So I went to a University, so my experience may be different from other people who go to a college specifically for art (like Calarts or something)
-What were your classes like 4th year? I was an illustration major getting a BFA, and my emphasis was on traditional painting for children's books and printed media (I did very little digital although it was fully allowed). But, a painter may also be in a BA for Fine Arts program. The difference between a BFA and a BA is like 60-90 hours of classwork so you'll want to clarify which your character is. Fine Arts were very time intensive (I took a few of their courses for fun, like ceramics and stained glass) however they weren't at all competitive. Everyone is very chill. Most of the majors were going to master in something else like museum curation or education.
The BFA's however were intense as hell. Senior year is when you get to decide your own projects and your own style. You take a business class, typically, where you learn about money and taxes and all that, and you are polishing up your graduation portfolio as your main focus for the year. This is the year your teachers get honest with you, critiques get pretty brutal, and you change the most because you need to be competitive by the time you're out of college. You are going to be balancing real freelance jobs at this point, since your teachers will be feeding you job opportunities. As far as stress goes, I was basically chewing through an entire bottle of tums every other week.
-How big were your classes? There were only about 20 people allowed in the major every year, since this is a university where most people take math, and it typically took at least one failed attempt to get into a BFA program (moreso animation than illustration, but it was still expected). So, I was actually in my 5th year by my senior year because...I wasn't ready to apply freshman year, lets say. I had to take a bunch of art classes extra because I didn't go to an artsy high school. Each class had as few as 7 people and as many as 20. Usually somewhere in between.
-What was the process of making a thesis? Your thesis is a class that you have to take, at least it was for me. The graduation thesis is a joke amongst illustrators unless you want to go into gallery work. The point of a thesis is that you want to show what you have learned, but you can't just hang up your portfolio, so instead, you kind of assign yourself a project of 4-5 pieces that will look good in a frame. Since I went to a University there was a paper requirement that was stupid. But, no one read my paper. In fact, I turned in a 15-paged assignment about the history of cosmology and the TA was like "GOD WHY." because they were the one that had to grade it.
Apparently the requirement used to be 50 pages, and so my teachers would talk about how they'd share these BS assignments that were 50 pages of filler with their families and just laugh their asses off because they were so horribly written. Everyone got an A on their paper no matter what it was filled with honestly, the teachers only cared about the art. This is probs not true for different art fields though, and just an illustration problem.
But, like the fine artists, it hung on the wall of our school museum, I could show it off to my grandma. It was fun. I enjoyed my thesis although it was kind of dumb and a rushed hot mess (Mine was a picture book with four finished paintings).
How much of your time was spent on assignments in a week? Almost all of it. I could still date and go to parties and stuff, but I had to budget my time like an adult. I had to wake up real early. I remember that on Wednesday I had class from 10AM-9PM so I was in the studio from when it opened at 8 AM, and I just brought a lunch and we bought taco bell for dinner and we'd stay working and taking classes in the studio till it closed at 10 PM. Typically we didn't have classes on Fridays so that was a homework day. (which was true for the BA students as well--although they had larger studios off-campus so I never saw them. They were doing like 12 foot paintings youknow)