The Best Art Schools for 2015 is something we take very seriously and no external influences or payments are entered into at any point. Our rankings focus on the quality of students portfolios that are submitted to our judging panel which best reflect the recruitment interview process.

We feel that traditional school rankings that include peer and employer reviews, faculty to student ratio, citations and other data are not adequate when ranking the best creative schools. For a complete breakdown of how we rank the best schools for 2018 please read how we rank the best schools and how we analyse the data in the sections located at the bottom of this page.

Top 20 Schools to Study VFX/Animation and Next-Gen Gaming for 2015

How we rank the best Art Schools

Our rankings focus on the quality of students portfolios that are submitted to our judging panel which best reflect the recruitment interview process.

The reason we take this approach is because we believe the goal of each creative school is tasked with helping students learn the right creative and technical skills that mirror the requirements of industry. It is their job to train artists to a level that allows them to transition from to a professional environment with ease.

The end result for students is less about grades, it’s about creating a digital portfolio that best showcases their skills and displays an understanding of production pipelines. This is why our judges review portfolios and review student work in the same manner as a professional job application.

The rankings are based on the scores as awarded by the official judging panel. Opinions by the general public are by no means considered.

Students are judged on their creative skills, technical skills, presentation, variety of skills, complexity, raw talent, and employment potential.

How we analyse the data

Each school is awarded a final score based on the performance of each student representing their academic facility.

When analysing the average scores of each student per school there are three possible data formulas available to use: mean, median and mode.

The Rookies uses median. The median is the middle point of a number set, in which half the numbers are above the median and half are below. A median is intrinsically understandable. It is the middle number when the values are put in order.

The most important factor here is that a median is not affected by outliers. This means that schools are not penalised for incomplete entries and schools are not favoured for a single high score that is not the norm. Student scores often have outlier values and using the median is the more robust solution to determine an average.

Important details about how a school score is calculated:

• Schools with < 5 student entries are excluded from ranking.
• Incomplete student entries are removed from calculations. No penalties.
• Each student receives a performance score. Max 100 points. (Student Score)
• Median students score calculated per school. Max 100 points. (Median Student Score)
• Each category finalist receives 10 bonus points toward School Score.
• Each category runner up receives 15 bonus points toward School Score.
• Each category winner receives 20 bonus points toward School Score.