QUICK ANSWER
Parsons runs a practitioner faculty model — 127 full-time and over 1,000 part-time instructors, many of them working professionals in New York’s design and fashion industries. That ratio is the fact to understand rather than any individual name. A largely part-time faculty means current industry exposure and a wide range of perspectives, but also that the person teaching a course may change year to year — so building an application around one professor is a fragile strategy. Research faculty to understand what the department values, not to name-drop. An essay that cites a professor without engaging their actual work reads worse than one that never mentions anyone.
Parsons has 127 full-time and over 1,000 part-time faculty members — many of whom are active practitioners in New York’s design, fashion, and art industries. Understanding who teaches at Parsons, what the faculty model looks like, and how to research faculty before applying helps Korean students write more compelling applications and choose the right program within Parsons.
| School | Acceptance Rate | Annual Tuition | Top Programs |
|---|---|---|---|
| RISD | ~20% | $58,000+ | Illustration, Graphic Design, ID |
| CalArts | ~24% | $55,000+ | Animation, Fine Arts, Film |
| Parsons | ~62% | $57,000+ | Fashion, Communication Design |
| SAIC | ~57% | $54,000+ | Painting, Photography, Design |
| SVA | ~72% | $50,000+ | Illustration, MFA, Film |
| Pratt | ~52% | $56,000+ | Architecture, Industrial Design |
Parsons sits at the intersection of design, art, and social impact. The admissions team values students who think critically about design’s role in society. Your challenge project and portfolio should demonstrate not just aesthetic skills but also how design can address real-world problems.
Frequently Asked Questions
Like RISD, Parsons follows a practitioner-educator model — most faculty maintain active professional practices alongside their teaching. With over 1,000 part-time faculty members, Parsons draws particularly heavily on New York’s working creative professionals: fashion designers who show at New York Fashion Week, communication designers at major agencies, architects at significant firms.
This model creates a specific educational culture: students learn from practitioners whose work is current, whose industry contacts are active, and whose critique is informed by what the field actually values — not only what academic theory prescribes.
Historically Distinguished Faculty
Some of the most significant names in design history have taught at Parsons:
Frank Lloyd Wright: Parsons’ most historically famous faculty member — the architect who shaped the 20th century’s understanding of organic architecture taught at Parsons in his later career.
Piet Mondrian: The De Stijl pioneer who fled Europe during World War II taught at Parsons in the 1940s, bringing European modernist theory directly to American design education.
Tim Gunn: The Project Runway mentor and fashion education leader served as chair of Parsons’ Fashion Design department — representing Parsons’ role at the center of American fashion media and culture.
Notable Current and Recent Faculty
Emily Oberman: Partner at Pentagram (one of the world’s most recognized design firms); Parsons Communication Design alumna and faculty — her teaching embodies the school’s integration of professional practice with design education.
Ben Katchor: Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist; teaches at Parsons, bringing sequential art and visual narrative into the curriculum.
Lauren Redniss: Illustrator, author, and artist whose interdisciplinary work spans journalism, comics, and visual narrative — MacArthur “Genius” Fellow; teaches at Parsons.
Paul Goldberger: Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic; has lectured at Parsons — representing The New School’s integration of critical writing with design education.
How Faculty Shape the Educational Experience by Program
Fashion Design faculty: Many are currently working fashion designers, former fashion industry leaders, or fashion critics. The direct industry connection means fashion students often encounter faculty who can connect them directly with internship opportunities, press contacts, and brand relationships.
Communication Design faculty: Design directors, creative directors, and brand strategists at major New York agencies and studios. Students learn branding and graphic design from people actively creating identities for major companies.
Fine Arts faculty: Gallery-represented artists working in New York’s contemporary art market. The critiques and connections fine arts students receive reflect active gallery culture.
How cKorean Students Should Research Parsons Faculty
공식 정보: Parsons 공식 입시
Before writing your personal statement: Review the faculty pages for your intended program on newschool.edu/parsons. Identify two or three faculty members whose practice genuinely intersects with your creative interests. Reference this knowledge specifically in your written materials — not as name-dropping, but as evidence of genuine engagement with what Parsons offers.
