B.A. Advertising – Creative

The Temerlin Advertising Institute’s creative program prepares students for careers in art direction or copywriting. Admission to the program is selective, and based upon a faculty panel’s evaluation of an application used to assess a student’s creative ability and potential. This screening process improves the quality of the experience each student receives in creative courses and helps ensure that the quality of work produced by our students is of the highest caliber and competitive by industry standards.

Creative program applications are collected at the end of every fall and spring semester. Most students’ first opportunity to apply is near the end of their ADV 3385 Introduction to Creativity course. Any student who is not admitted to the creative program on a first attempt may reapply during a subsequent application process.

NOTE: If you entered SMU before the 2006-07 academic year, then you are not required to participate in the creative program application process. However it is highly recommended that you participate in this exercise. If you have entered SMU during the 2006-07 academic year, then you must participate in the creative application process. Regardless, you will be unable to enroll in ADV 3395 Concepting until the results of the creative program application have been announced near the end of the spring and fall semesters.

Creative Program Application

The application requires students to submit two samples of creative work as evidence of their capabilities – one that demonstrates facility to solve a specific problem and another that permits a longitudinal examination of creative thinking ability:

Part I: The Big Question – Each semester, members of the creative program faculty will confer and propose a question that applicants are challenged to answer. The question is open to broad interpretation and responses may be crafted using words, images or a combination of both. Applicants must observe submission guidelines but are otherwise free to propose the most unique, intelligent and imaginative answers possible.

Part II: Idea Journal – Over the course of a semester, all ADV 3385 Introduction to Creativity students are required to maintain and submit a journal documenting their ideas and insights on a variety of topics, both assigned and voluntary. The journal conforms to certain parameters as a class assignment, but is designed to offer students the opportunity to document and showcase their identities as independent thinkers.