CalArts in 2026: Program Updates and Current Faculty

CalArts has had a genuinely eventful year, and almost none of it has reached Korean-language guides. A new bachelor’s degree launched. An existing one stopped existing as a separate degree. Two graduate programmes are not taking applications for 2027–28 — and one of those is currently contradicted by another CalArts document. The whole school’s web addresses moved, so most links you will find in search results are dead.

Everything below was read directly off CalArts pages in September 2026, including a programme-availability spreadsheet the school maintains and dates 14 September 2026.

CalArts launched a BFA in Creative Computing in Fall 2026. The school describes it as “among the first in existence” and frames it as a degree where code is the medium. There are five specialisations.

The academic base is computer science, electrical engineering and signal processing, plus VR/AR, robotics and machine learning. The programme director is Ajay Kapur, who also directs Music Technology.

Two structural points matter for how you apply.

It is a department, not a school. CalArts has six schools — Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, the Herb Alpert School of Music, and Theater. Creative Computing appears on the admissions deadline list as a separate line above all six: “Department of Creative Computing”. It is not a seventh school, and it is not inside any one of them.

Its faculty are drawn from across CalArts. The current faculty listing includes Michael Worthington, who is Co-Program Director of Graphic Design in the School of Art. So this degree grew out of the music school’s technology curriculum but is taught in part by the design faculty.

One requirement is unlike anything else on the CalArts application: the Creative Computing portfolio is capped at three pieces, and the school states plainly that “submitting more than 3 will hurt your application, not help it”. The written statement is 250–500 words and asks what you want to invent — a forward-looking question, where every other CalArts programme asks you to account for work you have already made.

The other half of that launch is a closure. The CalArts Music Technology page now opens with a notice: “The BFA in Music Technology is now a specialization in the new BFA in Creative Computing.” Electronic composition, sound design and audio electronics were folded into the broader computational degree.

The school’s own programme-availability sheet confirms it from the other direction. For Fall 2027, under the School of Music, Music Technology appears only as an MFA. There is no BFA row.

If you are holding a Korean guide that lists “CalArts BFA Music Technology” as a target, that degree is not what you would be applying to. You would be applying to Creative Computing, with Music Technology as one of five specialisations — a different application, a different portfolio cap, and a different written prompt.

The School of Music programme list marks Performer-Composer DMA as “Not accepting applications for 2027–28”. The school’s Open Programs spreadsheet, dated 14 September 2026, shows Performer/Composer with a DMA column marked OPEN.

We are not going to guess which is operative. If the doctorate is your target, write to admissions and get the answer in writing before you build a submission around it.

The second closure is not contradicted. The School of Music page marks World Music MFA as not accepting applications for 2027–28, and the spreadsheet contains no World Music MFA row at all — only World Music Performance BFA, which is open. The two sources agree.

CalArts publishes a spreadsheet listing every programme that is open for applications, separately for spring and fall entry, with a date stamp at the top. We have never seen it referenced in a Korean guide. It is the single most useful CalArts admissions document there is, because of one sentence on the page that links to it:

Here is the Fall 2027 matrix as the sheet stood on 14 September 2026. Blank means no such degree is offered, or it is not open.

Four things this table tells you that no prose page does. Creative Computing has no MFA. Graphic Design’s two-year and three-year MFAs are separate application lines, so you choose the track when you apply, not after. Jazz splits into two application lines — guitar, keyboard and reeds in one, everything else in the other. And Character Animation has no MFA, while Experimental Animation does.

CalArts has no Early Action and no Early Decision. It has two dated deadlines and a price difference, and the school says so in as many words.

The second sentence is the one that costs money. The discount is not for submitting the form by 1 December — it is for having the entire file complete, recommendations included. A recommender who is slow in late November costs you twenty dollars and, more importantly, tells you your file was not ready.

And then, after 5 January: “we will continue to receive applications on a rolling basis until each program closes.” CalArts is a rolling school after its dated deadline — which is exactly why the Open Programs sheet exists and why it warns that programmes can close without notice.

Fee waivers are worth reading properly, because CalArts’ list is unusually broad for undergraduates: the College Board or NACAC waiver, a counsellor’s hardship letter, or being an alum of CalArts, CalArts Extended Studies, CSSSA, the Community Arts Partnership, a Community College Transfer Pathway partner — or simply having applied to CalArts in a previous year. Requests go by email and must be processed before you pay; paid fees are not refunded.

CalArts states it directly: to apply to more than one programme you start two applications, and an application fee is required for each. There is no single form with a second-choice box.

This matters most for the two animation programmes, because their portfolio instructions are opposite.

A student who prepares “a CalArts animation portfolio” has prepared for one of these and disqualified themselves from the other. If both are on your list, you are running two separate preparations and paying two fees.

Two CalArts rules that surprise Korean families every year, both unchanged.

No letter grades. CalArts records High Pass, Pass, Low Pass and No Credit, and does not calculate a GPA internally. It publishes a conversion for external use only — HP 4.00, P 3.00, LP 2.00, NC 0.00. Plan for the fact that a Korean corporate application form or a graduate school with a GPA field will need explaining.

You cannot change programme after admission. The school states it plainly: “You may not change majors or programs after you have been accepted.” Review is done by “the faculty of each program, working together”.

