My daughter has been accepted in the ID programs at RIT, RISD and Philadelphia University. She is not sure whether she wants to work on the agency side or the corporate side (too soon, I guess to figure that out). So, the program should be flexible enough to let her make that choice later. Any opinions?
Also, how important is the school name when searching for your first job? Or are things like summer internships/jobs and portfolio more important?
Lastly, I noticed that the vast majority of the RISD faculty is from RISD. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
RISD faculty were RISD students…yes, let that tell you something indeed. Although I hear the program is a lot better (real world design) for undergrads than it was about 5 yrs ago. Facilities are good.
-If you can find out who the good teachers are from the upperclassmen early on and get into their classes then you’ll have a good learning experience. Beware, plenty of teachers get hired on for classes last minute and may or may not know be competent. For my CAD class, my teacher only showed up 3 days in the semester, the rest of the time it was taught by an upperclassmen TA who didn’t know the program either. So we just did tutorials and made a list of questions to ask for the next time our teacher would show up…he never did until last day I think to test our knowledge and give us a grade.
-Providence sucks but it’ll help you stay focused on your work because there isn’t really anything else to do at all (compared to any “real” city), very little distractions. Don’t even think about having a car there, very little parking and the ticket people attack like SEALS. Off campus apartments are highly overpriced now due to the new PR work providence has been getting and it’s proximity to boston. You’ll be paying the same amount as if you lived in a big city, but you’re in a place with only one mall and downtown is pretty much 1 sq mile, if that.
Competition is good there, the talented students are very talented. That, the outstanding resources, and the almost shaolin temple type of concentration you should be able to achieve (because there’s nothing to do) makes me still give it a thumbs up even though everything else is crappy.