I SHOULD be excited

join the corps and let them pay for your school! make sure to tell the recruiter i referred you!

 

Hey Mac Taco,

I attended Academy of Art University in SF. $600 for a fing unit? Each class is 3 units. You need 12 units for a full time status. I went for New Media Design for about 6 semesters and paid for it each time out of my pocket, no loans. Well I ran out of money so I took a "Hiatus" from school.

I haven't returned. I have a part time job as a production designer/graphic design.

I really think a state college can offer the same as the private colleges for a better price. I will be finishing my Degree at a state college like San Jose, SF State, or Sac. State.

But real world experience is equal to a degree.

Good luck in school.

 

I have 2 friends who have graduated from SCAD and both of them are broke, severely in debt. One works as a fucking dishwasher and the other at a restaurant. Your better off getting a degree from a state college/uni and learning design etc via the web.

 

Here is my Advise.

Buy the best computer that you can afford. Like a new Mac.

Then buy the Adobe CS 4. Focus on PS, Illustrator, Indesign, and Flash, Learn Basic HTML

then buy a few books about the programs form O'reilly Pub.
Adobe also has Seminars and web course.

You will need to take some Basic Design Classes form a College for building blocks.

You need to learn Shape, Line, And Color!

Color is by far the most difficult design element.

Also read up and study art history, You need to know your history. Willem de Kooning is my favorite artist.

Look at current design firms for inspiration. I.E.
Landor
Diamond Creative

Also check out AIGA

And get a part time job at a design house even if it is to sweep the floors.

Be anal about your copyrights!

 

If he needs CS4 he can pm me...

 

crap I need cs4

But CS3 is great.

 

no doubt its a good school. plus, i guess what you make after you graduate depends on your degree (not sure what my buddies got theirs in)

 

A PC will work fine. I started with a Mac, but honestly, some apps like flash work faster on PCs. Plus you can get a generic vanilla PC for under $1,000 fully loaded. A fully loaded Mac will set you back a good $2,500. I switched to PC years ago and it works fine.

The apps I use daily are:

Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver. Other apps I use are: After Effects, Illustrator, and Bridge.

It will help you greatly if you also learn HTML, CSS, and maybe a few other programming languages because as a graphic designer these days you will also find it handy to build sites in CSS. Many jobs I've had expected me to do this and I had to learn a crash-course in whatever they wanted.

Learn that stuff, and consider a state college. But most importantly, focus on what real-world jobs demand. Read actual job posts, see what commnalities they ask for, and study how to do those things. 75% of the people I know who went to art school never did anything afterwards because they basically had fun being artsy-fartsy for 4 years but then never thought to see what the "real world" of design is like once they got out and got overwhelmed. If you make that connection and have real skills, you'll be good to go!

 

You can go spend 4 years at SCAD, and spend your nights out getting your ass handed to you by the dudes form 1st Ranger BN. That was always a good time when I would go visit my boys there. They called it SCAD bashing.

Or you can enlist, and get the sweet college money they are offering these days--but it will cost you. Getting your ass shot off is no fun, but it is a means to an end. It may give you some perspective that young people lack today, and may give you a nice filter when the "academics" start runing their mouths.

Either way, college is a Joke today. Most places care not what your degree is in, and would rather have ANY degree, and experience in the field. Money and success is also not guaranteed because of a degree. I know guys who graduated from pretty prestigious places that are no shit flipping burgers today, and my uneducated ass is making 6 figures...of course, we go back to the getting your ass shot off thing...

Good luck.

 

Thanks for this.

Great advice.

 

cal poly FTW. i graduated june '08 and got a great job out here in LA.

i know some people are into it, but i dont see myself spending 25k/yr for school. yea you get hookups sometimes for going to schools like that, but in the end, my 1100/quarter cal poly got me a great job in a company that i can move up in and be stable for my career.

 

Congrats on being accepted. $28K! is high. I can only recommend what other people have said, fill out FAFSA and hopefully they can help out.

 

FAFSA if your white, and middle income forget about it. Fixed! Thanks!

 

aint that the truth...oh and fixed...!!

 

Who does she have her loans with? Sallie Mae has a program where you can extend your loan out to 25 years for loans over $25K. It sucks extending it out but you get much lower payments while you're trying to make ends meet vs a 10 year loan.

 

No idea who she has. student loans can be hard to work with. i have half my loans through stafford (state loans) and the other half through citi assist (citibank) and they are supposedly "impossible" to consolidate (i've tried). my state loans are low interest rate (less than 3%) but citiassist are around 7%. those are the ones i am primarily concerned about

 

I just went to Sallie Mae's site and it looks like they don't do loan consolidation anymore. She should check with her student loan underwriter to see if they offer alternative payment options. Citi offers it for Federal loans that amount to over $30,000. The way it works is they do a weighted-average of your interest rates to come up with the new rate (at least that's the way it was when I consolidated).

My guess is that the CitiAssist loan is considered a private loan and not an official "Student Loan" so that's why they won't consolidate it. Private loans are dischargable under bankruptcies whereas Federal Student loans are not so they operate under different rules.