I’m big on education. The more you know the better your music will sound, the more jobs you will get, the more money you will be paid and the more fun you will have. Last week I was talking to a friend of mine in Spain and he was telling me about his experience at the SAE Insitute over there. First off, he told me he paid about 9000€. Immediately I let out a big gulp. Teachers should be paid yes. Equipment is expensive yes… but still. I give him “props” as he’s not a native Spanish speaker and all his classes are in Spanish. Because of this however his grades are low. This doesn’t reflect on his music or drive because his tracks are well produced and he’s involved with some decent commercial work already. However, he complains that he can never get studio time at the school except for early in the morning around 8:00AM. He also mentioned that he has several rotating substitute teachers, none of which he has confidence in. He doesn’t like that they gave him the cheapest Mac laptop (the white one). I guess he should have known which computer he was going to get before entering into the program.
I know this post could be seen as a little controversial but I got the notion it was a good topic because over at the Sound on Sound Magazine forums a new bloak asks what people think about SAE almost daily. Almost daily the reviews are mainly negative. Here’s an example: click here
“i’d do a cost analysis: student loans versus potential income. hmmmmmmm, let’s see… potential income = zero” – Sqye, Gearslutz Forum Member
So are any of you currently enrolled at SAE? What do you think? Any allumni want to chime? Is it worth it? I think a lot of people coming into the music business want to know.
Some forum threads on the subject at Gearslutz: click here and another one.
This entry was written by , posted on October 25, 2008 at 8:37 am, filed under Uncategorized and tagged learning, SAE, school. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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Hi!I was about to join SAE next year to do filmaking but I read too many bad things about this places.I dont know you 10 grants is a lot of money I almost sell a kidney to study there.My research tells me not to do so…
Also when you get to see the final film students projects,compare to london film school or academy, they are crap.I dont say my videos are far better but my kidney stills intact.
I think the amount of written things against and about SAE tells the truth, SIMPLY NOT WORTH IT!!
My friend signed up this year and regretted it within a month, managed to get most of the money back and is now studying Film Making at the London Film School.
I have started the audio diploma at SAE London this september and am so far finding it great :) I believe it was a good choice as my teachers seem to be very knowledgeable and I am learning lots. After around 8-9 weeks of Golden Ears practical sessions, the EQ & Dynamics assignment, the audio edit assignment and many lectures I am seeing my knowledge of electronics, physics, maths and my ability to mix improve which for me is exiting. I imagine the course can only get better as we haven’t started our recording/post production assignments yet.
Don’t let everyone put you off SAE.
If you have the money, take a tour, ask students in the building of there opinion
and If its not your thing, I’m sure there are many other colleges equally as good!
You really can’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it.
WOW!!! I love this discussion. lol so much propaganda, as for me im going to be finishing a National diploma next year and want to go further with my education as i feel there is alot more for me to learn. Whether its getting my foot into a studio or going to an educationl faciity, to be honest SAE seems like “The Shortcut”. I’ve been looking into going to sae london for about a year and decided last week that im not when i found out SAE is actually a franchise..
http://www.saelicensing.com/
I think i might just sign up to, get a bank loan and have my own little SAE branch in canterbury!!! Why not!!! lol
Now from what i gathered some SAE institutes might be brilliant some might not, due to the nature of who owns which franchise. I dont want to study with a corporate company that may or may not have good managers and staff.
Regardless of their quality gear having passionate lecturers that care about where you want to be is important for your own confidence, having someone lecturing that doesnt give a crap about you and just want his/her pay check it can be very damaging not only to the student but the institution aswell.
At the end of the day your putting in £10000 and for that you expect to get at least a basic level of compitence and lecturers that cre about their jobs and the students. other than that the £10000 opens a door
that not many people get the chance to go through.
As for the illegal software it shows to me that the business men/women investing in opening up new franchises dont know how exspensive the whole professional studio shabang is, day one of my music tech course we learnt that, along with how hard and cut throat the industry is. I find this disgusting as not only have they tarnished the whole SAE franchise but the audio engeering industry,
I shall stop rambling and leave you with some little advice from my personal research:
Remember SAE is a franchise, who knows who own each individual one, lets just hope most of them are music industry proffesionals…..
For £10000 you could setup a basic recording setup, start recording local bands for free, with these recording you stick them in your portfolio, if you have the drive and know about audio engineering.. If your someome who knows nothing about music technology i recomend going to your local college, yes they may not have £600 000 mixing desks but you will learn a lot of the basics in a wide aspect of areas within the music industry, and if you have the drive you will go that extra mile and do some researcing and epanding your knnowledge.
