American Academy of Art College, Chicago | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

I went here from 2005-2009. They made a lot of claims that were not true to get you to enroll. The placement percentage was exaggerated and they touted a fully developed 3d animation curriculum.

We didn’t even start taking 3d classes until our junior year. Then, the good 3d teacher left and a new teacher took over the department our senior year. He decided that our portfolios were not up to his standards and that he’d fail all of us if we didn’t change majors… IN OUR SENIOR YEAR. I went from making Dean’s list and getting all A’s and B’s to suddenly being threatened with not graduating. Because, you know, that seems normal.

They had one career services lady there who did nothing. We went to her office the spring of our junior year because we wanted to learn about internships and she yelled at us for not making an appointment. So we emailed her for an appointment and she never responded. After I graduated, they’d get a new career services person every few months and that person would call me to ask how my job search was going. I’d tell them every time that I was stuck in retail and needed help. Every time, they’d say they were going to send me a list of jobs and connections to help…and never would follow through.

I kept in touch with the roughly 15 students who graduated in 3d with me. Only one of them got a job in the 3d animation field. But somehow, the academy was reporting on their website that 95% of my graduating animation class were placed in the field. It’s an outright lie. Most of my class either went back to school (like I did) or changed fields completely.

The best part is: now they’re sending me letters that, as an alumni, I should be donating money to the school. They will never get another dime of my money.

The only reason they get 2 and not 1 star is because the librarian and a couple of teachers were truly amazing and made up for it a bit.

The school is constantly a mess, rarely cleaned. The bathrooms are disgusting. Classrooms are not stocked regularly with necessities and the trash cans are not regularly emptied. There was a cockroach left in the hallway long enough for it to become an unofficial mascot of the school. Tables, chairs, computers, easels, all breaking down and raggedy and need to be replaced but even with the tens of thousands of dollars the students put into it every year there is no improvement.

The staff is so incredibly disorganized, its like they don’t talk to each other. The communication between the school and students is awful, they don’t tell you anything until the last moment and sometimes that really screws over the students. Not only that but there are multiple staff members known to be incredibly difficult to deal with. Swearing and yelling at students, treating them like they are stupid. The school has also been known to force students to delete their truthful negative reviews.

Many of the online professors also just don’t care and its obvious.

Don’t go here.

So I had moved across the country to start at this school as an independent and made it clear multiple times that since I’m an independent I’ll need assistance with figuring out a payment plan or something for tuition, and was told that itd be taken care of. Even after multiple further attempts to figure things out before leaving out of state, they did not hold their end of the bargain. I was waiting for them to reach out to me with further information as we still hadn’t set anything in stone in regards to payment, because again, I’ve been waiting for THEIR help. Thry decided to wait until a month before school started to send a letter saying that I needed to figure out how to pay $500 a month or approx $1500 every other month. After I reminded them ONCE AGAIN of my situation they had audacity to tell me the month before classes begin that they “don’t have the resources” for helping students figuring out their tuition payments. Forcing me to drop out before starting and stranded in a city I’ve never even been in before.