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The ideal portfolio will demonstrate your conceptual development while highlighting your technical abilities.

Portfolio Reviews with SMFA Admissions

Before you officially submit your portfolio, we encourage you to reach out to us for a personal portfolio review.

Although portfolio reviews are not an admissions requirement, they are a great opportunity to receive valuable guidance on portfolio preparation, and a chance to meet with our admissions team to discuss any questions you have on the application process.

Schedule a portfolio review for Undergraduate and Graduate Programs:

Undergraduate Programs Portfolio Review Graduate Programs Portfolio Review

Portfolio Submission Requirements

First-Year and Transfer Undergraduate Students

All applicants to the BFA and Combined Degree programs are required to submit a visual art portfolio consisting of 15-20 images of recent work and/or up to 10 minutes of time-based work. We encourage you to submit work that you believe to be the strongest representation of your skills and experiences to date, regardless of medium.

How to Submit

  • After submitting your application, you will receive an email with login information and a link to your applicant portal. Please allow for up to 24 hours after submitting your application to receive this email. 
  • Submit your portfolio by logging into your applicant portal and selecting the “Digital Portfolio” tab or navigating to the “Digital Portfolio” requirement in your applicant checklist, where detailed upload instructions can be found. 
  • Your applicant portal contains a checklist of additional application requirements such as letters of recommendation and the financial aid application. Decision letters are also released on the applicant portal. 

First Year Application Process and Deadlines Transfer Application Process and Deadlines

Graduate Students

All applicants to the MFA and Post-Baccalaureate programs are required to submit a visual art portfolio consisting 10-20 images of recent work and/or up to 10 minutes of time-based work. We strongly recommend that slides contain only one image per document rather than book format or multipage documents. We encourage you to submit work that you believe to be the strongest representation of your skills and experiences to date, regardless of medium. Portfolio submissions may consist of works from a single medium or project. For collaborative projects, please indicate which aspects you are credited with in the details section.

How to Submit

  • Upload your portfolio by navigating to the “Digital Portfolio” tab of your application, where detailed upload instructions can be found. 
  • Uploading a portfolio is part of the application and follows the same due dates for each application round; your application will not be considered complete until you have uploaded your portfolio.

Graduate Application Process and Deadlines

    File Sizes and Types

    We support media files as large as 5GB. Uploaded documents may contain up to 75 pages, but we recommend no more than 5 pages per document.
     
    We support the following file formats:
    Video: .3g2, .3gp, .avi, .m2v, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .mp4, .mxf, .webm, .wmv
    Audio: .aac, .m4a, .mka, .mp3, .oga, .ogg, .wav
    Slide: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff
    Document: .doc, .docx, .odg, .odp, .odt, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .wpd

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