Pre-College surrounded him with likeminded creatives

Learn more about and apply to CIA's Pre-College program here. The deadline for the summer 2020 program is April 15.

Describe Pre-College for someone who doesn’t know anything about it.
It's pretty much like real college. You come here. You draw all day. And then you can go out for lunch. It's just an awesome experience.

A lot of the stuff I'm doing here will just be helpful to me in the long run for doing artwork. And not only that, a lot of the pieces I'm creating I could just put into a college portfolio. All our instructors are very helpful. Whichever direction we want to go in, they're like, it's cool.

Were you familiar with CIA before you came to Pre-College?
I come here for life drawing sessions every week usually. I hadn’t really extensively looked at the campus, but I've been here for some school field trips. And I'm like, hey, this is cool. I could go to the Cleveland Institute of Art.

What do you like about it?
I think just being surrounded with a lot of art and artistically minded people really helps you garner that environment in which you can nurture your abilities and grow. So I think this environment will be very helpful to almost anyone who wants to go into some art-related career.

What would you advise someone who’s thinking of attending Pre-College?
I would say, of course do it. Because first of all, it's going to give you the true college experience. And it's going to let you know if you really want to do this for a living, you know? If you want to go into college for this.

And not only that, it's just a really good experience to have. Having this on your [application] for a college, it will really bolster it. A lot of [students] don't usually do live drawing and gesture drawing, and that's something that a lot of colleges look closely at. Coming here will also give you professional training in that field.

Learn more about and apply to CIA's Pre-College program here. The deadline for the summer 2020 program is April 15.