Once youve built up a little portfolio start requsting jobs within studios, show them your work, tell them what equipment youve used on your recordings! But dont expect to be hands on on the mixing desk if you do get a job. Just starting off as a tea boy is great! you’ve got foot in the door and from that point you put 110% in, it might take 6 months it might take 6 years but if your passioate and you have a dream you’ll get there in the end.
oops ive rambled on again :)
Anyway SAE isn’t for me so i believe that SAE is not worth the money!
Regards
Marcus
Forgot to mention this is what is said on the licensing website in their investments and benifits section:
“In the creative media industry and its related sub sectors, there will never be a saturation point for formally trained engineers and producers because of the dynamic nature of the industry. There will always be new technical innovations which require trained and re-trained engineers and producers before the creative talent can leverage upon it. Therefore, to invest in the business of providing education in these fields will always be relevant provided that the curriculum is always updated to keep up with current technology levels. ”
So if youve got the drive to become a studio engineer or something then GO FOR IT! Engineer and producers in the feild! SAE is your place!!
Hi Marcus,
If you look more closely, on the saelicensing website there is an animation with the title “Territories for Licensing” showing the countries that this applies to, e.g. countries like Botswana and Belarus. You will not see countries like the UK or Germany there – as these are not franchises. All operations in ‘core’ (‘western’) countries are directly owned by SAE. Sorry to disillusion your ideas about your own SAE in Canterbury, but that’s not going to happen …
All SAEs whether they’re franchises (e.g. India, Thailand) or ‘normal’ (UK, USA, etc etc) are subject to quality control mechanisms – in addition to all sorts of regulations and approvals in each country (e.g. ISO9001 in Germany, state accreditations in USA, BAC/Skillset in UK etc).
So, you can be assured that there is not this uncertainty as you describe it.
I hope this helps.
Greetings,
Matthias Postel
SAE UK
SAE Amsterdam is definitely not worth spending any money on.
These guys aren’t to be respected at all.
I can’t even imagine how these guys can bare to live with themselves putting off this awful scam.
Not only do I find it an insult to people who have
The only way I found a job is because I have the passion, but I really feel insulted and disrespected.
I was naive and actually I knew the school would have been a total joke.
The only reason I went there is because I had to chance to use studio’s, but man, you could rather do a daytime job and bag to be a coffeeboy in a studio and climb all the way up.
The point of studying is that you get a good education so you shouldn’t do this coffeeboything in the future.
If you don’t have any talent, there is no way you are going to make it with this education.
I did it, I did the goddamn thing, and please…spare me to even consider going back there.
The only thing they are after is your money, i even think they don’t want talent at there school, cause these people who get attention can tear the whole thing down…
Everywhere I come, I try not to speak about it, I just have my portfolio and never say a goddamn word about the school.
They are worse than a bunch of crack-junkies doing what they can to get some money…
And really, the things I heard there from teachers, man, it’s just sad!
Please,
Even if you’d like to record music, consider something else…
You are not going to go out of the school with a job, a good feeling or connections…
the only thing you know is that you lost 10000 precious dollars, and really than they become precious, that’s even the worst thing…
It’s all about the money, it’s almost like a sect!
I tell you, go there for a tour, and laugh, laugh hard…so they wake up and get a sense of respect…
Bunch of losers there, man!
Found this on the Sound on Sound Forum.. SAE Institute has gone into liquidation :)
SAE EDUCATIONAL TRUST LIMITED Liquidation
(Company Number 03077134)
At a General Meeting of the above named Company, duly convened
and held at One Great Cumberland Place, Marble Arch, London,
W1H 7LW on the 19 October 2009 the following Resolutions were
passed as a Special Resolution and an Ordinary Resolution
respectively:-
“That the Company be wound up voluntarily and that N A Bennett,
of Leonard Curtis, One Great Cumberland Place, Marble Arch,
London W1H 7LW, be and is hereby appointed the Liquidator of the
Company for the purposes of such winding up.”
Full Story here:
http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/59219/pages/18189
SAE Institute
From : youtube
Company Number: 03077134.
Name of Company: SAE EDUCATIONAL TRUST LIMITED.
Nature of Business: Educational services.
Type of Liquidation: Creditors.
Address of Registered Office: One Great Cumberland Place, Marble
Arch, London W1H 7LW.
Liquidator’s Name and Address: N A Bennett, of Leonard Curtis,
One Great Cumberland Place, Marble Arch, London W1H 7LW.
Office Holder Number: 9083.
Date of Appointment: 19 October 2009.
By whom Appointed: Members and Creditors
From all I can see SAE is run by a different company: http://london.sae.edu/en-gb/content/77/About_Us
I ordered a brochure the other day and there’s only reference to that company on the letterhead etc.
