Tribeca Flashpoint College Reviews of Associates in Video Game Design

"Not only did 1-2 student(s) receive a job from our class, you will be struggling to pay back loans for the rest of your life working in a totally unrelated field. It is NOT WORTH IT to attend here, it's more expensive than a 4 year school and the only thing you leave here with is a lifetime supply of debt. Everyone I still know from school is working some other job with thousands of dollars of debt working jobs that their entire pay checks go to their loans with only $20 to keep for himself. It's absolutely ridiculous, heed my words, do not attend here, you will only leave with a lifetimes worth of extreme anxiety and stress that eventually may lead to you needing medication to combat the overwhelming stress of struggling to pay back the school, I know SEVERAL of my classmates who need medication because of the stress they now have. Save yourself the life of trouble, it's not worth it."

"Don’t buy the fluff, don’t believe the numbers. One of the main selling points for picking TFA for me was their job placement number, which was something like 70% when I attended. Don’t buy it. There is no way it is accurate, they are either counting stuff like a retail position at game stop as a “industry job” or flat out lying and fudging numbers. My guess is they have an EXTREMELY loose definition as to what an industry job is. A year after graduation I was looking at my class and the amount of people in game industry jobs was shockingly low. From my specific focus, which included around 30 students, I believe only 3 or 4 (myself included) made it into the game industry. Out of my entire game and interactive media division I seriously doubt more than 15% made it into the game industry. This was in 2013 by the way. Personally for me it worked out and I found work a year after school though in all honesty I think I would say I found work DESPITE my time at Tribeca. If I would credit TFA at all I would say I ended up finding a job because of a few EXTREMELY dedicated instructors and a lot of hard work and sleepless nights. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, those instructors are no longer at TFA. Their curriculum is extremely counterproductive for honing your skills to help you find a job. Let’s say you want to be an artist in the game industry, you would expect most of your classes would revolve around getting you training so that you could achieve this one day. Not at TFA. My time there involved taking only ONE glass relating my focus each semester.. As for the other classes most were okay but generally just got in the way. Also I got the impression that the teaching staff was a lot of the time slowed down by the administration and hindered by upper management intervention. I would highly recommend you look elsewhere for this kind of education, try a 4 year school that’s going to have a better curriculum and give you more time to develop your skills, 1.5-2 years with Tribeca’s systems will most likely just leave you with a massive amount of debt and a bitter taste in your mouth. Also I believe recently they have been cutting staff and consolidating programs to be smaller and more cost effective for TFA. If you are considering going to this school for the digital art/animation I urge you to reconsider and do some research on alternative programs. In general I wouldn’t trust for-profit schools like this. Also carrier services were extremely unhelpful and honestly somewhat condescending of the game students in general. The jobs they refer were for the most part jobs you were either grossly over qualified for or grossly underqualified for. Also it is true, as I think someone mentioned on here before, that they at one point put a game stop retail position up on one of the job boards. When I attended it seemed clear to me that the schools image and profitability was more important than the students. On a personal note I think its criminal for schools like this to skew information about job placement numbers and focus so much on the schools image and marketability while neglecting students the training they need to find the actual jobs. I don’t get how people who are in charge of stuff like this can sleep at night, misleading people trying to get an education and better themselves for profit is just appalling. Let me finish by saying that this review is purely about their game/animation programs and no other curriculums like film or music as I didn’t experience those."

"Throughout my time at Flashpoint, the curriculum changed so frequently that all the students became familiar with several programs (that we had to pay for) but never became more than a novice at anything unless they took the initiative to teach themselves outside of class. As a programmer, we learned one of the least useful languages which ended with no job offerings after graduation. Everything I know now is self taught."

"If it was an option, I would give this school zero stars. Tribeca Flashpoint is a terrible waste of time. Do not come here or send your children here; the price tag is too high and you come out without much of an education. Your time is wasted on classes that are truly unnecessary and teachers do not listen to concerns, in fact, they spend their time justifying the "reasons" why the teach the way they teach. Their "career development" classes and their job fair are a joke. It is unclear to me how many students got jobs out of those scams but, judging by the amount of unemployed graduates, I can assume it's rather low. Upon seeing how past graduates are faring, I am not looking forward to searching for jobs on the field I've studied. If you're passionate about the fields that this school "teaches", do yourself a favor, get a monthly membership to either Lynda.com or DigitalTutors.com and learn from them... you'll be learning faster and more, not to mention you'll be saving a lot of money."

"Tell us about your college experience.The school is a challenging one, and you will be pushed to the limits almost every week. If you want to learn about a particular field, this school is great, but the job will not follow. The career services team is insufferable, and will drive you to the edge of insanity. All they want is a quota (placement in field) average from you, and once that is met (it won't), they will stop contact with you altogether.Would you get the same degree if you could start over?I would NEVER choose TFA if I had a chance to start over. The school likes to mention that every school has the same type of career services program that depends on the student, but I know graduates of other schools who we're basically handed jobs before they even graduated (mostly real universities such as Purdue, Ball State, etc.). You will learn everything you need at the school, but you won't get a job from it.What advice can you offer other students?Do not choose a trade school, they are awful. Tribeca Flashpoint Academy boasts a 73% placement rate of students, but it requires 70% to even be considered a school, which is pathetic really. On top of all of this, you will be $50,000 in debt, with an 8% interest rate, for a TWO year school, with an associates degree. Don't waste your time, go to a real university."