Last Updated on 06/17/2026 by Ethan Sawyer

Artists: Your Complete Guide to Applying to Art School

Written with Laura Young, Director of Enrollment Management at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, with special thanks to Chris Andersson (former Director of Admissions for Drama department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and founder of NothingButDrama.com), and Clara Lieu (Adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design & Partner at Artprof.org. You can also check out the Art Prof YouTube channel).

This section was primarily written by Laura Young, Director of Enrollment Management at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture because she talks about this stuff pretty much all day every day. But I’ve got firsthand experience creating art in both the liberal arts and conservatory environments, so this topic is close to my heart too.  (I majored in Performance Studies at Northwestern, then received an MFA in Acting from UC Irvine.)

Laura was my guest on the College Essay Guy podcast episode 113, Debunking the Myth of the Starving Artist.

Majoring in the Arts

So you want to major in the arts? Awesome. Creativity is an amazing superpower and it’s in high demand across industries. Unfortunately, timeworn cultural messages and media tropes like the “starving artist” tell us to believe that the only way to succeed as an artist is to be famous.

But plenty of successful working artists lead normal lives that include family, travel, and hobbies. Many just aren’t immediately visible to you. Look at the credits of any movie: the special effects artists, dialect coaches, composers, stunt doubles, set dressers, and costume designers are all non-famous artists making a living from their talents. Think too of the people staging exhibits, running galleries and museums, and educating the public.

Why Art-Making Matters

The arts are essential to a meaningful life. Sometimes creativity is in your face, like a groundbreaking musician or an A-list actor. More often it’s subtle: restaurant lighting calibrated just right, a floral arrangement that looks both elegant and organic, a building that makes you want to walk inside. The arts invite us to consider other perspectives, and to feel like someone else out there understands us.

Part of what an artist does is communicate an idea or share an experience that helps us feel less alone. In an increasingly commodified world, knowing how to create an individualized experience is an incredibly important—and robot-proof—skill.

Marketable Skills Art-Making Develops

• Critical thinking: Artists are trained to drill down into ideas and think about different perspectives long after most people have moved on.
• Empathy: To communicate ideas effectively, artists practice deeply inhabiting the experiences of others.
• Project management: Many artists can hold both details and the big picture simultaneously—a skill that helps whether you’re working solo, on a team, or leading a group toward a common goal.

In short: the arts are essential, valuable, and a perfectly valid college major.

Your Options for Studying Art in College

Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities

These schools can be public or private and offer a full range of majors alongside the arts. If you want to double major or minor in a non-arts area, you can. If you want the full college experience—student groups, athletics, Greek life—you’ve got it. And if you come in as an arts major and decide you’d rather study microbiology, you can switch without transferring.

Most liberal arts colleges offer traditional academic degrees (BA and BS), though some offer professional programs (BFA, BMus) in the arts with more rigorous curricula and separate admission requirements. You can get the best of both worlds: high-quality, intimate arts programs with all the benefits of a full college experience. Some colleges also have five-year dual-degree partnerships with nearby art schools or conservatories.

Visual and Performing Arts Schools

The majority of these are private institutions, and all degree programs are in creative areas (BFA, BMus). If you came from a high school where artists were in the minority, you’ll finally get the experience of being surrounded by your people. Academic coursework is still expected, but classes tend to be smaller and content is often tailored to artists.

Conservatories

Most arts programs are looking for potential. Conservatories seek a high level of existing talent. They exist to preserve and perfect the art of dance, theater, or music. Beyond bachelor’s and advanced degrees, some offer artist diplomas—a specialized program for extremely high-level performers.

Community Colleges

If you want more time to explore your options, a clean academic slate, or to save money before transferring, community colleges can support you in multiple ways. Some campuses have stronger arts programs than others, which matters if you want to transfer smoothly to a four-year school. Work with your destination institution to prepare, and ask your community college counselor for guidance on transfer pathways.

Vocational Schools

These focus on technical training targeted at entering the workforce—film editing, special effects, makeup, sound engineering, etc. One important heads-up: many of these institutions are for-profit, and their credits may not transfer to other institutions.

Values-Based Questions for Artists to Consider

How large a community am I seeking?

Some students feel energized by bigger campuses with lots of variety. Others feel more at home on small, intimate campuses. An art school’s student body may be as small as a few hundred people.

How important is mentorship to me?

