The Art Insitute of California - San Diego Review

$122k for an education based on PowerPoint presentations and lies is just not worth it. Unless you plan in using your GI Bill to pay for this so called education, I would not recommend it at all. The quality of instructors rapidly declined throughout the 4 years I was there. By the time I left the school many of the teachers in my program were in their early to mid 20's and had just graduated from the school a year or 2 before. The school then has the audacity to place students in entry level job interviews jammed with up to 30 other alumni. There is no support, the only thing they care about is taking your money. If I could do it again, I wouldn't. I've had dozens of interviews at this point where the management told me the equivalent of my degree is a joke. They don't trust the quality of student from this school and with a 40% completion rate, why should they? I beg you, reconsider coming here, don't make the same mistake I did by attending this school. I now have to deal with these loans for the next 35 years of my life.

Never go here, especially for audio engineering. The financial aide department engages in fraudulent activities. The classes you need in your last year aren t readily available. The instructors are going downhill and the school pushes you into more and more student loans.

If i could give 0 or negative stars I would. My wife had been screwed over by the scheduling department for 3 semesters now. On her first semester, they set her up for associates instead of bachelor's. Second semester, the scheduling program pretty much screwed everyone from what I heard from her and mixed up everyone's timelines so she was going to school at times not originally planned. And now my wife just got told that she couldn't take one of her classes this semester because of the fact that its for a different major. Who's fault was it entirely? SCHEDULING MANAGEMENT! Now they told her it would be best to just drop all her classes for the semester because they're not able to take her in for another class at this moment EVEN THOUGH IT IS ENTIRELY THEIR FAULT and she doesnt have enough classes to stay as a student. She uses her GI Bill for this school so now we are lost on what is going to happen with that for this semester. Granted there are only 4 weeks left. I've been frustrated with this school from the start and even a friend that went to Art Institute recommended me to not let my wife go to this school. If I was at her place and the scheduling department already messed up twice, bet I'm just taking my hard earned GI Bill somewhere. DO NOT GO TO THIS INSTITUTION!

Horrible service. Impossible to get anyone on the phone to discuss registrar issues. This school seems to be interested in collecting money but not in providing student services. They only want money!!

We were looking for a place to get a good steak dinner but didn't want to pay a ton of money for mediocre food. Found this on yelp with great reviews and decided to try it.

The food was fantastic, reasonably priced, and the service was very attentive.

This is a school. The dining room is small and has a limited number of tables. The point is for culinary students to gain practical experience in the subtleties of planning and executing a dining experience for the the restaurant business. These students did an excellent job and this was only their second night. I've been in places that have been established for years that weren't as well run.

The menu was limited with 5 or 6 main course choices but with good variety. Our steak and pork were cooked to perfection and very tender. Salads were creative and delicious and the deserts were some of the best I've had.

Altogether, dinner for two with mocktails, salads, main couse, and dessert cost about $50. You can expect a meal of this quality to cost twice as much anywhere else. The money paid for meals goes towards a scholarship fund.

If you would like to give this place a try call ahead and make a reservation. It will become difficult to get a seat as the semester progresses and they are only open a couple of days a week.

I can't guarantee your experience will be as great as ours but this is why the dining room exists. The staff was very friendly an open to crtitique. Put this on your list of places to try.

I attended this school because my friend was there, and made it seem to be pretty decent. The only decent thing about this school is how much money was put into it. The culinary program is what keeps the school running.

I wasn't even there 3 months, and I've decided to call it quits.

I am a veteran, so I use my Post 9/11 to go to school. Upon enrolling into this establishment, my information was NEVER submitted to the VA. So guess who didn't get paid the first month and a half? I had to call the VA and see what was going on, then go to the financial aid department myself to be told that for sure it was never submitted.

Then after that, the online textbooks that they charge you $200 dollars every semester for DOES NOT WORK! How the heck are we being charged hundreds of dollars for textbooks we can't access, and then being told to go find physical copies until further notice. How about you refund us that money back? Since we pay out of pocket for those electronic textbooks. The payments are automatically taken from your account, and if you don't want them to take it out then you have to submit a request form.

