obviously came from somewhere, and it does have some grounding in reality. Any school that accepts people at the rate SCAD does (some crazy number like 70-80%), obviously will have a lot of people that can’t draw for their lives. However, there are plenty of elite students here with enough talent to run with the best of any school. With that being said, does a place like Ringling have more talent? Probably. What does that mean though? Not much. I think people see a high concentration of talent coming from a school, and think that it’s always a direct result of the education. That’s really not the case.
Take a classic university like Harvard. Harvard has an amazing reputation for churning out the best and brightest our nation has to offer, but how much of it is the university itself? A lot of people that study higher learning, generally agree that it’s not really that much better of an education than a lot of other schools, they just happen to attract a lot of natural talent. See where I am going with this?
Ringling is notorious for being pretty selective in admissions to the CA department. As a result, there is always a steady stream of high quality portfolios and demo reals that come out of the department. Averaging everything out, it’s probably the best quality work. I’m not debating this. However, how much of this is can be attributed to the talent they let in, and how much of it is the actual school itself?
I honestly don’t think you are going to find much of a difference in the quality of education in what I consider the big 4 of computer animation schools (SVA, Ringling, SCAD, and the Academy of Art). Sure, some of them might turn out work that seems better than others. However, all of them have solid fine art programs, in addition to solid CG programs. That’s what matters.
I’ve gone through classes here at SCAD with kids that looked like complete artistic rejects at the beginning, but managed to really soak everything up and turn things around. At the end of college you might look at their portfolio and think, “It’s good. They will probably get a job somewhere, but it isn’t amazing”. Of course if you were to judge purely on the end result, it’s not anything special, but that would be forgetting that the bottom line of any education. That bottom line is that it’s not where you end up, but it’s how far you have come. Always keep this in mind.
I started off writing this thing about schools in general, but I think I’m going to compare two big lightening rods in this forum: SCAD and Ringling. I am picking these schools to not really specifically talk about either one of them, but to hopefully provide a little insight to high school students looking to apply to colleges.
Let's talk about SCAD first. While SCAD does have a decent reputation among the industry, a lot of people will have you believe that it’s a crappy school. This stigma obviously came from somewhere, and it does have some grounding in reality. Any school that accepts people at the rate SCAD does (some crazy number like 70-80%), obviously will have a lot of people that can’t draw for their lives. However, there are plenty of elite students here with enough talent to run with the best of any school. With that being said, does a place like Ringling have more talent? Probably. What does that mean though? Not much. I think people see a high concentration of talent coming from a school, and think that it’s always a direct result of the education. That’s really not the case.
Take a classic university like Harvard. Harvard has an amazing reputation for churning out the best and brightest our nation has to offer, but how much of it is the university itself? A lot of people that study higher learning, generally agree that it’s not really that much better of an education than a lot of other schools, they just happen to attract a lot of natural talent. See where I am going with this?
Ringling is notorious for being pretty selective in admissions to the CA department. As a result, there is always a steady stream of high quality portfolios and demo reals that come out of the department. Averaging everything out, it’s probably the best quality work. I’m not debating this. However, how much of this is can be attributed to the talent they let in, and how much of it is the actual school itself?
I honestly don’t think you are going to find much of a difference in the quality of education in what I consider the big 4 of computer animation schools (SVA, Ringling, SCAD, and the Academy of Art). Sure, some of them might turn out work that seems better than others. However, all of them have solid fine art programs, in addition to solid CG programs. That’s what matters.
I’ve gone through classes here at SCAD with kids that looked like complete artistic rejects at the beginning, but managed to really soak everything up and turn things around. At the end of college you might look at their portfolio and think, “It’s good. They will probably get a job somewhere, but it isn’t amazing”. Of course if you were to judge purely on the end result, it’s not anything special, but that would be forgetting that the bottom line of any education. That bottom line is that it’s not where you end up, but it’s how far you have come. Always keep this in mind.