International Academy of Design and Technology

I went to this school back in 1996 when it was the International Academy of Merchandising and Design. It was at a different location. I feel bothered by these reviews. I have accumulated so much financial aid, that will always be on my record. This school was horrible. I couldn’t transfer anything to and from. They kept you there longer, as they would add more classes to Interior Design program. I wonder if there is anything we can do to get the money back to the government that lent it to us and not have it on our records?

This school’s tactic to get people into the school is very clever. They get you all excited and tell you all the right things. The staff is very friendly and make you fell comfortable, and then you start classes. I have just finished my first «academic year» which is actually 8 months. They charge nearly $ 14,000 every 8 months. They were so deceptive to me in the beginning, if I knew that I would have never attended. Shoot, I am a 4.0 student I could have attended any Ivy League school of my choosing. I transfered in 68 credits. A typical Bachelor’s degree is only 120 credits. I now currently have 112 credits total with them and still have 2 «academic years» left. Does that even make any sense. I feel so deceived. I can’t even explain the frustration and anger I feel. I now am at a point where I have to hope and pray the credits I paid for will transfer. If they don’t, I am out of $ 14,000 and depleted my student loans. I now am at a point where I have to find a new school and start over when I was so excited because after 10 years of school, I finally saw the finish line and that is now taken from me. When I voived those feelings to the school, they had an oh well attitude. They got my money so who cares about me. If you are considering going to this school, I would strongly suggest finding another school. It is way too expensive and not worth the hassle. You can find online schools everywhere, this one is not worth it. Please, review your options, I would not recommend this school to anyone. You don’t want to be standing in the same spot I am, I feel like I got screwed and taken advantage of. Choose another school.
I know there are sceptics who read the reviews and think that something must have gone sour. But the thing is they tell you they take care of everything, and you feel confident that everything has been. Yes, I wish I checked everything more carefully but there was no reason to. I trusted that they did what they promised. I am so dissapointed.

Pretty much everything that’s been said about this school is the truth. I went there about 4 years ago and I wish I could get my money back. Do your research. If you want to take individual classes to learn in a specific field then do that but don’t try to get a degree from this place. I still owe then and I’m mad that I have to pay out loans for this shit. Lesson learned.

If an online «university» has to call me every hour on the hour to sell me on their school, chances are they are not particularly credible and I won’t gain much by having their name on my degree.
Using pushy sales tactics and continuing to ask questions even after I explicitly ask them to call me after 5pm as I work full-​time is not a way to get me interested. I can’t believe they are actually having any success at roping students in.
After reading more reviews on this school and seeing how many people are left with a bad taste in their mouths, I doubt I’ll be taking any courses from there.

As you can see by most of the reviews, the financial Aid department is the biggest problem when it comes to this school. Next is the amount you have to pay to attend, followed by the curriculum.
Unfortunately I made the mistake of going to this school and actually graduating from there leaving me in debt with salleMae with a total of over $ 150,000. That’s right one hundred and fifty THOUSAND dollars. Not the oh so promising $ 60,000 they said tuition would cost before fafsa (which I had).
Let me tell you what I think about this… once again as mentioned in previous posts before, there were always new financial aid office employees there. They were changed like clockwork. My guess is either some one was stealing money, or they didn’t know what they were doing. Why am I paying more then double the tuition??? I don’t remember getting an MD degree!!! I have yet to use my Bachelors degree on any job that I’ve done. More then half of the people I’ve met have either gone to Columbia or didn’t go to school at all.
I Graduated with a Bachelors in Video Animation Productions which has now become nothing but a pretty decoration on the wall with no meaning what so ever. I freelance in the industry, not because of what I learned at the school, but because of the internship I was able to land which had nothing to do with the school. When I started there, they laughed and said «did they teach you anything at that school?!» Lucky for me I learn fast and I’m likable so I was hired immediately. If it wasn’t for that, I think, like many of my peers, I would be working a 9 – 5 that has nothing to do with my career, making minimum wage to pay a ridiculous amount of money. (Which as a freelance cinematographer I still have to do since work isn’t available every day.)
My next step is to wright some letters to the school and the better business bureau to figure out what went wrong. Hopefully this will help straighten out my situation so I’m not stuck having to pay that stupid amount… I wish I could say more but It would be a never ending story. so its up to you now…
Wish me luck!!!
ps. If you are going to school for film, DON’T!!! Read some books instead and invest on a good camera.

