Full Sail
SouthCrackalack
3,853 Posts
what do you yall know about it? worth it or not? financial aid/loans available? Any (former) students on the Strut? Going on 27 yrs old and still no career..I am starting to look at this place a little more seriously. I really know dick about it..but I see ads in mags. Is it a scam type school or can something good actually come out of it? All info appreciated.
Comments
You can go down and visit the place. Its cool.
My other friend starts there next year.
Shit is mad expensive though.
yeah..how much is it? I just know its really high. do they have financial aid?
p.s am i the only one in the room who is shocked to learn this guy is almost 27????
why? because I am 27 and trying to get my shit together(better my life) and accomplish something? Sorry I am not a 18 yrs old with parents that will pay for college.
or did I misunderstand what that comment meant?
I was taken back by it a bit. I was thinking 16-21
and why the fuck was that,Doc?
Plus the price tag on fullsail is crazy high (what, 35k/year?) for what you get. If I were you I'd get a BA and then tack on some courses. If you want to get schooled in Logic or Final Cut just take some courses in that for a few K$ max. I have a BA in computer science and it's done more for me than an associates or certificate program would have.
However I know one doud on the board who went there and is doing alright in THE BIZ. I don't want to out him, so I'm sure he'll speak up if he sees this thread cuz we've chatted about this very subject before.
Oh and I'm your age (26) and still don't have a career or anything. So don't let anybody get you shook about that. Still plenty young. I'm back in school going for my MA looking for that next step, still feel clueless half the time tho if you know what I mean. The average american has 2.5 careers in his/her lifetime.
thanks for the advice..damn 35k a yr huh? I thought it was 20K for some reason. yikes.
Are you local to me?? orlando?
i started SAE in NYC when i was 27...i loved being back in school, and i was doing it part time in the evenings, while working a corporate job during the day.
now i'm interning...i love it and i'm learning a lot but it's a pretty long haul until i start getting really paid. and no matter how good the school is you really don't learn much until you start getting some real world experience. but you still gotta go to school.
i say just be honest with yourself about what you want to get from this. if you go to the school tours they are going to tell you everything you want to hear to get you to sign up and get your money, they'll say, oh yes, this is the best decision you'll ever make and oh yes, you will be overwhelmed with job offers when you are done.
what they won't tell you is that these schools are churning out mediocre engineers by the ton and that studios are closing left and right and that there really aren't that many jobs out there.
so ask yourself, are you going to school to get a job in the recording/production/post-production field, or are you going to further your knowledge and to help with your home productions? if it's the latter, IAR sounds pretty good, they are more hands on training and more geared towards helping you with your own projects.
if you want technical training to lead to a job in a studio, SAE is a little better and gives you a more rounded education.
if you want to go into post-production, you might be better off getting some sort of communications degree and a pro-tools certificate.
sure, at the end of the day you can learn a lot of this stuff at home but you'd be surprised at what you aren't learning...and what you may be doing wrong. these schools are legit, they just aren't really the most lucrative investments in the world. it's also hard work, so if you do indeed finish the course, you can feel pretty good about your chances in the field. out of my class only two of us finished!
..and just to add..there was a 2 year waiting list when I went, but they got a new second campus open in Gilbert. and one thing I liked about the Conservatory is that classes only had a maximum of 12 people.
http://www.cras.org/
its gonna take you YEARS to get a career going, and even longer to get paid. i mean, what do you know about it now? how much engineering knowledge do you have already? that might influence it a little, but for real, if you just sitting at home with an mpc and some turntables, i wouldnt waste my time. like CPR said, those schools are churning out tons of mediocre engineers and they are flooding the market. i have heard countless stories of kids who went to fullsail only to come back home and do nothing with there degree. the ones that are still doing something are doing it on a very small scale.
not to toot my own horn, but i didnt go to a recording school to get my career. i did it the old fashioned way, interned, bought some gear, interned, trained with a pro, bought some more gear, learned at home, interned, worked loooooooong hours at 3 different jobs, etc and got further than any fullsail cat i know. not that i know the school at all, im sure its a great place, but you gotta be the right person to make it happen, the school is not gonna do it for you.
i would try interning at a local studio for a few months, see what you can learn that way, before you spend more than you will make in the first 2-3 years of your engineering career on an education you end up not using.
also, get some type of recording program to start messing with and learn some basics. it will help you a lot if you have soime clue as to what they are talking about in the studio when you get there.
to clarify, this happened to me and i would not have been able to do what i am doing without this happening. school would have been the only other option. i was actually thinking about going a long time ago, but ended up on the path i am on now.
I was lucky to intern at a small busy studio that one of the teachers owned. I was able to get alot of hands on experience right away, and run alot of my own sessions. A couple friends of mine went to bigger studios and ended up cleaning and running errands...
Um what the hell I thought this was going to be another
Loggins & Messina thread.
You know about the little cuz going down there. Whats he doing NOW you might ask, well. Working 3 restaurant jobs, paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $400+ a month for loans, and other financial aid. Has a little studio in his apt that he makes garbage indie rock no one gives a dog shit about.
