Stay away from all Art Institutes. AI is nothing but a corporation there to make money. There are no standards to get accepted into the schools, half the teachers are unqualified former students and many other teachers are ones that are only working for AI because they can't get hired by anyone else in the industry (either because they haven't worked in the industry for years or because they're burnouts from companies like EA). They don't care about the quality of the programs, the abilities of the students, nothing. All they care about is the money they make. Money that's better spent in proper art schools for real education. Wonder why they're the only CHAIN that is able to afford those glossy TV commercials? Because they overcharge, and therefore are able to afford bigger advertising campaigns than REAL ART SCHOOLS.

I went to one for 8 months before dropping out, and when I DID drop out I owed $18,000. For 8 months of absolute crap. When my classes started, one of my teachers asked us how many of us had ever used Photoshop before. Exactly 1/3 of us raised our hands. The rest of the people in the class? They thought working on video games was cool and that even with zero skills or experience they could do it, and the school let them in because they were willing to pay for it.

And the advertisements are false as well. Their supposed success rate of hiring graduates is fake. Nobody in the industry wants to touch someone that has Art Institute of ______ on their resume. The only graduates that get hired are the ones with real skills that could have gotten jobs without the school in the first place, or graduates that ended up getting hired by AI to replace teachers fired for various reasons (they have extremely high turnover rates). The class sizes? It's not 12-15 like they claim in some of the ad campaigns, or during interviews with potential students (speaking of, administrators lie to interested students -- to their faces). It's about 30-35 students per class for most classes. They basically fill the classes with as many people as they have desks or computers. The only small classes are life drawing and 2D animation and that's only because you can't fit as many drawing and animation tables in there as you can computers into a lab.

You want to go to a good school, one that's qualified? Check out your local college for life drawing classes or if you're serious about investing in an art education, look at places like SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design), CalArts, etc.

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"Speak softly and carry a big stick; You will go far." -- Theodore Roosevelt

Wow. Thanks for the info

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Each of our lives and accomplishments lead a story and we have the chance to publish them

No problem, I don't want anyone to fall into the same trap myself and a bunch of my fellow pros did. All it did was cost us money, which is something that makes living hard for an artist.

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"Speak softly and carry a big stick; You will go far." -- Theodore Roosevelt

Wow, I really appreciate that!

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Each of our lives and accomplishments lead a story and we have the chance to publish them