When I started school here, they refused to accept my credits from previous school saying that their school had higher credentials.
When I finished, and wanted to get a higher degree, my credits were NOT accepted Anywhere, not even in a junior college.
Then to make it worse, IADT Lost my school records except for transcripts that would not be accepted anywhere.
Plus the staff is rude as hell to everyone once signed up.
No one there knows what is going on, classes are not good and the entire experience was garbage. Don’t Dot it!!!

DO NOT GO TO IADT !!!
They try to enroll anyone they can just to profit. Looking back, I realized how my admissions advisor worked so hard to sell the school. She even told me all of my credits would transfer to other schools, which is a blatant lie. The institution that accredits IADT is a corporation that owns IADT. It is not regionally accredited, meaning, if you want to transfer to a legit college/​university, absolutely 0 of your IADT credits will transfer. My admissions advisor preyed on how naïve I was, and explained none of this. They don’t care if they deceive you. She also told me she would be my advisor for the whole three year program, but when school started, I could not even get in touch with her.
The instructors are terrible. I was in the fashion design program & teachers were either mean, boring, unknowledgeable, or all of the above. One of my teachers actually lost my final project, claimed I never handed it in & failed me! I contested my grade to the program director, and was denied any kind of solution. It was unbelievable, I felt like it was a conspiracy against me!
They make you take bogus classes your first year about how to study, critical thinking, & how to deal with the real world. These required classes are a waste of time & money. I learned NOTHING in the year I attended.
This school is expensive!!! And for what ?! So many graduates of IADT say they cannot find art & design jobs, & that the school does nothing to help them.
For anyone who wants to study art/​design/​etc, apply to SAIC, even Columbia in Chicago. Go to FIT (which is cheap!) in New York. Do not be a victim to this scam of a school.

This school is has bogus accreditation. I attended for around 7 months before doing the research i should have done initially. I’ve transferred now, but I wish someone would have told me and given me insight on the scam that’s going on here. This school is overpriced (tuition compares closely to some of the top art schools in Chicago), many credits do not transfer, and the financial aid/​admissions department is a wreck. I dealt with about 8 financial aid advisors, many of which were let go. Forewarning to anyone thinking of attending this school, do your research and find out what your singing up for! The only positive thing I will say about this establishment is that my experience with my teachers was a good one. I had a few teachers who were actively involved & experienced in their field, and I learned a lot from them.

I just started going to this school in April, I attended a community college in Kalamazoo MI before for 2 years, I was able to transfer a lot of credits over to IADT.
I am nervous because of the loan amounts and because of the bogus accreditation accusations.
Brianna in the financial aid department is very helpful but it has taken a long time to get my funds from Chase which is not the schools fault.
When I first started at this school it was hard to get a straight answer as far as when classes started and who to get my books from. I was an on line student so it was hard because I was 2 hours away in MI.
They never sent my books and I failed my first two classes, so that was frustrating but I am in the appeals process so I can get refunded for those classes under the advisement of my counselor.
Susan Wade is my program director and she is very friendly and very knowledgeable.
We will see what happens! I start on ground classes in September but I will say that the three sessions of on line classes have been great and I have learned more in those classes than I ever did sitting in Community college in Kalamazoo, very interactive and a lot different styles of learning like a lecture, reading, interactive power points as well as reading assignments, quiz’s and study guides. I also like working with the teachers on line because they post
videos that pertain to the lecture and class and its a great way to learn from multiple avenues.