$40k a year is retarded no matter how you look at that.
my wife owes like $28k still on her education... unbelievable.. 30 years old and you gotta still be paying for what you are basically told "is the greatest decision of your life" (goin to college).
i was lucky.. only got my BFA and was glad to be done with school.
paid the loan off fast.
but man it was still like close to 10k... that's alot of money to be owin on a peace of paper.. a freakin art school undergrad degree???
if you wanna do something you'll find away to do that thing whether you get a peace of paper somehow approving your ability to do said deed.
listen to mesh.. dude speaks truth.
CO-SIGN!
As a [whisper] fullsail grad [/whisper] don't waste your time. I spent most of the time half asleep due to the 1am-5am labs. One thing that irked me was that I had recent grads (4 months) as lab instructors. What the fuck do they know about "Real World Education"(fullsail tagline). As they say "not a good look". If you are just looking to work freelance or maybe get a gig @ a small local studio do what mesh said and DIY. Start from the bottom up and LEARN. I can't agree enough w/ mesh. These schools pump out a lot of lazypotheadtrustfundIwannamakeitinthebiz type kids. At the same time it's all up too YOU. If you don't hustle, you don't eat. Learn every program you can. I went to school for audio, but I can run an avid adrenaline, final cut, after-effects, DVD studio pro...The more skills you posses the easier you are to market.
I've been very lucky (w/ lots of hard work) over the last 4 years. The overwhelming majority of people I know that went to school for recording are stuck @ a desk, doing construction, car porter, selling herb, or still living off mommy and daddies $$$$. With that said I NEVER would have got my 1st gig was it not for the school I attended. I had an interview @ HBO a month before I graduated. 2 months later I became their 1st & last intern. Everyone on the floor resented me for the 1st few weeks because I was a paid intern. All of these dudes had been doing this for 8+ years and here come this newjack fresh out of school (In the end we all ended up going to the strip club when we got laid off 2 years later) I would've spent years trying to break into a place like that. So yeah the "piece of paper" does help. In the 4 years since I graduated I've been able to work @ a major cable & network level doing sound design & post, work w/ a Grammy award winning engineer & artist, run a small protools school, & do consulting work for small studios. Hopefully the next step is as a predator @ Univision (interview this week).
So yeah it's expensive...but I got some good jobs and paid it off. Now I'm 25 work out of my own house and charge clients $45 an hr so I can use protools so I'm pretty happy.
Anyhow... I graduated in 2001 and it was just in time for the recording industry to go in the shitter. The problem with going to some place like Full Sail is that jobs in the industry are drying up and it's getting more competitive than ever. Studios are going out of business left and right thanks to the proliferation of cheap home recording gear that can give you recordings near pro quality.
I was in a similar situation to you. I was 27 when I graduated so I know all about feeling the pressures of age and feeling like you need to do something with your life. I did what was in my heart and got my recording degree and I don't regret doing it at all, but the realities of the business have kept me from bothering to give it a shot. Oh, it's entirely possible you might be able to do the hustle and make something happen, but the recording industry is especially cut-throat. The guys that are already at the top and have the good jobs don't want to give it up, and like I said the jobs are drying up, not expanding. You're gonna start out at the bottom as a glorified errand boy, working for peanuts and not having any benefits or insurance. In the recording industry you're basically an independent contractor so even if you get jobs it's likely you'll never have benefits or insurance unless you pay for it yourself. Recording (and entertainment in general) is a high risk/high reward business, but the truth is that most people don't reap the big rewards.
The other truth is that there are people who make it all the way to the top in the business without a lick of schooling. It's not a field where a college degree or any degree of any sort really gets you much. It's much like a trade and all that matters is experience. Rick Rubin made something out of himself and he didn't go to a recording school or anything. You'll be out $40k or whatever Full Sail costs working a job where you'll be lucky if you'll see $20k a year. Full Sail is basically a factory for recording dudes and the truth is that certificate doesn't really make you any better qualified than a lot of other people out there.
Like somebody else said, video is really where the industry has gone as of late. With the boom in DVD sales that's the hot market right now, and DVD authoring is really where the money's to be made. Really, if you're wanting to find a "career" and try to make something of a stable life for yourself it really isn't the way to go unless you're REALLY dedicated to it and are willing to claw and scratch for everything like your life depends on it, because your life WILL depend on it. Fewer and fewer jobs that everybody wants. If you don't feel like doing that (I didn't, that's why I didn't get into it after I graduated) then you might want to find something else that's perhaps a bit more stable for the future.
But as far as Full Sail itself...it seems awfully expensive for what you get. I mean, honestly, I have a Bachelor's degree to show for my schooling and not only do I think I'm probably every bit as educated about recording as anybody coming out of Full Sail would be I was only paying about $2000 a year to go to school. Even across 4 years that's still a hell of a lot cheaper than what Full Sail wants. There's other options out there as far as recording if that is indeed what you want to do that won't cost you nearly as much as Full Sail.
R E A L T A L K !
I'm agree with everything you just said in your post...EVERY single word.
I currently intern (i.e., errandboy) for a smallish house/R & B music label while working a steady 9-5 desk job in order to pay the bills...and can sadly report with 99.9% certainty that my apprenticeship will not lead to anything remotely substantial careerwise in the future.
It's that .1 percent that keeps me going, though...futile, to say the least.
SG