School Notes: School of Art
March/April 2007

Applications continue to rise

The School of Art received a record 1,215 applications this year for admission in September 2007, reflecting a 15-percent jump in applications from last year. All four departments at the school -- graphic design, painting and printmaking, photography, and sculpture -- saw increased applications.

In a rigorous two-tiered process that will result in a class of about 60 students, the original pool of applicants is whittled down to about 175 candidates, who are then asked to interview on campus and present their portfolios to faculty and students. Final acceptance letters are mailed in late March. The school boasts a low acceptance rate (approximately 5 percent), and its yield (the percentage of those accepted who matriculate) has remained quite high -- between 89 percent and 100 percent (depending on the department) over the last two years.

A welcoming website

The newly revamped School of Art website, yale.edu/art, which was originally launched in October 2005, is a wiki site, which allows art school graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni to edit the site's contents and add new content. Within the next few months, alumni will be invited to contribute to a page on which they can link their sites and personal or professional information. It is anticipated that by summer the website will become one of the richest resources for both alumni information and images of their work.

Spring exhibitions

The semester of MFA thesis exhibitions has begun; please consult the school website for a schedule and images of current work in the shows in Green Hall. The ten graduating sculptors will open the thesis shows and take up the first two months of the gallery with installations, video, and other constructions.