Cornish College of the Arts

Date: Jun 10 2005
Major: Design Arts - Industrial Design/Graphic Design/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
I went into Cornish's Illustration department, a subset of their Graphic Design department, in 2002. Based my decision to attend on their phenomenal reputation, and their professional portfolio reviews. I attended for about a year and a half, in both the old Capital Hill and new Lenora Street campuses. I was present during the move.

I went through Foundation Year frustrated and repulsed by their disorganized beaurocracy, snooty attitude, and generalized lack of knowledge. The computer lab was poorly run, their wireless network down or in disrepair about 40% of the time. Campus security was a joke; my bicycle was stolen from a bike lockup about a week after starting school. My departnent was crammed with students who cared more about shopping at the Gap during lunch than actually completing assignments in an original and thoughtful manner. There was no school cohesion, and we were completely isolated from the other departments.

Professors were out-of-touch with current tech and theory, and for the most part unapproachable and uninterested, with the exception of Caren Gussoff, Susan Boyle, and a few others whose names I regrettably forget. The Photoshop and Illustrator classes were "taught" directly from the Adobe tutorials included with the software. My Sequential Art profressor in particular was shockingly incompetent, perhaps due to his advanced age and possible senility. I was ill the day we were to pick up our final projects from him, post-grading, and instead of setting the two pieces of 11x17" vellum aside for me, or putting them in my mailbox (three steps from the actual classroom) he simply threw them away.

The facilities were also laughable, even after they moved from Capital Hill to the Lenora Campus, at which point our locker sizes were reduced from the formerly cramped two-people-to-one-locker, to three students per locker, and the locker itself was too small to contain the standardized size of our life drawing sketchpads. In other words, they built lockers from scratch that were too small to contain the only school supply that was the same size for every single student in the department.

I really could go on. I have heard, in Cornish's defense, that the Design department is the worst of the bunch and that the theater and dance departments are quite good. But this place left a horrible taste in my mouth that has still, years later, not disappated. And the frustration and wastefulness I experienced during my time there has screwed up my college career both financially and psychologically in ways too numerous to dwell on.

Long story short: don't believe the hype. Talk to current students at any school you're interested in. They're the only ones who really know what's going on.