Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is located on a 25-acre tree-lined campus, with twenty-seven buildings, including landmarked Romanesque- and Renaissance Revival–style structures, in Brooklyn’s historic Clinton Hill section. Approximately 84 percent of freshmen live in one of Pratt’s six residence halls. On-campus parking is available for residents and commuters. Pratt’s proximity to New York City, which offers a vast array of professional, cultural, and recreational opportunities, is a distinct advantage to students. Through Pratt’s optional internship program, qualified students are offered challenging on-the-job experience in Manhattan’s top galleries and design firms, giving them firsthand work experience as well as credit toward their professional degree. This extension of the classroom into the professional world adds a practical dimension to their education.

Pratt is one of the largest undergraduate and graduate schools for art, design, and architecture in the United States, offering a wide range of cross-disciplinary study options, dual degrees, and major concentrations. Pratt offers undergraduate degrees in architecture, art history and criticism, art and design education, communication design (advertising art direction, graphic design, and illustration), construction management, critical and visual studies, digital arts, fine arts (ceramics, jewelry design, painting/drawing, printmaking, and sculpture), fashion design, industrial design, interior design, media arts (animation, film/video and photography), and writing. Graduate degrees are offered in architecture, art history and criticism, art and design education, art therapy, arts and cultural management, city and regional planning, communication design (graphic and packaging design), dance therapy, design management, digital arts, environmental systems management, facilities management, fine art (painting/drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, and new forms), historic preservation, industrial design, interior design, library science, and urban design.

Student services include academic advisement, career planning and placement, counseling, and academic skills development. There are more than sixty student-run organizations, including fraternities, sororities, professional societies, and clubs. Pratt participates in NCAA and ECAA men’s and women’s varsity competitions and has intramural sports teams as well.

Pratt Institute has educated professionals for productive careers in artistic and technical fields since its founding in 1887. By employing seasoned professionals as instructors; supporting its innovative programming with an extensive array of art- and design-related studios, workshops, computer labs, and galleries; and providing a rigorous liberal arts core curriculum (mandatory for all students), Pratt Institute offers students an outstanding professional as well as an academically well-rounded education. The fact that Pratt has one of the highest student retention rates in the country among schools of its kind confirms the satisfaction students and their families report about the quality of the education they receive here.

Pratt’s faculty members, all practicing professionals, bring to the classroom a real-world expertise, a strong theoretical base, and the high standards of their professional work. Pratt faculty members enjoy overwhelming success and critical acclaim in their prospective fields. They have garnered prestigious academic and professional awards, including Tiffany, Fulbright, and Guggenheim grants, and have been provided with publishing contracts, travel and research scholarships, and exhibition opportunities. This intimate acquaintance with real-world success and high critical standards has a significant impact on Pratt students, leading them to rewarding and lucrative careers in the fields of art and design.

For more than 100 years, the Institute has produced great artists and designers. The following are just a few of Pratt’s alumni and their outstanding accomplishments: Bob Giraldi, director of award-winning TV commercials, including the Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial; Morris Cousins, industrial designer and founder of Tupperware; Betsey Johnson, fashion designer; Ellsworth Kelly, painter; Robert Wilson, performance artist; Bruce Hannah, Knoll furniture designer; Paul Rand, graphic designer of IBM, Westinghouse, and NEXT computer logos; William Boyer, automobile designer of the classic Thunderbird; Peter Blake, prominent architecture author and editor; Harvey Fierstein, playwright of Torch Song Trilogy; Robert Mapplethrope, photographer; Robert Redford, actor and director; Jeremy Scott, fashion designer; Tomie DePaola, author and illustrator of the children’s classic, Strega Nona; Patti Smith, rock star and poet; and Peter Max, pop artist.

Pratt is the only school for art and design in New York that has a traditional college campus. With spacious lawns and tree-lined plazas, a contemporary sculpture park, historic buildings, and residence halls on campus, the 25-acre campus provides students with a beautiful and peaceful environment in which to work, just minutes from Manhattan. Its numerous buildings offer an abundance of light, air, and open space—highly conducive to focused, serious studio work—and house a wealth of art and design support facilities that include exhibition galleries; printmaking, woodworking, and metalworking shops; casting forges; sculpture and ceramic studios; photo printing darkrooms; film studios; projection and editing rooms; animation stands; and computer labs.

The educational goal of the School of Art and Design is to educate whole artists, writers, and designers. A Pratt education focuses primarily on two objectives: professional training—emphasizing the learning of skills, techniques, and the methodology necessary for students to perform in the professional community as productive artists, writers, or designers—and building students’ critical awareness through exposure to a strong liberal arts curriculum. Pratt students are encouraged to enroll in courses outside their major and explore the interconnectedness of art, design, writing, technology, and human need.

At Pratt, future art teachers discover themselves by teaching classes in the Department of Art and Design Education’s Saturday Art School. For almost a century, this laboratory school has provided New York City children, adolescents, and, more recently, adults and senior citizens with a high-quality art program.

By educating more than four generations of students to be creative, technically skilled, and adaptable professionals, Pratt has earned an international reputation that attracts more than 4,700 undergraduate and graduate students annually from more than forty-seven states and fifty countries.

Application Procedures

Deadline--freshmen: January 5; transfers: February 1. Notification date--freshmen and transfers: April 1. Required: essay, high school transcript, college transcript(s) for transfer students, letter of recommendation, portfolio, SAT or ACT test scores, writing sample for some majors. Recommended: minimum 3.0 high school GPA, interview. Auditions held 1 time. Portfolio reviews held continuously on campus and off campus in various locations on National Portfolio Days; the submission of slides may be substituted for portfolios when distance is prohibitive (beyond a 100-mile radius).

Pratt Institute

Application Procedures

Undergraduate Contact

Graduate Contact