Then back to the financial aid department...if you have a refund for financial aid you can forget about receiving it. I have a refund over $2000 just sitting there and it's been months, to be told they're on hold. For months? I've emailed 2 members of financial aid, including the manager to be told they aren't sending out stipends just yet. Some of us have families and siblings to take care of. This school is quick to take your money, but slow to refund it back. From what I've read from other students, the reason this money isn't being refunded is because it's being pocketed.

I've submitted complaints to FASFA about BOTH issues.

To be honest it doesn't seem like the administrative staff care too much. Upon submitting paperwork stating I would no longer be in attendance, I got asked why I was leaving; and if I had tried to find other resources in order to stay with the school.

Why would I want to stay at a school with all of these problems? I'm glad I'm leaving, instead of wasting my G.I. Bill.

The frustration I feel with this school is unbelievable. Let me start by saying some of the instructors there are some of the most artistic, creative, most down to earth leaders. Jaw dropping and amazing work! Other parts of the institution, I can t speak so highly of. The financial aid office is constantly slacking and the main reason the school is going under. You would think as a financial aid officers that their job is to handle the finances of the students? WRONG! They make sure they get the money from the VA, without paying the students their federal stipends. They re reasons to believe some of the financial advisors have been taking money from the VA and putting them into personal accounts. I understand people who work there are unsure of their future, and stealing may be their only option. Veteran students like me are also starting to become unsure about our future at the school. I would NEVER steal from the Veteran Affairs Department as an option. It s hurting the veterans at the school who are adapting and bettering their lives as civilians.

A terrible school which preys on its students. They have been using misleading job placement statistics since 2000 and misrepresenting their reputation in the industry. The Art Institute is considered the bottom of the barrel in terms of higher education and they should be avoided at all costs. No art degree from a place with zero admissions standards should cost 90,000 dollars (which translates to over 200,000 over the lifetime of the loan with interest) Trust me when I say that you do not want to be paying 600-1000 a month for the rest of your life for a degree that you never once profited from getting. They are currently closing most of their campuses, so enrolling now would be like boarding a sinking ship - AVOID! For more information please join "I Am Ai" on Facebook and watch the movie "Fail State" which details the Ai scam.

Is there any way I can give no stars? HUGE mistake. Scam. I withdrew after a year so I wouldn't get into more debt. This school is a waste of time and money.

Great University. Yea its challenging, yes you learn, yes your going to have to read a book. 6-8 years since I've been to school, its easy to get started, and its easy to quit when the going gets tough. Just remember that the bachelors program is consolidated into 3 years, so it is a lot of information, as long as you go to class you will pass. Just because the teachers are great and explain everything you need to know. Great school, the only thing is, if your lazy and going for a Culinary degree than you will most likely hate the cooking classes. No one is washing your dishes, you cook, clean, mop. The only draw back but its worth it, as long as the Instructor isn't a total drag. Veteran, using gi bill, school loans, pell grant, and my wife is only working, so its still a little tough, because I take my daughter to pre school when I'm not going to school. So try to plan ahead for homework, I normally wait last minute, but its very stressful. At the same time to beat the traffic in the morning, I wake up extra early around 4-4:30, shower and get to school around 6am (when they open at both buildings), do my hw for the class I'm going to be at by 8 or 9, which will change since I'm doing night classes next semester. So just figure out a way to simplify anything that you dislike. Trust me these people rating crap stars, are the people that gave up.

The food and service today was great. The three course meal was incredible, brussel sprouts, salmon and apple tartlet. Couldn't ask for any better. Service was great too!

