I had been at the University of Maryland in Business Administration from 87-91 and then MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in 91 building a portfolio with the intention of applying to CCS and Art Center.
I was accepted at both but the trimesters and cost of Art Center were just too much (since it was the third school I’d been at, my parents said “enough, we’re not paying anymore”) so I was paying for it myself (or so I thought).
CCS offered me scholarships and grants and I was going to be lobbying to transfer a good number of credits from UofM and MICA so I chose CCS. The program was outstanding from the start - John Steiner and Tom Molyneaux still stand out as amazing instructors in my mind. The opportunities were great and the jobs coming out were plentiful - it helped that I was a little older than the other students, I tended to take everything more seriously and graduated at the top of my class.
The icing on the cake was this; At my graduation, my Mom handed me a check for my entire student debt - she said, “We were always going to pay for this but we wanted you to be motivated”. That was very cool.