QUICK ANSWER
Our record, stated as counts rather than percentages: 1,099 acceptances across 95 schools between 2012 and 2026. Of those, 454 came with scholarship money — a 41.3% award rate totalling $23,746,972, averaging $52,306 per award. Three things to read carefully. These are acceptances, not enrolments — a student admitted to five schools appears five times. We publish no acceptance rate, because the denominator only we would know and nobody audits it. And we mark what we cannot support: CalArts appears 15 times, too small a base for us to quote any percentage from, so we say so instead of quoting one.
Claims without documentation are marketing. Documentation without claims is evidence. Royal Blue Art & Design’s 19-year track record of US art school admissions results is the clearest argument for the quality of our preparation — and the clearest thing for prospective families to ask about when they consult with us.
This post describes what Royal Blue’s track record looks like and how families can review and verify it.
| 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 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Over 19 years of Apgujeong-based preparation, Royal Blue Art & Design has guided Korean students to admissions at the following US art programs, among others:
RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Royal Blue has documented RISD admissions results across multiple programs — Illustration, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Painting, Photography, and others — across multiple admission cycles. RISD admissions from Royal Blue include both domestic-level scholarship awards and admissions at standard admission.
Parsons School of Design (The New School) Royal Blue has documented Parsons admissions results across programs including Fashion Design, Communication Design, Illustration, and Product Design — with scholarship outcomes that reflect portfolio strength recognized at the merit level.
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Royal Blue has documented CalArts admissions results in Film/Video and Art programs, reflecting preparation specifically calibrated to the demands of those programs.
School of Visual Arts (SVA) Royal Blue has consistent SVA admissions results across multiple programs, including merit scholarship outcomes.
Pratt Institute Royal Blue has documented Pratt admissions including Presidential Scholarship-level outcomes, reflecting the portfolio quality that Pratt’s most competitive awards recognize.
Cooper Union (School of Art) Royal Blue has experience with Cooper Union’s unique Hometest-based admissions process and documented results at this highly selective program.
SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) Royal Blue has documented SAIC admissions results reflecting the conceptual and experimental portfolio orientation that SAIC specifically evaluates.
What “Documented Results” Means
Royal Blue’s results are not self-reported percentages or aggregate claims. They are year-by-year records — specific programs, specific years, specific scholarship amounts where applicable — that we present in consultations and that past students and families can independently verify.
We do not inflate results by counting safety school admissions alongside competitive program admissions. We do not calculate acceptance rates over selective enrollment populations designed to protect the rate. We do not claim results we cannot document.
The Scholarship Dimension
A distinctive aspect of Royal Blue’s track record is the consistency of merit scholarship outcomes alongside admissions outcomes. Scholarship awards at RISD, Parsons, Pratt, and other programs require portfolios that exceed the average admitted student’s quality — not just portfolios that clear the admission threshold.
Royal Blue’s scholarship results reflect that our preparation explicitly targets scholarship quality, not just admission quality. For Korean families managing the significant cost of US art school, this dimension of our track record is often the most financially meaningful.
How to Review Our Track Record
Families who want to review Royal Blue’s admissions history can do so through our consultation process:
- Schedule a consultation — we present our results specifically and in detail
- Ask for year-by-year documentation — we provide specific records across our operational history
- Request contact with past students or families — we connect families with past participants willing to share their experience
- Ask specific questions about your target programs — we can discuss what our results look like specifically at RISD, Parsons, CalArts, or any other target school
We do not ask families to take our track record on faith. We ask them to verify it — and we make that verification as straightforward as possible.
Contact us through royalblue-art.com to begin the consultation process.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Royal Blue guarantee specific admissions outcomes?
No. Our track record reflects what we have achieved across many students and many admissions cycles — not a guarantee for any individual student. Selective school admission is probabilistic, and genuinely honest programs acknowledge this.
How does Royal Blue’s track record compare to other Apgujeong academies?
We encourage families to evaluate multiple programs with the same documentation standards they apply to Royal Blue. An academy that cannot provide specific, verifiable results documentation is not providing a comparable basis for comparison.
Are Royal Blue’s historical results still representative of current outcomes?
Our current results reflect the same preparation philosophy and documented approach as our historical results, with curriculum continuously updated to reflect current admissions priorities at target programs. Our most recent results are available in consultation.
Royal Blue Art & Design is a US art school admissions specialist in Apgujeong, Seoul. For 19 years, we have guided Korean students to RISD, Parsons, CalArts, and other top programs.
