I believed the Institute was legitimate and still feel they are "borderline" legit. There are instructors that do teach and are, for the most part, good. But there are also instructors that are nightmares. I worked very, very hard and was rewarded with good grades. I was an A student. Then I had teachers that I could not get a good grade from no matter what I did. I had teachers that would pull reasons to mark students down out of the air. For instance, I always paid a lot of attention to the instructions for assignments and the grading criteria (things you would be graded for and how many points for each thing). I proudly handed my floorplan in feeling very good about the assignment. I was told " the kitchen has to be on the east side, the baths have to be located on the west wall and bedroom has to be on the south wall, the entrance has to be on the south side, this is all wrong." I combed the course site and the text books I couldn't find anything that told us we had to do it just that way. And besides, this was an exercise in creative space planning. If it somewhere told us just where we had to place the rooms what would be the point of the assignment? I asked were was it written or told to us these things. She said it was in the grading criteria. I copied and pasted the grading criteria and asked where in the criteria does it say this? She couldn't give me an answer and I still got a "0". Another felt that students had nothing between their ears but air and couldn't possibly write a good paper unless they were committing plagiarism. If they handed in a good sketch she believed it couldn't possibly be our own work. This is an art school!!! I got 0's in her class left and right for handing in good work. I was very sick and couldn't sleep from the stess. The fact is, I have been writing professionally for longer than she has been alive. That was the last straw and I left.
I got a D in her class and a D in drafting because the office messed up my student aid and I had no money for the supplies we needed for drafting. I had to take my class with nothing but a ruler and a No. 2 pencil. There may have been some mistakes but my work but it was not D work.
A year, several thousands of dollars and a nervous breakdown later, I am left with nothing. With two D's on my transcripts I can't show them to anyone, I can't let a prospective employer see them so I'm left with 0. Well, nothing but a bill for $150, they claim my stipend was $150 too much and I owe them the extra. I don't know if that is true or not or if I really owe this. I need to get my student loans out of the school as soon as possible or they may be gone.
As for the other complaints against them: if a student had that many errors in a written assignment we would never have a passing grade. People with the high degrees they supposably have to be instructors in this school would not write like a 6th grade student. They are among the most expensive schools in the country and that would have been okay if they offered an education to match. They didn't.
When I saw complaints about the school I thought it was just a case of sour grapes because the student wasn't willing to put forth the effort and was ticked off because they got a bad grade. But I see now that no matter how much effort you put forth there, you will still get nothing if you have one of their psychotic teachers.
With age comes wisdom. Too bad it cost so much in time, money and my health.
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