Fine Art Photography at The Glasgow School of Art February 01, 2026

By Gerrit B (Physics, Middlebury College) - abroad from 09/14/2026 to 01/23/2026 with

Glasgow School of Art: Glasgow - Direct Enrollment & Exchange

What did you gain/learn from your experience abroad? Was it worthwhile?

Very worthwhile. The academic experience of working independently, but alongside other photography and art students, was great, and I feel I developed my artistic intent and abilities immensely. Beyond that, living in Scotland, where everything is familiar enough to be non-intimidating, but different enough to remain very interesting, was a great experience. I'd also never had any experience living in a city, so Glasgow was a very nice introduction to that, big enough to be a proper city with proper city amenities and transit, but not so big as to be overwhelming. Even though housing was in a GSA hall, there's no single "campus" area to the school, and it was really much more an apartment building that happens to be nearby and owned by the school to simplify logistics, and it was on the whole a much more independent structure than a typical residential American college.

Personal Information

How much international exposure did you have prior to this program?	1 month - 6 months

Review Your Program

* Overall educational experience Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.	Fantastic Experience!
* Host Country Program Administration On-site administration of your program
* Housing: How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?	Exchange students seem all to be grouped together and housed in the newer of the school's two dorm buildings.
* Food:	There's a small cafe with prepacked sandwiches and etc in both studio buildings, but there is not dining hall and everything is self catered - the student housing does have decent kitchens.
* Social & Cultural Integration: How integrated did you feel with the local culture?	I think this depends a lot on the specific program you do within GSA. My exchange friends in the Painting and Printmaking program were in the studio constantly, working and socializing with other students, my photography program was inherently much more independent, with little reason to be in the studio outside of the infrequent group critiques.
* Health Care: How well were health issues addressed during the program?	The school does not have it's own "health office" in the typical American college style. There is a local GP that they recommend students register with, but I did not have any personal or anecdotal experience with that.
* Safety:	Glasgow isn't as clean or well kept as Edinburgh. It's a former industrial city, and not very touristy. The traffic is a bit hectic, and yet everyone jaywalks. I'd say the most encountered "unsafe" aspect of the city is the uneven sidewalks and steep streets.
If you could do it all over again would you choose the same program?	Yes Everyone at GSA was super friendly, and I feel like I had a great opportunity to develop my photographic practice. Scotland as a whole is a wonderful country, and Glasgow has

Finances

* Money: How easily were you able to live on a student's budget? (1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)	Groceries in the UK seem a bit cheaper than in the US, with the caveat that it's all in GBP which are themselves worth more than USD, but I think it still works out cheaper when converted
Not including program expenses, about how much money did you spend on food and other expenses each week?	£50

Language

* Did your program have a foreign language component?	No

Direct Enrollment/Exchange

* Did you study abroad through an exchange program or did you directly enroll in the foreign university?	Direct Enrollment

Other Program Information

* Where did you live? Select all that apply	Dorm
* Who did you live with? Select all that apply	Americans
* Who did you take classes with? Select all that apply	Local Students
About how many local friends did you make that you will likely keep in touch with?

A Look Back

* What did you like most about the program?	Immersion in a studio art community meeting foreign students opportunity to travel
* What could be improved?	defined structure and pacing - at least coming from an American perspective more direct instruction/contact hours distinct lack of proper office hours
* What do you know now that you wish you knew before going on this program?	For photography at least, exchange students are placed into Year 2, which has a lot of new "direct entry" GSA degree students starting alongside you, so there's a smooth and well defined on-ramp.

Reasons For Studying Abroad

To help future students find programs attended by like-minded individuals, please choose the profile that most closely represents you.	The Avid Adventurer The wardrobe you packed was better suited for a semester of camping than club hopping. Outdoorsy, you might forgo a crazy night out for an early all-day adventure. You'd rather take in the rich culture of an old town than the metropolis of a modern city, but for you getting off the grid is ideal.

Individual Course Reviews

Course Name/Rating:	Fine Art Critial Studies - Year 2 Fine Art Photography
Course Department:	FACS
Instructor:	Ben Greenman, Nat Raha
Instruction Language:	English
Comments:	Class met once a week for 3 hours, a mix of lecture and seminar discussion in small groups. Many full GSA students start as "direct entry" in second year, so there was already an expectation that half the class would be entirely new to University, the art school itself, and fine art studies at this level. There was one ungraded midterm essay, which was mostly a trial run to receive feedback for the final essay. The final essay was 2,500 words on any one piece of artwork, with a fairly straightforward guiding framework, and accounted for the entirety of the grade for the course. For home students, it's ultimately graded pass/fail, and only final year grades matter for graduating with honors, there's no 4 year average, so the stakes were substantially lower for everyone else, but you do still get a specific letter grade at the end of it. The British culture of office hours is basically nonexistent - over the entire semester the course professor and the department head each had a single drop in hour scheduled, for ~25 and ~130 students respectively. The lectures themselves were alright - long and tedious, but on average interesting enough, there is again an expectation that this is a first introduction to fine art studies for much of the class.
Credit Transfer Issues:	The course is given a weighting with the standardized ECTS credit system - 20 I believe. I personally did not need a specifically "art history" credit transferred, but the course seems to be a standard enough "intro to photographic art history" type of course.

Course Name/Rating:	Year 2 Studio
Course Department:	School of Fine Art, Fine Art Photography
Instructor:	Michael Mersinis
Instruction Language:	English
Comments:	There are enough regular home students doing "direct entry" into second year, so there's enough orientation and technical induction and re-sorting of social groups to make the transition really quite painless. The School of Fine Art within GSA is a very fundamentally "studio" oriented program, which for photography means a lot of self directed work. Most all of the "contact time" is inductions and tutorials from the technical support department on anything from film processing to digital printing to book layout software. Contact time with our actual photography professor was mostly in 30 minute one-on-one tutorials throughout the semester, maybe once every two to three weeks or so, and a handful of lectures here and there. The unrestricted "studio" (or field, for photography) time really is a great opportunity to develop your own artistic practice and do more ambitious projects, but it is a very drastic shift from a classic American liberal arts program. With occasional entire weeks where you don't need to go into the studio building for anything, it does take a lot of self discipline to maintain an evenly distributed level of productivity. For the Fall semester there are two major assignments, though the instructor Michael makes it very clear that these are very open guidelines just to get you thinking and working - there was plenty of room for all 30 of us to have very different interpretations and final products, and I never felt like I was doing any art 'just for the sake of the assignment'. Each assignment has a group critique session after a month or two of work, but final submissions for both of them don't happen until the end of the semester, so you have time to take in feedback and change your work before it's actually graded. The course is graded based on final image submissions for both assignments and a display of intermediate work from test prints to the semester's sketch/notebook to research on other artists and etc. The professor stressed that he primarily cares about the work you make as artwork, not as academic material, and as long as you are actively developing your artistic process, the grade will follow, and you don't really need to worry about it.
Credit Transfer Issues:	I believe it was given a 40 credit weight in the ECTS system, which is a weird 2/3 of a semester's worth of credits. I don't need an specific "studio art" type of credit for myself, so I can't say how well it'd transfer beyond generically academic credit, but it's probably reasonably close to any other intro/intermediate level photographic studio art course.