College Costs: Part 3. When Valedictorian Wants To Go to Art School
Daughter No. 2 just graduated from high school, valedictorian of her class. There had been no drama raising her, she studied hard without prodding from us. My parenting time was so consumed with helping Daughter No. 1 through her ADD challenges that I had not realized that Daughter No. 2 had been stealthily excelling in everything she worked on. This is the child who attended private middle school at the same time we transferred her older sister to private school (see previous blog) because we didn't want to favor one daughter with private school over another. This same daughter also transferred herself out of private school when she felt that the swanky private school placed more emphasis on sports rather than the arts even though she herself played varsity basketball.
She researched and submitted her portfolio to the highly regarded public Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) that emphasized the arts as well as academics. She got in. She, along with us, had to endure two hours of commuting each day to the new school for four years!) During the four years at LACHSA, she excelled artistically and academically. She was admitted to the highly selective California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA), as well as a research internship at Cal Tech the following summer. She led the revitalization of the school's zine club to get students involved, and raised significant money for the club and for her visual arts department. Academically, she took six AP classes, got 4s or better on each of them. While not a National Merit Finalist like her sister, she was a Commended Scholar for her PSAT scores, and she was valedictorian.
We had high hopes that she would apply to a top university such as the Ivies, Cal Tech, or some other top ranked schools. With one other child in college, we thought that she should be able to receive some financial aid. We would gladly pay for the rest. Well, she refused to even apply to those universities. She pronounced that she wanted to attend a university with a good art and design department, and not just a fine arts program. She wanted to have her own business using her skills in art and design. She researched the Ivies, but to her, their art departments' traditional fine arts focus was not what she wanted. In addition, she felt that a liberal arts education aimed at making her into a "renaissance woman" is overrated and that in being forced to take those foundation classes in science, language and literature, social sciences, or maths, she would be forced to focus less on her art. She felt that she could develop her knowledge in those areas on her own.
In the end, she applied to a battery of art colleges and universities that supposedly give out merit scholarships in art. She got into every single one of the art colleges she applied to: Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Instutute, Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art (MICA), California College of the Arts (CCA), California Institute For The Arts (CalArts), USC, UC Berkeley, and Washington University in Saint Louis. The last one because supposedly they gave merit scholarships. The only schools she didn't get into was Stanford. and Carnegie Mellon.
It turns out, RISD, which has no merit scholarships, did not give her any financial aid besides loans. She also was not interested because she found RISD's animation program uninspiring. She turned down Berkeley because she found it lacking in basic art and design programs. She did not receive any scholarships or financial aid from USC. WSU paid for her to visit the campus, but gave her no merit scholarship. She stayed on campus for two nights, came home and said the university felt too institutional, like Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Basically, not artsy enough. Pratt and CCA each gave her the equivalent of half scholarship. MICA gave her a full scholarship, while CalArts gave her maybe a 1/3 scholarship.
It came down to MICA and CalArts. MICA because of the full ride, and CalArts because it has the top character animation program in the country. Despite the full ride, she chose CalArts for its reputation and student animation work that she saw. She received about $14,000 per year in scholarships from the school, and to save money, she decided to not stay in the expensive dorms and will instead live in an apartment outside of campus and cook for herself.
While we have saved money to pay for the rest of daughter No. 2's tuition at CalArts, we worry that she is getting an education that is too narrow in focus. Isn't college the time to broaden one's horizon rather than to narrow it? Yet, we talk about the relevancy of a college education in preparing a young adult for college. Many out there say that an art degree, or English, or History degree is worthless in landing one a decent job. Yet, short of forcing her to pursue math, science or engineering which she dislikes, is attending art school any worse than getting a degree in the liberal arts?
I've learned to not count daughter No. 2 out when it comes to making sound and independent decisions. She wants to be an entrepreneur using her skills in art and design. She made a choice to specialize in animation partly because she senses that there are good job opportunities out there while she builds her business. She knows this first hand because her dad is a storyboard artist in the animation industry despite having a Bachelor's degree from Berkeley, and a Master's degree in architecture from Yale. He made the transition into being an artist in his 30's realizing that he could earn much more as an artist. He often laments that had he known he could pursue a career in art and that his parents encouraged him to do so instead of forcing him to go into architecture, he would have been much further along in his career and finances by now. Also, he would have wished to attend a school like CalArts for the training and connections. As it is, he is never hard pressed to find jobs as an artist, and his work in the animation industry has allowed me to leave my job as a lawyer and stay home to raise my kids. So who is to say that daughter No. 2's decision to pursue art is wrong? Only time will tell.