The Computer Forensics Program at The International Academy of Design & Technology is a complete joke. I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams being more unimpressed. Who decides these teachers are credible? First of all, my last CF teacher made passes at me, which sadly enough isn’t that big of a deal to me compared to the quality of his teaching. He seriously ate McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and anything else while he lectured in class. He scarfed that sh* down while he LECTURED. He seemed mentally incompetent… So much that I humored him when he answered my questions. It was bad. I had to record the lectures because of his slang and nonsensical analogies and explanations. And he talked so fast it was so hard to keep up with everything on top of his Ebonics and nonsensical thought processes. And his exams are ridiculous. He makes them really long and completely nonsensical. Many questions are repeated in different sentence formats, sometimes even giving away the answers. When that happens, he eliminates the one you got right because later in the test he accidentally giving the answers away. The questions are worded in ways that you don’t know what kind of answer he wants. It could be a number of things. On the midterm everyone asked to be able to use the book or at least notes and he complied to allow it for the first half, which I though was nice. I had studied very well so I wasn’t worried. I had written down everything he said to study in detail, which was a lot. I studied all of that plus much, much more. But I couldn’t seem to answer the questions, even with a book, and notes. It astonished me. A lot of the questions did not even have legitimate answers, yet we were expected to know. For example: «The process of placing evidence in bags and then labeling it with tags is called_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​.» I figured, okay, I don’t remember this but it sounds so simple, so I looked and looked in any section of the book that remotely mentioned bags or tags, but no term was listed for this process. So, finally I talked to him about it. He couldn’t find the answer in the book either. Finally, he pointed to the word bag on one page and the word tag on another quickly, and said, «It’s right here! Bagging and tagging!» I pointed out to him that it didn’t say «bagging and tagging». «You pointed to the word bag on one page and the word tag on another. In know way, shape, or form does anywhere in this book even imply that „bagging and tagging“ as a term. So I am supposed to guess?» Then he said, «Well I think it was in one of my PowerPoint’s during a lecture. Did you miss that class?» Another girl then agreed with me that he would not let us have copies of the PowerPoint’s to study «because then we could use them to teach the class somewhere else». (Ha ha) And when we tried to take notes from them in a hurry he would change the slides, and scold in a sarcastic tone, saying, «All of this is in the book». But clearly it wasn’t if this is the case. Then he said, «Well we talked about it for 30 minutes». Yet no one remembered. Other people were complaining about finding answers and the disorganization of the questions. He’d try to help by asking, «What did you guys put for question 17?» People would say, «Which 17?» It was so scattered. Then when they figured out which 17 it was people said they didn’t know, and couldn’t find it. Some guessed. He’d scrunch up his face and say, «That is sort of what I’m looking for. That’ll pass.» But he didn’t have a real answer. The grammar in these «exams» was utterly horrendous. It made it even harder to understand what the question was. I showed my roommate the exam. I asked him to try. He studied and everything. He read all SEVEN VERY LONG CHAPTERS, tried to answer the questions himself WITH THE BOOK AND NOTES and was appalled. He agreed with me, and seemed just as upset as I was. I had another very upsetting experience with the final exam (not open book) when he took my exam from me because I took too long. One of the students (the one that had anxiety attacks and cried sometimes because of how hard it was) was grading the exams! A CLASSMATE WAS GRADING THE EXAMS RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES! He verbally verified what I saw with my own eyes. Amazing. And this is just ONE of the ridiculous classes-​just ONE. I don’t have the energy to dive in any further to explain my point. It is offensive to know that I am paying $ 1800 plus interest for classes like this. I didn’t even think I was paying that much until recently. Some of the teachers are great — but not the Computer Forensics Department — at least not the ones I have had and the ones I have heard about. I am fed up with this program and will go elsewhere, but I have wasted precious time in my life, and will be paying off student loans for God knows how long-​ALL FOR NOTHING IN RETURN, except for bad experiences. I feel scammed and pissed. And I am not sure if the credits are even transferable. –Sigh–

Warning! if you are serious about fashion school please go to NYC! This school’s accreditation is worth squat! what does this mean? It means if you ever want to continue going to school your diploma is not recognized nearly Nowhere! Do not go to this school! I had a three week art project stolen, from, I believe my own teacher! I cry every each time I make my student loan payment because it is a $ 40K waste of money! they dont help you find a job, after graduation you are non existant. I was forced to give a one star otherwise, i would say NO STAR! piece of crap school!!!

I am not trying to be contrary by writing some terrible review of this school, but I feel compelled to say that my experience there really left me with terrible memories. But I do want to mention that there are some truly wonderful people there as well, like a few of the teachers or the bookstore guy. They were really dedicated to their jobs. But there were many more of the other kind of person. Quite a lot of staff there are completely inefficient, mean, unskilled, etc. like in the financial aid office or the library, or in charge of maintaining the building.
And the review by Sharlene is definitely something to consider before going there because it’s absolutely true.
The review by Allison B, though, is an exception that should be noted. Some people do find their niche there. They are really self-​motivated, and willing to overlook things like stealing or fights or undercover cops needed to patrol the halls. It is what you make of it in many respects.
You should definitely be a self-​starter, either independently wealthy or willing to take out a lot of loans, very patient, and really dedicated to your work.

The teachers here are good and experienced in the field. I personally have worked with some.
Fair warning though… this school has bogus accreditation. The organization that accredits them is part of the same large corporation that owns their school (including every other television college). Because of this, your diploma will not be recognized by most major universities and holds less weight than an Associates from a community college. Simple proof, call up a university and ask them if they take transfer credits rather than ask IADT if their credits are transferable.
That looks really bad when you apply for a job. I kind of cringe when I see resumes listing them as a school. Having a degree from IADT has as much weight as having a degree from a correspondence school.