Art Institute of Seattle

[Klumpmeister]

Anyone have heard anything good or bad about this school?

I went to the summer program and liked it but is there anyone out there that has first hand experience with any game design degrees out there?

[tsloper]

Do they really teach game design? Sounds like an art school.
Read:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/bus...ures/schools1/
http://scientificninja.com/blog/on-game-schools
http://www.igda.org/games-game-june-2009
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/designprep.htm
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson25.htm
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson34.htm
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson44.htm

[mooserider]

My wife recently started going to school for the art program here. I have to say, we are both horribly disappointed. She's been going for two quarters now. We were expecting, especially for the absurd cost, that the students would work in groups that mimics the real working world to some degree. This is how Digipen and some other decent schools work.

But after two quarters, we've seen nothing but lazy and unprepared teachers. Zero coordination between classes. No project coordination between classes. They don't even have her filling up sketch books! Some teachers come to class and have the students watch videos for the whole class, the kind of stuff you can find on netflix or watch in your own spare time. They should have the art students working in teams with some of the programming students, working on projects and building real world portfolios. Nothing even close to this is happening.

At one point this last quarter, a group of student had to go complain about their teacher not being prepared! When this sort of thing is occurring, you know something is seriously wrong!

This school is obscenely expensive, and I see absolutely no difference from a standard community college. I think we're going to pull her out of the school and move her over to Digipen or something. I would HIGHLY suggest considering anything else over the Art Institute. Students coming out of this school these days have no more appeal to employers than a student from a community college. The school has no respect anymore and is only out to make a lot of money. I just wish we had done more research before registering her with the school.

[Klumpmeister]

Thanks guys for the advice! This has definitely changed my mind dramatically.