Champlain College

Date: Jan 09 2016
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
I was one or two classes above the core curriculum being implemented. I had a three history classes, four english and literature classes, a science class, a math, a psych or sociology class, and a logic and reason class required, then everything else was an elective, or required for my major, which was multimedia and graphic design, which the school changed to just graphic design for later students. However, that changed when they added a number of core classes, which everyone I knew seemed to complain about.

The environment catered to progressing and innovating within your career, but you needed to build your own path, and sort of know what you wanted to do.

The curriculum was easy enough that if you really wanted to, you'd be able to float through and graduate while not truly being prepared for a position in your field. However, if you were passionate about what you do, it was a great experience. The resources available were a tremendous help, and all of the professors seemed very encouraging.

Some people had difficulty getting jobs after school, but I graduated class of 2010, which was a year where the economy pretty much came to a halt, and no matter what school you went to, it was difficult for new grads to find positions, especially in graphic design.

I remember at times being frustrated with some aspects of my program, but most of those issues were resolved about the time that I was graduating. They started up a print shop for more hands on production experience. Began focussing more on digital and the technical side of it, namely teaching the design majors to code. Either way, these were all skill sets that I was self learning outside of school, and my courses did a great job teaching the fundamentals of design and interactive design which would've been much more difficult to learn on my own, and it's helped me exceed beyond my peers in my industry (web design).

As for social life, it's very easy to find a place to fit in here. With no greek life, and no varsity sports, you don't have too much of your run of the mill sorority and frat type personalities. Almost everyone here has some sort of eccentric streak about them. Lots of gamers, lots of hippies, and lots of ski or snowboard bums, but I don't think having a brief hippy phase is such a bad thing in terms of growing as a person and with the access to mountains, it'd be weird if you weren't enthused about skiing or snowboarding.