my son is searching for a pre-college design program, media arts, industrial, for example. he spent last summer at pratt and was dissapointed, poor instruction, i am sure the grad program is great. anyone with any experience who has taken a intensive, dedicated summer program or workshop? western europe and the us would be a start. i know thios is not a narrow search[/b]
I went to carnegie mellon’s program when i was in high school… now i’m an upperclassmen in industrial design at the university of cincinnati.
Overall, I’m really glad I went to CMU before college, they’re program (5 years ago at least) gave me a taste of industrial design, communication design, graphic design, and photography. It let me find out where my strengths were, and what i really wanted to persue in college.
It was a good, low pressure, not super competitive environment where everyone was experimenting with finding their niche. I loved half of the professors and hated the other half (half knew how to have fun, and deal with younger students, while the other half were very knowledgable, but didn’t know how to come down to our level)
hope that helps a little!
I recommend RISD’s pre-college program from experience. I found it to be a good preview of what art school was like (kind of like a try before you buy), and it helped generate some of the key portfolio pieces that got me into art school the following year. I was able to apply what I learned at RISD to my high school art classes, and made significant strides during senior year. The exposure to, and ability to meet other talented hs students from all across the country and abroad is also a nice part of the package. Summertime in Providence was very pleasant too.