Let me say: do not enroll in a for profit shool without garenteed grants. Only do loans as a last resort and have lots of money to waste if you want to do AI. I transfered here and it was almost an impossible transition. This school was on a complete other level. AI colorado was a more laid back and focused on what students wanted. AI SD is very competitive and if you dont have enough motivation you will fail to be skilled enough to get a job after graduation. As for the the staff, was friendly but there seemed to be very little staff for teaching such a wide set of classes in media arts animation and game art. They aren't bad but getting support is pretty much impossible since they have to work other jobs to survive so no office hours at all for help. They dont pay teacher even close to what they deserve so I feel like sometimes students can get whiplash from this. a few teachers totally saved me when others just let me sink and skim past in classes. I failed portfolio twice because first teacher I got knew nothing about 3D which was everything I was working on. When I got port 2 teacher that knew 3D I had to start completely over. They port1 class was degree based and did not cater to what you were doing.You have control over what happens. Ensure you get what you need, because it is there just not enough will tell you help is available unless you ask. I used my GI bill to come here, I still think it taught me alot. Their security for alumni is pretty painful is my biggest dissapointment.

DO NOT ATTEND !
I had Spent a year+ here .
It's an awful school of corporate crap.
Most of the teachers are awful (not all of them, a few were great) and everything that isn't the primary teachings (eg: math, language and prerequisites) are tacked on with very little care or effort.

Only rating 2 stars for the cintiq lab. DO NOT go to this school. All of the instructors, who actually know what they're doing, recently got canned and brought back on as part time. So not only are students getting screwed out of full access to teachers who actually work in the industry, they are paying 100,000 for a degree that most people scoff at. Don't do it. The financial aid department is horrible, the registrar is damn near recalcitrant. (I have yet to be connected to a person when calling their offices directly, along with slow shipping and services), and the administration has no idea what it's doing. Just don't go.

I must say that the school was a great place to learn. I've only attended for a little over a year, but the teachers were great and helped me to get my act together when I needed it.

Unfortunately, the school is now closed, so it only gets three stars. In fact, this search result may not even be up for much longer...

the art institute is all for your money i got a 8k loan and now its 24k princalple balance of 24.99 apr... they settled 10 years later on 2k and now wont let me get my paper... wow thanks AI glad you got another one...

This art institute is a big cheater. When the San Francisco campus close. They said if I transfer to other school they will send me a $5,000 transfer grant. I have been wait it over half year and they said it still on process. They are cheating your money on so many ways. It should be my tuition on my next semester. They give me a big problem. All of them are liar.

This school closed it's doors today at 5pm permanently.

Everyone here is super friendly, and very knowledgeable in the industry. It is a bit challenging at times, don't enroll if you're looking for an easy way to get a degree. You have access to nearly all of the supplies you need and the assignments are similar to the types of jobs you will experience in the industry. All of my professors have been very helpful, and they typically try to understand the general level of the class before starting. One thing I've noticed with struggling students is the lack of asking for assistance. You can not be afraid to ask for help!! They are here to help you be successful and they can not do so if you do not speak up.

Shady business practices and mishandling student loan funds. This is why for-profit higher education should not be legal! I just hope all of their students get their loans forgiven. Now I hope a good company takes that office space. It's a nice building in a great spot.

It s a great school, it takes money to make money. I understand the negative comments about this school.

So before I get into the reasons behind the rating just know if you go here for Culinary you will owe more than 100k and end up at the same dead end job I have. I applied and got a job in Temecula after dropping this program and ended up working with a guy from my class who finished. It was funny when he showed up on his first day of work with his A.I. bag and knife kit to make the same 12.00 I was getting without being in debt 100k. But the actual 1 star is from this school being a scam. I was promised that my G.I. Bill would cover it along with the 2 other programs I qualified for, so I started school and quickly came to dislike the place. Mainly because of the attitudes of certain chefs who instructed and how they treated people and tried talking down to me. I complained to the head chef who told me if I didn't like it to go somewhere else which is exactly what I did. I notified my instructors I wouldn't be back and stopped attending. After deciding to go back to school I found another college (a real one) and applied but was told I needed to provide transcripts for my time at the A.I. in order for my benefits to be certified but the A.I. refused to provide any transcripts because they continued to schedule classes for me the next semester and even though I did not request the classes and no showed every day from the 1st to the last they still charged me a "food cost" for food I never used and was payed for using the GI Bill, yellow ribbon, and fafsa but supposedly I still owe 340dollars which prevents me from getting my transcripts. Isn't that convienient? Please do your research and make absolutely sure this is a place you want to go BEFORE signing anything. These people are fast talking conartist oopppssss I mean sales people.