Foundation Diploma at the Royal Drawing School

Snarky comments not intended! Congratulations! But wow no qualification is the equivalent to doing a portfolio prep course - personally I would be super careful and only do an accredited course with the qualification - which is what every degree worth its salt asks for, pretty much! Am sure the course is fab, but consider it very carefully as next year when applying you don't want to get a pile of rejections on not meeting enternance requirements! As sometimes when they have equally matched portfolio scores, they will decide by the qualification. Good luck 🍀

Just to put my mind at rest I decided to email the admissions departments of a couple of the Universities that my daughter would like to apply to after her foundation (one is a Russell Group). I asked them if studying at the RDS would adversely affect her application (considering the lack of Ucas points/accreditation). I have copied part of what they replied.
'A foundation at the London Drawing School would be a very good way to spend your daughters foundation year. It is highly regarded and we even have an ex student of ours who lectures there.
It would not adversely affect your daughter's application, as it is well thought of and we would recognise the course as equivalent to a foundation. Acceptance on all courses within the school of Art and Design are on interview and portfolio anyway, so your daughters needs to make sure she has a strong portfolio of work when she applies, and I know that the Drawing School will advise and assist her with this, and her application.'

'I have checked with the Programme Leader and he is more than happy for us to consider anyone who has studied the Royal Drawing School foundation year programme. The entry requirement for this course would just be to pass it. When we receive her application, she will be invited to attend an interview in December or early next year after which a final decision would be made.'

Obviously this bears out the fact that past students have gone on to study at numerous well regarded Universities. I just wanted to hear it from the 'horses mouth'

that's great to hear! my art teachers have been telling me its very prestigious so its good to hear that universities agree on that. would you mind my asking which universities these responses are from?

Yeah I have a similar problem, but I can't come to the exhibition but I'm going to the meet and greet. Add me on Facebook and we will make a closed Facebook group that we can add people to! My name is Preslav Kostov

Started this thread a while back, and after deciding to study at RDS I have no regrets!! I was worried that because it doesn't offer the same UCAS points as other diplomas that I was going to struggle with getting into a good Fine Art degree. This was not the case!
Art degrees care predominately about your portfolio, skills and personality, whether they believe you will benefit from being on the course! I got into pretty much everywhere I applied to (some of the top art schools in the UK) and two of my closest friends are going to Oxford, one for a Fine Art degree and one for an English degree.
Additionally, as RDS is a course with only 45 people, we get so much help when applying to Universities. We have weekly tutorials and our own tutor to help us in our personal project progression. I have learned so much in this short period of time that I've attended the RDS and would recommend it to anyone who wants to develop and work hard to become an artist or even take a year to broaden your artistic skills before moving on to do another degree.

That's really useful feedback - foundations are notoriously ropey for getting student opinions.

Can I just clarify - the RDS foundation is obviously very very focused on drawing - do you know what sort of degrees your fellow students are going on to? Are they mainly fine art and illustration based or is anyone branching out into other areas? From the website it doesn't sound like the photography or textiles facilities are particularly great (not that that's a bad thing - it's just understanding who is best taking this course).

That's really useful feedback - foundations are notoriously ropey for getting student opinions.

Can I just clarify - the RDS foundation is obviously very very focused on drawing - do you know what sort of degrees your fellow students are going on to? Are they mainly fine art and illustration based or is anyone branching out into other areas? From the website it doesn't sound like the photography or textiles facilities are particularly great (not that that's a bad thing - it's just understanding who is best taking this course).

The course does include a lot of drawing, e.g. life drawing, however, I have done so much more than just drawing on this foundation. We've been taught how to do every type of print possible, photography with both a film camera (then developing in darkroom) and a digital camera, ceramics, sculpture (in clay, wax, wire etc.) animation, using photoshop, painting- we have done a lot of painting in both acrylic and oil, using limited palettes and experimenting with different scales. The amount I have learned on this course is endless and I still have 1 term left! In terms of textiles, we don't necessarily have workshops for this area, however, we came into this course understanding it is a Fine Art based foundation and there are a few students who bring in their own materials and sewing machines etc. on personal project days to do their own textiles.
We do get taught photography (have a dark room and DSLR's/film cameras) and a few of the tutors have done Photography BA's, so if we feel passionate, we can choose to study it. In fact, a girl here applied and has been accepted to go to some of the top courses in the country for Photography such as Glasgow School of Art and LCC.

Some of the courses people are going onto:
Fine Art (painting)
Fine Art (printmaking)
Animation
Illustration
Fine art, Sculpture
Photography
English
History of Art
History
Fine Art and History of Art Combined
Shoe Design
Architecture
Set Design

These are the ones i can remember but I'm pretty sure there's more!
And I know that everyone has had offers from pretty amazing places so everybody seems to be doing really well.