She researched and submitted her portfolio to the highly regarded public Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) that emphasized the arts as well as academics. She got in. She, along with us, had to endure two hours of commuting each day to the new school for four years!) During the four years at LACHSA, she excelled artistically and academically. She was admitted to the highly selective California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA), as well as a research internship at Cal Tech the following summer. She led the revitalization of the school's zine club to get students involved, and raised significant money for the club and for her visual arts department. Academically, she took six AP classes, got 4s or better on each of them. While not a National Merit Finalist like her sister, she was a Commended Scholar for her PSAT scores, and she was valedictorian.
We had high hopes that she would apply to a top university such as the Ivies, Cal Tech, or some other top ranked schools. With one other child in college, we thought that she should be able to receive some financial aid. We would gladly pay for the rest. Well, she refused to even apply to those universities. She pronounced that she wanted to attend a university with a good art and design department, and not just a fine arts program. She wanted to have her own business using her skills in art and design. She researched the Ivies, but to her, their art departments' traditional fine arts focus was not what she wanted. In addition, she felt that a liberal arts education aimed at making her into a "renaissance woman" is overrated and that in being forced to take those foundation classes in science, language and literature, social sciences, or maths, she would be forced to focus less on her art. She felt that she could develop her knowledge in those areas on her own.
In the end, she applied to a battery of art colleges and universities that supposedly give out merit scholarships in art. She got into every single one of the art colleges she applied to: Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Instutute, Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art (MICA), California College of the Arts (CCA), California Institute For The Arts (CalArts), USC, UC Berkeley, and Washington University in Saint Louis. The last one because supposedly they gave merit scholarships. The only schools she didn't get into was Stanford. and Carnegie Mellon.
It turns out, RISD, which has no merit scholarships, did not give her any financial aid besides loans. She also was not interested because she found RISD's animation program uninspiring. She turned down Berkeley because she found it lacking in basic art and design programs. She did not receive any scholarships or financial aid from USC. WSU paid for her to visit the campus, but gave her no merit scholarship. She stayed on campus for two nights, came home and said the university felt too institutional, like Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Basically, not artsy enough. Pratt and CCA each gave her the equivalent of half scholarship. MICA gave her a full scholarship, while CalArts gave her maybe a 1/3 scholarship.
It came down to MICA and CalArts. MICA because of the full ride, and CalArts because it has the top character animation program in the country. Despite the full ride, she chose CalArts for its reputation and student animation work that she saw. She received about $14,000 per year in scholarships from the school, and to save money, she decided to not stay in the expensive dorms and will instead live in an apartment outside of campus and cook for herself.
While we have saved money to pay for the rest of daughter No. 2's tuition at CalArts, we worry that she is getting an education that is too narrow in focus. Isn't college the time to broaden one's horizon rather than to narrow it? Yet, we talk about the relevancy of a college education in preparing a young adult for college. Many out there say that an art degree, or English, or History degree is worthless in landing one a decent job. Yet, short of forcing her to pursue math, science or engineering which she dislikes, is attending art school any worse than getting a degree in the liberal arts?
I've learned to not count daughter No. 2 out when it comes to making sound and independent decisions. She wants to be an entrepreneur using her skills in art and design. She made a choice to specialize in animation partly because she senses that there are good job opportunities out there while she builds her business. She knows this first hand because her dad is a storyboard artist in the animation industry despite having a Bachelor's degree from Berkeley, and a Master's degree in architecture from Yale. He made the transition into being an artist in his 30's realizing that he could earn much more as an artist. He often laments that had he known he could pursue a career in art and that his parents encouraged him to do so instead of forcing him to go into architecture, he would have been much further along in his career and finances by now. Also, he would have wished to attend a school like CalArts for the training and connections. As it is, he is never hard pressed to find jobs as an artist, and his work in the animation industry has allowed me to leave my job as a lawyer and stay home to raise my kids. So who is to say that daughter No. 2's decision to pursue art is wrong? Only time will tell.
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