ITT Technical Institute - Knoxville

Personal obligations kept me in Tennessee, and I decided to make the most of my time there. I had long been interested in art and storytelling, writing and drawing from a very young age, and in the years approaching college age, I'd become more and more enthralled by the idea of pursuing three-dimensional modeling/animation both as a hobby and career.

Looking into ITT, I soon found they offered just such a subject. Given its close proximity to me at the time as well as the support of my girlfriend and mother, I decided to attend. I was spoken to by a student rep that handled my area, and was told of all the great resources the school offered, the fundamentals they taught and how well prepared they made you for a job in the field. "We'll help you find a job throughout your life," he said. All the classes, even the mandatory cores, were related to your career, so you weren't wasting any time at all. Everything had a purpose.

In short, he sold me. And it wasn't long before I was signing the necessary paperwork.
Starting the school, I was excited, and, though my early classes were relatively generic ones, I maintained that excitement and my interest quarter after quarter. Once my 'real' (read: degree-specific) classes began, however, I found that they weren't getting much better. The 'Multimedia' path I was lead to believe maintained a central focus on 3D animation/game design did nothing of the such, focusing on these things for roughly two or three of your classes. The work was far from challenging, and a handful of the instructors were seemingly incapable (and prone to merely reading from the book), and more and more I felt as if I'd been conned.

Programming classes consisted of VB6, wherein I had the same teacher for I and II, a man whose expectations of his class consisted of copying code he had written up himself. Indeed, my (and everyone else's) 'final project' consisted of roughly a half dozen pages worth of code that came straight out of him or the book. Waste of time? You bet.

And that isn't the only class like that. The mass majority of the classes were complete and utter wastes, wrought with poor instructors, poor coursework or bias grading - one instructor, unqualified for his job and let go a mere quarter after, failed his -entire- class on a whim. The school's response to student upset was that there was 'nothing' they could do. Yet another example - one of my own instructors, whom was given the task of teaching a '3D Modeling' course. On opening day, he says to the class, "You'll have to bear with me - I've never done any of this before." Turns out they gave him the book a week before us, him having no experience with Max, modeling or 3D whatsoever, and thought him appropriate to teach the class.

Let me note here what is good about ITT - obtaining books and necessary coursework is obscenely easy: all related costs get tied into your tuition and all materials are picked up from the campus bookstore - paperwork is made (entirely too) easy - transferring from campus to campus is a breeze. That's about it.

Let me touch on the curriculum - ITT boasts that they use standard industry software, and your student rep will likely present you with a massive list of games and films that have been made with or used said software (if you're going into IT/Multimedia or Digital Entertainment and Game Design). What they fail to understand (and what you best if you care about your career potential at all) is that this industry is not based on software packages. There are certain fundamentals one needs - understanding principles of animation, math, physics, anatomy, various art skills. However, you will find all of these completely lacking at ITT. Also, despite how they may sell it to you, Multimedia is meant to cover the breadth of multimedia industries (however poorly) such as web design, graphic design, 3d modeling/animation, etc., and -is absolutely not- focused on 3D modeling/animation or game design whatsoever. That being said, they don't even use industry standards (in regards to animation). As far as general and commercially-available 3D IDEs go, Maya is the standard for film animation. Macs are the standard hardware across practically -all- multimedia industries, and you'll find -four- in the entire campus which you'll quite likely never even use. Not once. What software you can use you aren't given copies of - so be well prepared to fly your jolly roger or buy your own copy. For Max, that's $150 or so for a 1 year student license, and $3500+ for a full version.

Cost - ITT's cost is absurd. You're looking at a tuition roughly around $40000 for two years - $405+ per credit hour, 96 credit hours for an Associates. After interest, and even with my mum taking out a loan herself (which came to $13000 total), I am currently looking at paying $53000 for my time there. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. I reason that there was only one class there worth taking - Portfolio with Ms. Ippolito. It was helpful. Taking into account the books I've acquired (some of which are genuinely useful), I reason I rightfully owe them around $400.

Job Finding - This is ITT's shining light, something they promote above most everything else. Their commercials like to reiterate this. However, in my experience, I have found it completely useless. My career services rep told me explicitly that I should just personally pursue any leads I may find and not rely on them, because they probably won't find me anything. If any of their 70+ campuses are better suited at finding a job in -any- multimedia field, they apparently are unable to communicate with one another. Chances are good that if you get any offers (of which I have received -none- despite having a nice portfolio, extensive work experience and a well-built resume), it won't be for anything remotely related to what you wanted to do, and to what your student rep likely lied to you and told you you would be doing.Advice - If you're wanting to do anything related to animation, film, gaming or otherwise, stay as far away from ITT as you can possibly manage. I'd recommend investing but a fraction of that potential tuition money into some art supplies and instruction, programming books or what have you. Buy some books on drawing and perspective (which actually help a -lot- in regards to 3D work), and, if you want to attend a university, attend a proper one - Digipen, Full Sail, UCLA - whether they offer a proper 3D/digital artwork major (which they most likely will), make certain they cover art fundamentals, and that they instructors are wise. If the school promises you anything regarding a job but has more or less -no- industry connections, then you should take that as a hint and stay away. Self-study, art instruction and a little effort on developing your skills and portfolio will land you an industry job far quicker than spending years wasting away in this school.