Contact us → royalblue-art.com/contact
The Record, School by School
Below are the schools that appear most often in our archive, with the funding column beside each. A count and a date range are checkable in a way a percentage is not — which is why we lead with them.
| School | Acceptances | Awarded | Award rate | Average award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SVA | 140 | 41 | 29% | $58,944 |
| Pratt | 102 | 40 | 39% | $67,638 |
| SAIC | 81 | 56 | 69% | $46,775 |
| RISD | 68 | 4 | 6% | $103,760 |
| MICA | 64 | 51 | 80% | $54,290 |
| Parsons | 63 | 38 | 60% | $53,116 |
| ArtCenter | 43 | 5 | 12% | $49,200 |
| SCAD | 42 | 34 | 81% | $30,221 |
| Otis | 38 | 31 | 82% | $63,935 |
| Ringling | 36 | — | not tallied | not tallied |
| CalArts | 15 | — | sample too small | sample too small |
| All 95 schools | 1,099 | 454 | 41.3% | $52,306 |
Source: Royal Blue admissions records, 2012–2026. Initial award letters, applied against tuition. Total awarded $23,746,972. Ringling’s scholarship figures are not separately tallied in our top-school breakdown.
Three Things This Table Deliberately Does Not Say
It is not an acceptance rate. We publish no percentage of applicants admitted, because that fraction needs a denominator only we would know and nobody audits. A rate is a claim about a number you cannot see; a count with a date range is not.
These are acceptances, not enrolments. A student admitted to five schools appears in five rows. Both figures are legitimate and they measure different things — conflating them is where inflated claims usually originate, so we state which one this is.
Two rows are marked rather than filled. Ringling’s scholarship figures are not separately tallied in our breakdown, and CalArts’ 15 acceptances are too small a base for a reliable rate — below roughly that size a percentage swings on one or two cases. We would rather show a gap than a number we cannot support.
Why We Track Scholarships at All
Most academies publish acceptances only. For a Korean family that is half the outcome. An offer you cannot fund is a letter, not a plan — and the difference between those two states is decided by the second column, not the first.
The spread is the most useful thing we hold: 82% at Otis down to 6% at RISD. Two students with comparable portfolios can face completely different four-year bills depending on which door opens, and no ranking contains that information.
Read both columns together, though. SCAD awards at 81% but averages $30,221, our lowest; RISD awards at 6% but averages $103,760, our highest. A percentage tells you your odds; it does not tell you your bill. Reading either column alone produces a wrong conclusion about both schools.
This is what the archive is for in practice. The failure we see every spring is not a rejection — it is a family holding two or three acceptances with no money attached to any of them. That is a list-composition problem, and it is solved in October rather than April.
What the Record Also Shows by Major
Funding varies as much by field as by institution, and the two layers compound.
| Major | Acceptances | Award rate | Average award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animation | 43 | 58% | $56,140 |
| Communication Design | 95 | 54% | $53,490 |
| Fashion Design | 50 | 54% | $42,778 |
| Industrial Design | 32 | 41% | $64,385 |
| Graphic Design | 211 | 36% | $48,591 |
| Illustration | 102 | 32% | $42,373 |
| Fine Arts | 148 | 26% | $58,451 |
Source: Royal Blue admissions records, 2012–2026. Major labels normalised. Initial award letters.
Animation at 58% and illustration at 32% are the two majors Korean families most often treat as interchangeable, and the gap between them is wider than the gap between many schools. Industrial design is the opposite shape — 41% frequency but our largest average award at $64,385: rare enough that you should apply widely, large enough that one offer changes the arithmetic.
Sample sizes differ and that matters. Graphic design’s 36% rests on 211 cases and is a number you can plan around; animation’s 58% rests on 43 and gives a clear direction without that precision. We publish both and say which is which.
How to Check Any Academy’s Claims, Including Ours
1. Ask for counts, years and schools — not percentages. “Many top-school acceptances” is not a record.
2. Ask whether the figure is acceptances or enrolments.
3. If a rate is quoted, ask for the denominator — and whether students who were discouraged from applying were counted.
4. Ask about scholarship outcomes. An academy that records only admissions is recording half the result.
5. Ask what the academy says it does not know. Our CalArts row is marked rather than filled. An academy with no stated limits has not examined its own data.
The standing caution on everything above: an award rate is not an admission rate and not a measure of programme quality. RISD’s 6% says nothing about its teaching. These figures describe how schools distributed their own money among students we worked with — a planning input for building a list, and not a promise about any individual application.
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