Is Trios College a SCAM? What school should I g o to?
polycounter lvl 6
Hello
I am a graduate of the Game Development Program at George Brown College.
I graduated in 2013 and I did not find any jobs. I regret not even trying to apply for internships while I was in school. The gaming industry is very competitive and I wish to further my training in the Game Design program (post grad) preferably at George Brown College. I have applied to both Sheridan and George Brown College and wish to apply for internships while I'm there.
There is a school called Trios College which is a private school. I like how the course is fully art based without any programming courses. The program is only a year and a half and includes a 16 week internship. They say the rate of getting a job is 70%.
However... The tuition is 30,000
Trios College offers the Second Career program in which you have to be first eligible and being eligible that would take 10,000 off of the tuition. The site seems a little blahhh
here it is: http://www.trios.com/career/?section=VideoGameDesignTechnologies
Do you guys think Trios is a scam?? Tell me your thoughts. I'm a bit iffy about this one.
I am a graduate of the Game Development Program at George Brown College.
I graduated in 2013 and I did not find any jobs. I regret not even trying to apply for internships while I was in school. The gaming industry is very competitive and I wish to further my training in the Game Design program (post grad) preferably at George Brown College. I have applied to both Sheridan and George Brown College and wish to apply for internships while I'm there.
There is a school called Trios College which is a private school. I like how the course is fully art based without any programming courses. The program is only a year and a half and includes a 16 week internship. They say the rate of getting a job is 70%.
However... The tuition is 30,000
Trios College offers the Second Career program in which you have to be first eligible and being eligible that would take 10,000 off of the tuition. The site seems a little blahhh
here it is: http://www.trios.com/career/?section=VideoGameDesignTechnologies
Do you guys think Trios is a scam?? Tell me your thoughts. I'm a bit iffy about this one.
Replies
Don't drop money on a college that volunteering for a game development team on your freetime will provide you.
If you want to make games, literally make a game. Quality will vary, but you will literally be making something that professionally you make anyways.
$30k with a degree you've already earned? This isn't a post-grad education that's worth it. You're better off doing a focused tutoring program or getting access to Gnomon's library of DVDs.
Will you not have as frequent contact with other students and human beings? Sure. But $30,000 in debt from a not stereotypical uni/college institution is too much. I have no solution to the former, but you're done with formal schooling. There's no need for a formal post-grad, I think.
Btw, do you want to do game design or game art, because they're very different disciplines with different measures of aptitude.
If you want more schooling, I would suggest doing online courses. They are cheaper, and you will end up learning SO much more than if you went to a brick and mortar school. Seriously...
Here's a few to check out. You`ll get senior people within the industry teaching you, giving you assignments, giving you amazing feedback. George Brown is fine for getting started. It's one of the better ones in the area. But any college will need to follow specific guidelines and such. Online classes dont. Colleges tend to just teach you how the tools work. Online classes tend to teach you how to make amazing art, with industry standard workflows.
http://training.cgsociety.org/
http://www.gnomonschool.com/programs/online_training/
So you worked a normal job while working on your portfolio? How many days did you work a week? I work a normal job too sometimes I'll get 5 days sometimes 2. What did you do during the "work your ass off" process? Did you constantly learn here on polycount? or did you take online classes?
I also went to GBC and graduated from their Game Dev program. Took about another year of working as much as I could after graduating to finally start getting somewhere. The course is good for getting started and provides a lot of good experience, but on its own won't get you to the level that is needed to get a job.
I would avoid traditional schools because they're insanely expensive and you can probably achieve as much or more artistic growth on your own in the same amount of time, without the massive tuition.
Make art, post it on Polycount, use the feedback people give you to improve and use online courses to fill the gaps.
Any serious program will probably want you making art 60-80 hours a week, minimum, so instead of paying out 30k, just put in that time on your own, and grind out the best work you can.
Post your stuff here. If nobody comments, don't be discouraged. Keep posting. Even if your work is terrible, and someone tears your work to shreds, don't sweat it and keep posting. Eventually, someone will comment. If you take suggestions intelligently, and apply them with reason, you'll improve faster than you would at any avg. school.
Did you apply to both game and VFX studios? Did they leave a reason why they didn't hire you?
I'm looking at your work, and it appears you have both Character and Environment art. Maybe you should focus on just one discipline.
Also, your email is a hotmail. That's not good. Use gmail instead.
courses and to look up second careers by the ontario government, in which my friend profile happens to be a IT tech at rogers. anyhow I went to second careers, it was an government of ontario website that offers grants to those that been off work since 2005, clicked on careers sections and chosen computer tech repairs and a list of college popped up and trios was the recommended one to choose from so,made an appointment and spoke vis emails from seema and went in, passed the entrance exam and enquired about cost and length of time of courses, any how they tried to hit me up with osap classes are starting soon, grants will take a long time, I said I think about it, anyhow the next day received an email from seema requesting for osap and said not interested, later my computer crashed and had to recover my system up and running again. trios students programmers and webpage makers and as well as their computer techs, assemble and maintains misleading websites claiming to be government, passes viruses from free ad wares and malware programs, scams, and crashing computer system, however police said if they take money from you then they can take action even if you paid through asap and gave them money. anyhow had recovered from an fuking headache I got through trios so they are dangerous people in trios, to make matters worst the cost of this program at trios is much higher than going through government colleges by an mile.
http://drawabox.com/
https://www.gameartinstitute.com/
https://www.schoolism.com/school.php
http://www.scott-eaton.com/anatomy-for-artists-online-course
https://www.ctrlpaint.com/
https://www.uartsy.com/
http://www.mold3dacademy.com/all-classes.html
http://www.zbrushworkshops.com/
https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/
https://www.learnsquared.com/
http://cgmasteracademy.com/
Some Youtube channels that have valuable stuff
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbdyjrrJAjDIACjCsjAGFAA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClM2LuQ1q5WEc23462tQzBg
Save yourself the money, as a former for-profit grad (Art Institute) the debt is not worth it and if I had any of these options when I started I wold have done these instead.
EDIT: Just realized this thread was a Necro