The Academy of Art University

Date: Aug 03 2015
Major: Design Arts - Industrial Design/Graphic Design/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
I thought about attending AAU for many many years before finally going. While I didn't have a terrible experience, my experience was not worth the money that it costs to attend this school. Best advice if you do decide to go is first to thoroughly examine the requirements needed for your degree. Make sure to get all basic credits (math, english, art history, speech, etc) done elsewhere. These classes are labeled as Libral Arts requirements at AAU. As of Fall 2015 every undergrad class here is about $2400 a piece per semester so there is no reason to pay that kind of money for general education requirements. Next piece of advice would be to be fully aware that you will need to literally LIVE your major to get the most out of it here. You have to work your tail off, probably harder than you ever have before. The grading scale here is very difficult. Basically, a B at a regular college is a C here. A's are extremely rare and difficult to come by unless you are a stellar designer or artist. One complaint for me is, while still teaching things in class, almost every professor both on-campus and online would tell you to look online to learn more about things. For the cost, I don't want to be told to basically self-teach. If it's simply that easy to learn about it, then there would be no reason to go to an art school. The school can be great if you are a die-hard, 100% committed student and creator. If your heart is not in it to spend the time needed to excel then there is truly no reason to pay the outrageous cost of tuition here.