The Alliance Francaise in Paris has jumped the sha...

The Alliance Francaise in Paris has jumped the shark. I am an intermediate French student and took a course there in the summer of 2010. The quality of professors is highly variable and the administration is abominable. Every week that I was there, I spent at least one day a week resolving their administrative mistakes. They refuse to communicate via email and told me that they could only correspond in writing via regular mail (which is convenient since the vast majority of students have no ability to receive mail in France and thus would receive correspondence in their native country). They were utterly useless.
The Alliance Francaise has a great reputation in many of the students' home countries and about half of my classmates had taken courses at the Alliance in their home countries prior to coming to France. Consistently, they said that the instruction and administration in their home countries were superior. I think the Alliance in Paris attracts students primarily from its favorable international reputation. There are countless language schools in Paris that are cheaper and that deliver a better product than the Alliance.
I studied French at a good U.S. university prior to attending the Alliance and learned far more in those general courses than I did in the "intensive" Alliance program. The books at the Alliance ("Alter Ego" series written by the AF) are very poorly organized and fail to provide a concise and complete explanation of grammatical concepts. If you have a good professor they will supplement it with their own content. I had one professor who did this, while the other one failed to compensate for the book's shortcomings. I had to supplement my book with Bescherelle and several other resources. In short, look around before you commit to the AF or prepare to be disappointed.