Also before I continue with rebuttal I want to put out there that if you don't believe something I say I would be happy to get paper work, scan it and post it by Tuesday when I am near a scanner with some time (School closed on Monday). I would just have to black out parts due to personal information.
Also all of this information is just what I know about AIP. I've heard other AI are terrible and other AI are better.
Whoops, looks like I misread what I saw. Anyway, I messed around with their tuition calculator, and it looks like it'd be 32k per year with the fees, deposits, and starting kit.
Fees, deposit and the starting kit are only paid for once. You don't have to pay for it ever again. The deposit and application fee (I may be wrong with one of them, I know at least one does) also go directly to your tuition. Also costs and the such will vary from AI to AI, only a couple thousand I'm assuming.
Did you read the fine print? Because every site I read about AI mentions the loans, and how ridiculously hard they are to pay off. One former employee said this:
"Over half of the students I counseled DID NOT EVEN GRADUATE, due to reaching their aggregate loan limits ($57,500), when this happens if you do not have fantastic credit or a co-signer you will be forced to leave school and begin repaying your debt with NO DIPLOMA!"
Congrats on having a good co-signer, but not everyone does.
I read the fine print, on the Sallie Mae website. You don't fill out any loan papers with AI. You sit on a computer and go through the Sallie Mae website, at school or at home. My roommate who went to a Paul Mitchell school in Nevada has a Sallie Mae loan, I just asked my other roommate who went Devry in Washington and he has Sallie Mae loans. Hell, if Sallie Mae doesn't work for you they will
take any other student loan from any loan company. They just suggest Sallie Mae since it seems to be the easiest to go through. It's the default loan company. And I don't know, most private colleges cost about that much to attend from what I've researched. It's whatever works for you and if you think the money is worth it.
And all loans are hard to pay off, anyone who is currently in college on loans can tell you that.
Also sucks for those people with the stories. Again, only speaking for Art Institute of Portland. Each Art Institute is their own establishment and is run quiet different from other AI students I have spoken with.
Considering how many people say prospective employers will laugh over an AI degree, I doubt the resume will help much. In fact, 37.5% of AI of Fort Lauderdale graduates are unemployed and 12.5% work minimum wage jobs. 62.5% state that AI helped them very little in their career success.
At the Art Institute of Seattle, 33% of graduates are unemployed, and 83.33% say that AI helped them very little in their career success.
I was quoting a student from the AI of Pittsburgh when I said that they give you a dry website. As for talent, well, considering that the AI doesn't even look at your portfolio, I doubt that it's a good indicator of talent.
Really? Because we frequently have people from big name companies in Portland (Laika, Bent, Liquid etc. etc.) come to job fairs, talk with faculty, and offer internships for students at our school which are posted up in the career center. If they "laugh" at AI degrees why would they go to so much trouble to get involved with the campus? If I were someone in that position I would ignore a school that produces crappy students. And hell, those are GREAT places to freaking work. I would be honored and my dreams would become a reality if I was to get hired on by one of those companies. And that's only local businesses I know about (I want to stay in Portland since my career focus's hub is here, I don't look into things outside of area). I have heard of companies from Washington contacting the school and asking for references of potential employees.
And kinda rusty on the numbers here, but AIP has an 85% I think of students acquiring a field related job 6 months after graduation? Pretty damn good if you ask me. I can go get exact numbers tomorrow if needed. And again, just Portland. I don't know about other states and the such. Also talking to other people in the art field and other students from other schools, AIP has a better reputation then Seattle. That's just by word of mouth though, I don't know if it's completely true.
And just because they don't check portfolios upon going in doesn't mean that there is little to no talent at a school, that is a very bad generalization on your part. I don't really agree with the fact that they don't check either but it's kind of nice that they give kids a chance. Not all people are born with talent in a certain skill or given the chance to practice in it, and I've watched a lot of kids grown from stick figures or bad anime art to be amazing artists because there was an opening for them here. Not everyone, but there is a good handful.
ALSO, not all degrees at the school are based around if you can draw or not. There are programming, 3-D Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Marketing, Film, and Culinary degrees here. So they would have to require a portfolio for only some majors. Depends completely what major you are looking at. But I agree, things where you are involved to draw should require a portfolio.
If they worked on all these big important projects, why are they teaching at the AI of Portland? Art Institutes have a bad reputation, considering how they're a for-profit school.
Most of them are working their jobs of choice still and teaching on the side.
Anyone going into an art career should take this in to mind: The majority of art careers are not a constant. You are taken on for a project and upon the projects completion your contract is over. Not saying that there aren't jobs where you are working a 9-5 job, 5 days a week, with some paid vacation in the art field but most aren't. I don't blame them for wanting to work a teaching job as some stability.