Look at faculty work beyond their Parsons profile: Faculty personal websites, portfolio platforms, exhibition records, published writing, and social media provide richer pictures of their current practice than institutional bio pages alone.
Be selective and honest: Reference faculty whose work you have genuinely engaged with. Citing faculty you haven’t actually looked at is detectable — and counterproductive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Parsons faculty provide mentorship outside of class? Yes. Parsons’ student-to-faculty ratio of 10:1 and its culture of professional practice create meaningful opportunities for faculty mentorship. Industry connections — internship referrals, exhibition opportunities, professional introductions — often flow through faculty relationships.
Are Parsons’ 1,000+ part-time faculty as useful as full-time faculty? Part-time faculty at Parsons are often working industry professionals whose current connections are as valuable as (sometimes more than) full-time academics. The breadth of part-time faculty creates diversity of perspective and industry access throughout the curriculum.
How has Parsons’ faculty changed in recent years? The 2025 restructuring of The New School brought some changes to Parsons’ academic organization and faculty composition. Verify current faculty through the official Parsons website, as rosters change.
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What the 127-to-1,000 Ratio Actually Means
The number above is the most useful thing on this page, and it is easy to skim past. Parsons employs roughly eight times more part-time instructors than full-time ones. That is a deliberate model, and it produces both the advantages and the limits Korean families should plan around.
The advantage is currency. An instructor who spent this week working in a New York studio brings that week into the classroom. Software, workflow, client expectations and portfolio conventions stay current in a way that a purely academic faculty cannot easily match.
The limit is continuity. Part-time instructors teach around professional commitments, so who teaches a given course can change between years. A student who chose Parsons for one specific teacher may not study with them.
So the practical instruction is to research the department rather than the individual — what kind of work it produces, which questions recur in its curriculum, how it defines the discipline. That understanding survives faculty turnover; a name does not.
How to Use Faculty Research in an Application
Korean applicants are often advised to mention professors by name. That advice is half right, and the missing half is where essays go wrong.
Naming a professor proves nothing. Engaging with their work proves something. A sentence that says “I want to study under Professor X” is indistinguishable from a sentence produced by a website search. A sentence that explains how a specific idea in their practice connects to a problem in your own work cannot be produced that way.
This matters more at Parsons than at some schools because of the Parsons’ required essays, which asks you to take one idea already present in your portfolio and develop it into new work. The application is structured around demonstrating how you think — and a name-drop is the opposite of that demonstration.
A useful test: remove the professor’s name from your sentence and see whether anything remains. If the sentence collapses, it was decoration. If a real observation about method or subject survives, the name was earning its place.
What Our Records Say About Parsons
Royal Blue has recorded 1,099 acceptances across 95 schools since 2012, including 63 at Parsons. We do not hold data on which faculty taught which students, so nothing here speaks to teaching quality — but two figures are worth knowing before you build a list around this school.
| School | Acceptances | Awarded | Award rate | Average award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MICA | 64 | 51 | 80% | $54,290 |
| SAIC | 81 | 56 | 69% | $46,775 |
| Parsons | 63 | 38 | 60% | $53,116 |
| Pratt | 102 | 40 | 39% | $67,638 |
| SVA | 140 | 41 | 29% | $58,944 |
Source: Royal Blue admissions records, 1,099 acceptances across 95 schools, 2012–2026. Initial award letters. Overall award rate 41.3% (454 awards, $23,746,972 total, $52,306 average).
Parsons awarded scholarship money to 38 of 63 accepted students — 60%, above our overall rate of 41.3%. Within New York it is the most likely of the three main options to attach money to an offer: Parsons 60%, Pratt 39%, SVA 29%.
The other figure is a caution for one group. In our records illustration accounts for only 4 of our 63 Parsons acceptances, against 14 of 68 at RISD. That is a distribution rather than an admit rate, but if illustration is your major it belongs in the decision — and note that the funding runs the other way, with RISD at 6%.
The standing caution: an award rate is not an admission rate and not a measure of teaching quality. Nothing in this table speaks to the faculty discussed above. It describes how each school distributed its own money among students we worked with — a planning input for your list, not a judgement on the education.