Ask about the student-to-instructor ratio in your studio areas. Music majors sometimes have one-on-one lessons with faculty—it doesn’t get much more intimate than that. When looking at arts programs within larger universities, ask specifically about class sizes in your intended major, since arts classes will often be smaller even when general university classes are not.

Will the resources and facilities support my creative development?

If you’re a sculptor looking to pour bronze, ask if the school has a foundry. Research resources matter too—slide libraries, music archives, and print collections are still highly relevant to young artists, and not everything is online.

How much weight does the artistic review carry in admission?

Find out how your portfolio or audition is weighted relative to academic performance, and who’s involved in the selection process (faculty, admission counselors, or both). If a portfolio or audition is part of the process, there’s often more flexibility around GPA.

How to Crush Your Audition

Tips from Chris Andersson, former Director of Admissions for the Drama department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Find material you love. If you can’t wait to share your monologue, song, or design project with your evaluator, that’s your material. Loving what you perform makes the review more enjoyable for both of you. You’re sharing something you love with people who love it too.

Organize like crazy. Performing arts schools often have many program-specific requirements that are easy to lose track of. Build a spreadsheet to track:

• Prescreen submission deadlines (if required)
• When and where auditions are offered
• Monologue and song length requirements and parameters
• Whether the school requires a dance call
• What must be included in directing, design, or stage management portfolios
• Whether the review includes a conversation component

Then double-check everything. The clearer you are on what needs to be done and when, the calmer you’ll feel throughout the process.

Research, research, research. Learn about each department’s mission, curriculum, faculty, production season, and student experience. This knowledge will serve you when interviewers ask why you’re interested in their program, and it’ll help you come up with smart questions for them.

Have fun. Look at your fellow applicants as future classmates, not competition. Talk to people. Make friends. You just might end up in the same program.

Take solo time when you need it. If you need quiet before your audition, find a corner or hallway away from the crowd. Focus on what you’re about to do. You can socialize after.

How to Create a Great Art Portfolio

Tips from Clara Lieu, Partner at Artprof.org and former Adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Give yourself time. Preparing a portfolio for college admission is not casual—it’s common for students to underestimate the time involved. For most, it takes several months, sometimes up to a year.

Create more than required. Even if the portfolio requires fifteen artworks, aim for thirty to forty. Your work will improve dramatically in the process, and you’ll have more to choose from.

Pay attention to different prompts across schools. One art school might require a sketchbook; another might post a unique prompt every year. Read requirements carefully.

Draw from life. The vast majority of high school students draw exclusively from photos, which builds bad habits. Drawing from life is harder and slower, but the payoff is real skill development.

Include a wide variety of subject matter. Admission officers don’t want to see twenty self-portraits. Common subjects include figures, still lifes, landscapes, and interior spaces—but don’t stop there. Character design, abstraction, editorial illustration, typography, political art, and more are all fair game.

Prioritize your best work over your intended major. You could have every intention of majoring in architecture, have zero architectural models in your portfolio, and still be a strong candidate.

Avoid clichés. If you’re given a prompt like “time,” resist the urge to paint a clock or hourglass. Push past the obvious and find an uncommon angle.

Express your own point of view. Show intellectual or emotional engagement with your subject matter. Choose themes that excite you, and show why.

Include a sketchbook spread. A page or two of raw sketchbook work shows your thinking and brainstorming process in unedited form—and evaluators love it.

Present your work professionally. No dirty fingerprints, ripped edges, or tape hanging off the side. Neat presentation matters. Many colleges ask for a digital portfolio submitted through SlideRoom.

Bring pieces to full completion. Many student portfolios have half-finished pieces with glaringly empty backgrounds. Sometimes the difference is just one extra hour of work.

Include drawings in traditional media. Even if you have impressive digital work, traditional drawing skills are still expected. Drawing isn’t just copying a photo accurately—what can you express that a camera can’t?

Use a wide range of media. Show you can work in more than one medium: crayons, conte crayons, pastels, photography, painting, sculpture, collage, digital, printmaking, video, and more.

Use high-quality photographs of your artwork. A blurry photo can seriously undermine an evaluator’s first impression of the piece. Give this step the time it deserves.

Get feedback from an art teacher or professional artist. All artists—even professionals—can get stuck in their own heads. Outside perspectives are valuable.

Attend National Portfolio Day. This is essentially a college fair where representatives from art schools and colleges with art programs critique your portfolio in person. Go in the fall of junior year to get a feel for things, then again in the fall of senior year. Expect long lines and big crowds. Brace yourself for the possibility of harsh or rushed feedback—but don’t let a tough critique discourage you.