I was considering applying to places like Rhode Island School of Design, Ringling School of Art and Design, and UCLA but never felt my work was good enough.
I never had any formal training. To this day, my first formal art class was Drawing I at Penn --- the first time in my life I used charcoal or conte, the first time when I truly understood that art is a "study" not "arts and crafts" like most people would think. On top of this, my parents, though supportive, also asked, "as an art major, what would you do once you graduate?" It was one of those questions which I couldn't answer myself.
Being young and naïve, I ultimately made the more practical choice and applied to schools like Berkeley , CMU, and Penn where I could "broader my horizon" by studying more than one discipline.
Berkeley was out of the question. First, I had trouble finding information about their art department online (first negative sign). Secondly, applying to their engineering department was the equivalent of selling my life to long nights of programming rather than long nights in the art studio (if that existed on campus).
For CMU, I had jointly applied to both Carnegie Mellon's Engineering School and Design School , which took about 50 students each year. Sign #1: When I told my interviewer that I was interested in studying both design and engineering, he basically told me this was "unheard of" and literally "impossible." Basically, both programs were too work-intensive that I wouldn't be able to handle the coursework. Sign #2: Though I got into their engineering school, I was waitlisted for Design. (This was more discouraging than anything but did not really surprise me. My high school offered no AP Art curriculum, so the world I had to show my interviewers was very limited in terms of traditional art. As for the digital work, it was all my own creation with hardly any formal critique.)
Finally, there was Penn, and it's combined Digital Media Design program, an engineering degree in computer science with both fine arts and communications components. A perfect combination, right?
The final irony: Now, I'm studying Digital Media Design -and- business from Wharton at Penn. While CMU and Berkeley both made it "impossible" to study two disciplines, I'm attempting to study three.
(Note: I'm double majoring, but Penn offers more breadth by allowing me to study three disciplines: engineering, art, and business.)
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