California Institute of the Arts Rankings by Salary Score™

I was super excited when I saw that there was a program that could possibly bring technology and audio together. Me being engineer as an undergraduate I was super stoked when I could pursue education in music technology. However when I started my classes I realised that it was total waste of time and money. This is me talking only for music technology department. Nobody cares about you here. There’s one mentor for 30 students who barely has time to meet up with and talk to you about your career and education.... Read More The department head is never at school. Never seen him at all. The whole Purpose of this program is to bust your ass off with project you hopefully can find somewhere within school and possibly put it on a portfolio. And end up with a studio assistant job. The best part about me doing an MFA is that I have all the classes with BFA students and the curriculum remains the same. Except an MFA student has to finish an additional project to get HIgh Pass grade. Not sure if that’s how a Masters course is. If you really want a challenge you can take a class which VST development which teaches audio programming with C++ . Be aware , this class has no TAs and no time given by the teacher to help you in case you are stuck. You have to take time outside class read books and watch YouTube videos to catch up. They say that the prerequisite for this class for this class is intro to programming 1. Do not believe that. This class requires way more experience in coding than you think it does. Career fairs in CalArts is pretty useless. I attended one and it was the most useless thing ever. There are three kinds of companies that show up. 1. Companies that want to market themselves in the market and offer extra classes for you to take. 2. Companies that want to hire 1 or 2 students only. 3. Companies that have no relevance to the school. There was absolutely no one hiring music tech students. I personally do not recommend the Music Tech program. This was my experience here at CalArts. I had to to take a supplemental program from UCLA in web development to get a job.

This school is expensive and does not allow for much interdisciplinary study at a high level. The BFA Film program is extremely niche and experimental. It does not prepare students to work in the film industry with any specialized skill set. The film education (technically speaking) is general. The school indulges poor mental health and impracticality. This program has ties to the art world, not the film industry. It is most relevant if you want to be a video artist in that sense, though don't expect to make... Read More a living doing that. I would not recommend this program for people who want to work commercially, or want to make a living as a filmmaker. I would also not recommend this program for people who seek a broad arts eduction in different disciplines.