Also don't really wanna type out a paragraph for this but I am just going to hit some points on the teachers...
-Disney's 2-D department went under (until Princess and the Frog, they have come back since that) and were focusing solely on 3-D which is why the 2-D animation teacher left California I'm assuming.
-Missed the point where one of my teachers is an Art Director at Liquid Development
-Flash teacher works on commercials and short childrens shows still quiet frequently.
-Other teachers at the school work as children book illustrators, animators, and game designers while still teaching.
And personal opinion, but I think it's a generalization to lump all the AI's together. Again, they all may be under the same company head but they are all totally different establishments, teach different ways, and have different course outlines and even majors to work with the area they are located in.
You're painting with a $5 pack of watercolours at an art school? That seems pretty sketchy, sorry.
So...supplies that the school suggests high grade art materials that are a bit expensive are too much money and sketchy, but when they offer you cheaper alternatives that's sketchy too? I don't get why you needed to throw that in there.
Except not everyone is a good test taker? And really, what does English have to do with art? There are multiple intelligences, after all, and just because someone isn't good at English doesn't mean that they're stupid or not good at art.
Uhhhh, you do know you can't get a degree anywhere without taking general education courses, right? I'm pretty sure that's a guideline for any higher educational institute in America. And that three English courses is a very normal amount for any degree?
And English has a lot to do with art. You still need to write letters, proposals, speeches, and forms for people while you work in an art degree. And to add to that you need to be able to research and know how to properly take in words and information to do that. Letters and numbers don't magically become un-needed because you are working in a creative field. If I worked in an animation department, and I asked someone to write me up a prompt for the project we are doing and their paragraphs weren't properly formed and they didn't use proper punctuation making it hard to read, I wouldn't waste my time on it, throw it away, and go on to something else.
But what about to another art school? And have you tried transferring the GE and art classes to another school? Everything I've read says differently.
I haven't tried another art school, I'm not sure how that would work out but I think it would completely depend on the courses they have there. If they don't have some of the weird stuff like Texturing and Character Sculpting then they probably won't. Also all schools have different ways of teaching so sometimes they will make you retake a class to learn as per their certain guidelines so you aren't lost in more advanced classes.
And I haven't transferred out of the Art Institute, but one of my best friend has. All of her general education and art classes transferred to Central Oregon Community College and a Trade School focused on Welding here in Portland. Her 3-D and game production classes did not due to the fact that they school did not offer things like that in their curriculum.
Nope. Look at the student reviews of other, non-profit universities on studentsreview.com. Most of them don't have the amount of bad reviews that AI does.
When I was looking for college pretty much everything was....bad. I would go look now but I don't want to go on a college search again, I already did three years ago so I will take your word for it. Sorry I was mistaken there.
No, but when a school puts in more money towards advertising than it does towards supplies for its students. .
Colleges aren't required to have supplies for their students. When I went to Community College I had to buy my own supplies too. This isn't like High School where the government and tax payers dollars support the school (Though, when I was in High School we still had to buy all our own stuff because our district was hella poor /qq). Don't quote me on it but I think most colleges get very little in the form of government and tax money help. Do you have any proof of how much they spend in advertising in comparison to events run for students, computer labs, tutors, and campus upkeep? These are all things that effect a students success at a school, much like supplies.
Uh, no. Colleges tend to be non-profit corporations. They're not focused on profit, because they're non-profit, and they are not legally allowed to make a profit. The university I will be attending is a private school, and it is non-profit. For-profit schools tend to be really sketchy.
Just because colleges are corporations does not mean they are businesses. Businesses are only one type of corporation.
I probably should have made myself clearer on my statement I was trying to get across so sorry if I was all wonky about it. All college are out to make money, if colleges weren't, colleges would be free to attend much like primary school. Money is needed to pay money for property, essential things like water and electricity for the building, remoldling, teachers pay, computer labs, tables chairs, desks, events like graduations and welcoming ceremonies, expanding etc. etc. They get money, they stay open, they don't they close. So, at least in my mind, I see all colleges as out to bring in money because if they don't they are done and no one has jobs.
And yes AI and other things like that are out to make money, I know that and I'm not trying to argue that at all. And this is just a generalization on my part but you seem to be kind of lumping them all together for that. Just because AI Portland makes money off of me doesn't mean I'm not getting a good education, I'm sure other schools like that are the same, I'm sure the other ones are really crappy.
Also, not to be offensive at all, but you keep throwing out numbers for other AI establishments but none for AIP. I guess I'm just trying to say don't lump everything to be the same. Sorry if me assuming that isn't correct.