Undergraduate Admissions: First-time Freshmen

Blur Lines. Break Conventions. Reinvent.

At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), our interdisciplinary curriculum is designed to prepare you for life as a 21st-century artist and designer. We recognize that to realize your creative vision, you need the freedom to explore without boundaries. This means that you may choose to concentrate in one discipline or choose a path that includes study across different media.

This approach will help you uniquely problem-solve, preparing you to be a truly creative, innovative, and groundbreaking artist, designer, and scholar. We emphasize understanding the thinking behind your work and give you the tools and freedom to define your own creative pathway. This is why you will not declare a major, and the courses you take are graded on a credit/no-credit basis.

Every course you take will not be an endless series of lectures, but an open and rigorous dialogue among peers. And all of this takes place in one of the most dynamic and culturally rich cities in the world, Chicago.

The artists and designers that are our faculty, students, and alumni break boundaries and make history. We invite you to join them.