Full Sail Online

TWO2SEVEN said:

I've been looking to change fields to something that actually interests me. I am currently in mortgage underwriting, mostly because the pay is decent.

I am looking at a few of the online bachelors programs from Full Sail. Does any one have any experience with them, good or bad?

Thanks!

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Full Sail, a for-profit trade school, does not have a great reputation in the industry. Tuition is high, the programs are not that strong, and there are well known difficulties in transferring credits to other schools if you decide to leave (they have regional but not national accreditation, so most "real" schools do not honor their credits). They have massive turnover and very, very low graduation rates.

Now, the above is my experience with students physically attending the college, but I can't see that an online course—which lacks face-to-face interaction and critique—would be any better.

If you are looking at changing careers you would be better served by finding some night school classes locally that are taught by professionals working in the field. You will make more useful industry connections that way.

If you want a video game development degree (not sure which degree you're after at Full Sail but generally people go there for games although I heard they now offer much more) look at DigiPen. They're not online but they're owned by Nintendo and everyone hires from them.

That being said the general consensus is to go for just a computer science degree since it opens up more doors to you. Lots of people get burned out on making games because its insanely hard work and lower pay than traditional software engineering jobs.

If you are not going for game creation, ignore everything I just said

I am a Full Sail graduate.

My friend, no in a million years take that program.

Full Sail is good but is way too expensive and the education you receive is never worth the price you paid for it specially now days.

The first thing you need to do is to be 100% clear what you want to learn, video editing? motion graphics? and find FIRST how much you can get paid in the street for that, then you will see if the tuition you are paying is worth it.

I graduated from Full Sail in 1998 and yes, I have used what I learned but they gave me a "taste" of everything, so when I got out I was so confuse and I was jumping from one job to the other finding myself.

Today I am in video post production in a TV station, I am using Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Soundtrack Pro and Cinema 4D. I didn't need the $20K I paid back then and obviously not the $60K they are asking today for the same thing.

Save your money, do not was it. You can get the education cheaper every where else.

TWO2SEVEN said:

Thank you so much for the advice. It's great to hear from some one who went there. It's so hard to find reviews online. You never know how reliable they are.

Thanks again!

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Look, what I would do....

What are you interested on? Lets say... video editing... Final Cut Pro... go to the community college and learn there, the teachers are the same, is not star trek installations but Cristobal Columbus discovered america for real in 3 boats the size of a piano and Star Trek still science fiction. What you want is the education and the experience.

I work at a TV station, we use Final Cut 7 and After Effects... THAT IS IT! if you know some 3D like Maya or Cinema 4D you are better yet. Take some 3D animation training around.

Full Sail will teach you image tracking and all that, let em tell you, the only image tracking system I have seen in my life was at Full Sail when I visited 2 years ago. Do not pay $60K for something you are not going to use.

Do tutorials, every single one, read books, eat Youtube tutorials. Get a lot of internships and know how the industry move. In one month as an inter you will learn more than in a semester... and free! Once inside as an intern you will learn more.

There are loads of information out there and more now days. Work on your talent, get a camera and learn photography. Then take a training in Project Management and learn how to handle an client and a team... because if you do not have structure you will be a low level employee. Learn management.

TWO2SEVEN said:

I've been looking to change fields to something that actually interests me. I am currently in mortgage underwriting, mostly because the pay is decent.

I am looking at a few of the online bachelors programs from Full Sail. Does any one have any experience with them, good or bad?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I went there (online) and after seven months withdrew from the program because I really didn't learn anything.

Every class/subject is one month. Now granted you can learn quite a bit in one month if taught properly but at FSO you're actually not taught anything, you teach yourself.

You get a free membership to Lynda.com and are told to watch the video tutorials on whatever you happened to be on that month. In some cases they don't even tell you which specific videos to watch to be able to complete an assignment.

On the month that I had Illustrator we were given a completed image and we were supposed to be able to recreate it. They showed us about five in house videos that introduced the tools in Illustrator. They showed us what the tools did but not how to use them. That we were supposed to learn from lynda.com.

Lynda.com has somewhere in the area if one hundred hours of video on Illustrator and a lot of them are geared to print work. After watching close to ten hours of video I was no closer to understanding how to complete my assignment. I reached out the the instructor Agee times and asked which videos I should watch. He never pointed me at the right videos and wasn't helpful at all.

That's when I decided to withdraw.

I consider FSO to be an introduction to web design/development. As I said before, class is one month and once you're done with the subject you don't revisit it again until later towards the end when you have to create your final project. So for me Illustrator was my seventh month and I was going to have to remember what I learned about fourteen months later to use it in my final project.

I just can't see how anyone can become an accomplished developer learning one thing per month. PHP alone in the real world can take months to learn along with MySql and Apache.

It's one of the worst decisions I've ever made. I learned more from books I bought and some classes I found online than I did in seven months at FSO.

I'm now looking into all the real colleges and universities in my area. I see now that's the only way to get a good enough education to make a real career change. At 49 I'm hearing the clock ticking if you know what I mean.

I went to Full Sail for Computer Animation back in 2001 (before they became the monster school they are now). I don't have any experience with the online portion of it as I was on campus. What I can say is they are grossly overpriced for what they teach. I also have a friend that started her graphic design program online, and well to say the least, it shows in her work that she is doing an online art degree. Horrible stuff. As far as web design, I know a few people that did that on campus and they did a decent job of teaching them different programs they may have to use and whatnot so I think it was a good experience for them. Unfortunately I don't trust any type of "online art degree" program but it may be just what your looking for.