The Laptop requirements for the 2023-2024 school year have been announced!

High End Windows Laptop: 

Animation*, and Biomedical Art* majors should purchase the following:

• Dell Mobile Precision 15 5000 Series (5520)
• 2.9 GHz quad-core i7
• Nvidia Quadro M1200M/4GB
• 8GB RAM
• 500MB hard drive
• 3 year warranty
• UHD display

 *(The high-End Macintosh is acceptable, though the student should be aware some software used may only be PC compatible - the student will be responsible for any lack of required software in the course).

Gaming Laptop: 

Game Design majors should purchase the following:

• Alienware 15 R3 or equivalent
• Quad-core i7
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 w/ 6GB RAM
• 16GB RAM
• 128GB SSD / 1TB HD hard drives
• 3 year warranty
• HD display or better

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Midrange Macintosh: 

Ceramics, Drawing, Glass, Graphic Design, Illustration*, Interior Architecture, Jewelry + Metals, Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture + Expanded Media majors should purchase the following: 

*Illustration majors: a Macintosh is preferred, but an equivalent Windows-based laptop is acceptable

13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display Specifications 2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5 8GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM 256GB Flash Storage Touch Bar and Touch ID Accessory Kit System also includes: AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook / MacBook Air / 13" MacBook Pro

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High End Macintosh: 

Industrial Design** and Photography + Video majors

should purchase the following:

 **(For Industrial Design students, the High End PC spec is acceptable, though the student should be aware some software used may only be Mac compatible - the student will be responsible for any lack of required software in the course). 

15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display Specifications 2.7GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage Touch Bar and Touch ID System also includes: AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook Pro

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Cleveland Institute of Art Laptop Policy

Updated April 5, 2023

All CIA students are required to have a laptop. At a minimum, this laptop should support Adobe Creative Cloud*. Specifications for laptops suitable for Adobe Creative Cloud can be found in the table below.

* All CIA students are provided with FULL Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions. Students do not need to purchase subscriptions.  Information will be distributed to incoming students before the start of the semester.

*If you use macOS, you will be able to accomplish much of what you need in Industrial Design. However, there are certain Windows-based applications that you will use in your Junior and Senior years that will only be available on CIA-owned computers (Solidworks and Alias).

Some students may already own laptops that meet these minimum requirements. Students may continue to use these laptops for as long the device continues to support their curricular needs. In this scenario, students accept the risk that their laptop may not be able to address their needs for their last year(s) at CIA.

The student should select the laptop based on their curricular needs, individual preferences between macOS and Windows, and budget.

Support, and substitutions for the standard recommendations

Personally-owned devices will not be supported by CIA Information Technology, beyond a limited assessment. Hardware issues will need to be supported by the manufacturer, which is why every standard includes a 3-year warranty as part of the requirement. Questions related to how to run software are handled either through faculty or technical specialists, or through online support from vendors.

The Equipment Checkout will continue to provide a limited number of laptops for short term loans. These laptops are not a substitution for students owning their own laptop.

If a student has a question about whether a specific laptop will be suitable for their curricular needs, they are encouraged to check the requirements webpage for the software that they expect to use most heavily. All students should plan to have a laptop that supports the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, at minimum.

View requirements for commonly used software:

Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of all software packages used at CIA. In addition, some features or plugins for the above-mentioned software may only run on macOS or Windows, respectively. 

As of April 2021, Apple supports Boot Camp Assistant on computers running Intel processors, which allows users to run Windows on their Mac. Note that Apple is in the process of changing their processors to the M1/M2 chips, and computers using Apple silicon chips cannot use Boot Camp Assistant. While Apple’s M1/M2 chips use the latest technology, software developers are still in the process of converting their applications to be Apple silicon-naitive. In the meantime, some software applications will require a free piece of software called Rosetta in order to run.

If you have any questions, please contact Matthew McKenna, Associate Vice President of Information Systems + Technology, at mkmckenna@cia.edu.

If you have any questions, please contact Matthew McKenna, Director of Information Technology, at mkmckenna@cia.edu or 216-421-7384.