Practice makes perfect

Embracing failure: building a growth mindset through the arts

The recipe for success: taking risks, making mistakes, and integrating critical feedback.

New Mexico School for the Arts (NMSA), based in Santa Fe, is the only four-year, statewide, public high school serving artist-scholars across New Mexico with a rigorous, award-winning pre-professional arts and academics program.

NMSA provides students in 9th through 12th grades with intensive, pre-professional instruction in five major arts disciplines, Creative Writing & Literature, Dance, Music (Vocal, Jazz or Instrumental), Theatre, and Visual Arts. Arts disciplines are taught daily by master teachers and professional artists in a 3-hour daily arts block that takes place after the academic day.

NMSA is open to all students in New Mexico who qualify through a blind, competitive audition and portfolio admissions process held every February. Students can audition in up to two of the five major departments. A panel of professional artists participate as part the selection team.

Named as one of the top 10 high schools in the state for 2018 by U.S. News and World Report, NMSA has been a recipient of one of the highest national honors in education, the national Blue Ribbon Award; has received an ‘A’ grade by the New Mexico Public Education Dept. every year since 2012; and has outperformed for the past five years on state standards assessments in reading, math and science.