I visited last week for a tour in London and the college is most definitely up and running (quite impressive actually). They mentioned that they have christmas holidays now until first week of January, but I think that’s like every year.
So I think what you found must be relating to some old company structure.
I noticed on the SAE website that this Matthias Postel is no longer the Manager at SAE London. Probably his fault they went into liquidation anyway by reading the comments on here. He also writes on here “are subject to quality control mechanisms” if he’d been subject to quality control maybe SAE would not have gone into liquidation in the first place.
hey people,
is there anybody who actually got a job offer after graduating from SAE? im planning to go to SAE NY. in an interview Misner claimed that he has to place the 75% of his graduates in NY due to a state law. (sry bout my terrible english) i really want to get a job in NY related to audio engineering cause some of my relatives live there. i’ve been recording/composing/performing music for 7 years. do you think its possible?
went to sae london to study web design. biggest mistake of my life.
7 grand for the first year, 90% of the stuff you learn can be learned online at the comfort of your own home for FREE.
my fucking tutor was an ex student and my web design skills were better than his.
my graphics design tutor couldn’t even speak english properly, even made a few spelling mistakes in one of the e-mails he sent me. he couldn’t even run a lesson properly. classrooms were packed and smelly.
they’ve tried putting me 2 grand into debt when all i had to pay was a cancellation fee.
I read this post with interest after noticing that SAE were starting to broadcast a few more interviews with music producers and industry types. Great news, i thought, finally i might start learning a little more post my HND qualification from SAE Liverpool in 2003, something that might be comparable to graduate support……
I ended up there after enrolling at Liverpool uni to do Music as they had promised they were building a new Recording suite in 2002 which we would have lots of access to. After the 1st year it was still not completed so i started to look at LIPA (the Mcartney funded/ affiliation) organisation, before discovering SAE which was newly opened.
I finished the audio engineering diploma and after a spell being treated like a retard in Metropolis studio London (all through my own contacts, nothing to do with SAE graduate support) i spent some (considerable) money making what is now cut and sussed records studio. Its been a lot of hard work with very little finincial reward for the last 7 years. Truth be told, i built a recording studio in Durham (UK)- possibly an error in hindsight as since the 70s Durham might as well not exist on the music map. I get by doing a mixture of DJ work, PA hire and recording sessions, mostly for new- ish bands and solo singers. Barely break even, but (like a fine wine……. ahem) im improving with age.
I do love working with people making music so its not all doom and gloom, and i make a living now but only after 4 or more years of not having ANY money whilst i built the contacts necessary to support myself. This is the key point i wish to make with my comments here. SAE have been, in a word, TERRIBLE with grad support. I will balance that with the following facts: we were supposed to visit SAE London to work on their Neve Legend but the trip was cancelled, so when i had a chance to get some work engineering for Paul Tucker (Lighthouse Family) a year or so after i graduated, who happened to have a Neve Legend, i was allowed to re- visit SAE Liverpool to sit in the classes who were learning how to use the newli installed Neve (replacing the Soundtracks Jade console).
But back to my point- there is no grad support as far as i am concerned. Never once have they pointed an opportunity my way, and i’ve never received any emails telling me about vacant posts in the industry, or inviting me to revisit the college for talks from Industry people. As i mentioned: terrible. So, what should you take form this if you are considering going to SAE??
My advice is to go if you are 100% committed to being an audio engineer and will do ANYTHING and stop at NOTHING to get into the industry. You Must be prepared to act as anyone who works freelance does- you gotta be brazen, sell yourself at EVERY poortunity, say goodbye to being mr nice/ shy/ retiring guy and focus instead on getting your feet in doors, talking (often lying in fact) to people and essentially continually push to get a lead in the industry, as SAE are not going to do any of this for you. Be prepared to diversify. Be prepared to have no money for at least 2- 3 years after you graduate (unless you FLUKE it and record a demo of a band that gets signed, has a few hits and you get a royalty or similar). I’ve made enough money to pay tax for the last three years, and am on an upward curve after 7 years working at it, but previously money was TIGHT.
SAE offers you the chance to get the experience and expertise to get ahead in audio. What it doesnt do is spoon feed you it, all it does is give you the potential to achieve it which is why it is so important to decide what you want earlier rather than later.
I now also work as a freelance photographer, and regularly work for Northumbria University design department. As much as photography is a passion, its also just because i couldnt find enough money in recording. Their graduate recruitment record makes me green with envy, and their post grad support bears no similarity to SAE.
Ok, ive said my piece, i hope this helps people make an important life decision.
James