The consequence is the one applicants keep asking about. CalArts does not publish acceptance rates by programme, and structurally it is not a number the school holds out. Nor does it publish an institutional rate: CalArts issues no Common Data Set, and its own most recent published statistics come from an IPEDS Data Feedback Report for 2022. The figure usually quoted — 32.34% — is federal IPEDS data for Fall 2024. Quote the year and the source or do not quote it.

ETS retired the 0–120 TOEFL iBT total on 21 January 2026 and replaced it with a 1–6 scale in half-point steps, where the total is the average of four sections. CalArts now asks for a score of 4, having previously asked for 80.

CalArts also states “We do not require the SAT, ACT, or GRE” and publishes no minimum GPA.

CalArts is one of only two schools on the usual shortlist that publishes a full cost of attendance — and it publishes three, by housing situation.

The $8,662 gap between on-campus and off-campus is the number to look at. For most Korean students living at home is not an option, so the real choice is the first two rows — and living on campus in Valencia is substantially cheaper. CalArts’ housing cost is the lowest of the schools we track, roughly $8,300, which is what pulls the on-campus figure down. The trade is distance: Valencia is not Los Angeles, and internships in the city mean travel.

Against the shortlist on tuition: RISD $66,460, Pratt $64,703, CalArts $62,954, Parsons $62,348, SAIC $59,460, MICA $58,310, SVA $55,270.

CalArts’ aid structure is simpler than most and more specific about international students than most.

Two notes. The “top 30%” line appears on the international student page specifically, which is unusually direct — most schools will not tell you what share of an entering class receives merit money. And CalArts pairs it with a sentence that should be read literally:

In our own records, CalArts has produced 16 confirmed acceptances since 2009, 7 of them with scholarship money — a 44% award rate, averaging $86,857 across those 7 awards. That average sits on seven awards, so one or two cases move it considerably; treat it as an indication, not a forecast. Every acceptance in this record was confirmed directly with the student, and acceptances we could not verify are not counted.

There is no such thing as “the CalArts portfolio”. The caps are set programme by programme and some of them are strict.

Two rules are constant across every programme. Two letters of recommendation are required — for all programmes, which is stricter than Pratt or SVA, where recommendations are optional. And submission is through CalArts’ own portal: not the Common App, not SlideRoom, no PDFs, no external links, and no edits after you submit.

The video rules are identical wherever a video is required: speak directly to the camera, no edits, no special effects or on-screen overlays. A phone camera is explicitly fine.

CalArts also maintains a dedicated AI guideline page for admissions, with three stated principles — authenticity is paramount, process matters as much as product, transparency builds trust. Basic grammar and spell checking on writing, and basic technical assistance on creative work, are fine; beyond that you must disclose, and you may be asked for process material — sketches, iterations, development stages. Undisclosed extensive use “may lead to additional review and re-evaluation of your application” — not automatic rejection, but re-opening a decision you thought was made.

Two corrections that appear in almost every Korean introduction to this school.

Walt Disney did not found CalArts alone. The school’s own account: Walt and his brother Roy, in 1961, through the merger of the Chouinard Art Institute — founded by Nelbert Chouinard — and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, guided by its trustee Lulu May Von Hagen. A merger of two existing institutions, not a founding from nothing, and two Disney brothers rather than one.

There are six schools, and one of them has no BFA. Art, Critical Studies, Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, Film/Video, the Herb Alpert School of Music, and Theater. Critical Studies is graduate-only — an MA in Aesthetics and Politics and an MFA in Creative Writing. Guides that say “six schools, each offering a BFA” are wrong.

Critical Studies still shapes every undergraduate degree, though: it delivers the general education requirement, 46 credits, which CalArts describes as “about 40 percent of each student’s overall course load”. The first-year Critical Studies courses both carry “an intensive writing workshop component”. A CalArts BFA is 120 credits minimum over eight semesters, and nearly half of it is reading and writing.

CalArts reorganised its site. Programme pages now live under calarts.edu/academics/programs-and-degrees/ and the schools under short paths such as calarts.edu/music. Older addresses in the form calarts.edu/academics/schools/… return 404.

We hit this on four consecutive articles while writing our CalArts programme guides — Art, Graphic Design, Photography and Media, and Music all had dead official links. Search results still surface the old addresses. Treat any CalArts link older than a year as suspect and navigate from the current programmes index instead.

Four actions follow from the above.

Open the Open Programs sheet before you decide anything. It is dated, it is authoritative, and it is the only place that tells you whether your target is accepting applications at all. Check it again before you submit.

If games, AI or interactive work is the goal, look at Creative Computing now. It launched this year, it takes three pieces only, and its written prompt asks what you want to invent rather than what you have made. That is a different preparation from every other CalArts application — and a much shorter one.

Secure two recommenders early. Two letters are required for every programme, and they must be in by 1 December if you want the reduced fee. This is the item that slips.

Choose one animation programme, or budget for two preparations. Character and Experimental Animation are not variations on a theme. They ask for opposite work, they need separate applications, and they charge separate fees.

CalArts, programme by programme — Art · Graphic Design · Photography and Media · Film and Video · Character Animation · Experimental Animation · Theater · Music.

Other schools, same treatment — RISD in 2026 · Parsons in 2026 · SVA in 2026 · SAIC in 2026.

Applying — building a portfolio as an international student.

This page was verified against CalArts pages in September 2026, including the school’s Open Programs spreadsheet as it stood on 14 September 2026. That sheet changes without notice, and one item above is currently contradictory on CalArts’ own site. If you find something here that has since changed, tell us and we will correct it.