Tufts Blogs

As you go through your four (or five) years at the SMFA, each semester will begin with a meeting with your academic advisor and end with a Review Board and a time of reflection. These semester bookends help you define each year as it speeds by, so that by the next one, you are closer to understanding your artistic process and are making the most of every minute in college.

Another way to take this further and define your practice is the Senior Thesis Program. The goals of this program are in the name – it’s only for seniors (either 4th year BFA students or 5th year dual-degree students) and it’s an opportunity to work on one body of work over the course of your last year.

There are only about 20 spots available, so getting into Thesis can be competitive. With that said, it’s not the right move for everyone in their last year, so you probably won’t be applying along with the entirety of your senior class. If you do apply, you’ll be charged with developing a proposal for an artistic thesis that will be subject to much critique, change, and development over the year.

But you’ll also be given a studio space in which to do all of this changing and exploring! This means that you can spread yourself wide and push your practice farther than it’s gone before. Your mediums are not limited, but keeping your topic as one cohesive goal is important.

Thesis will give you space and time to develop your artwork until it fits your goals and in the end, you will take your final pieces and display them in a group Exhibition, right before Commencement. You’ll spend a lot of time with those 19 other students, each taking your individual work to the next level and supporting each other with honest critiques and suggestions.

Just like the Review Boards, the year in Senior Thesis (and the exhibition at the end) can help frame your time in art school.