From 2004-2007 I attended The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM).

FIDM is a private arts college (and not solely a “fashion school”) that is headquartered in Los Angeles. I attended and graduated from FIDM’s San Francisco, CA campus.

I have an Associate of Arts degree from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM). I graduated from FIDM’s San Francisco campus in July of 2007.

An AA from FIDM is the qualitative equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts from other equally NASAD accredited educational institutions.

I have partial AA credits in Visual Communications, where my initial career at FIDM began. I switched my major to Merchandise Marketing for an Associate of Arts degree, the only degree FIDM offered at the time, after my initial six months of enrollment.

As of this moment, I have completed 96 credits. This is an additional six months’ worth of credits more than required for an Associate of Arts degree. I graduated with a current 3.35/2.9 cumulative GPA with the later being due to a grade slump before switching majors from Design & Visual Communications to Marketing.

Based on FIDM’s concentrated coursework approach, an Associate of Arts is a qualitative equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts — though quantitatively speaking it can only be categorized as an Associate of Arts when applying.The goal for FIDM grads is that at the of time of their graduation from FIDM graduates will possess the knowledge base of graduates who hold Bachelor of Arts degrees from equally accredited universities. FIDM’s approach allowed me to start working for companies like GAP Inc. only nine days after I graduated.

The prestige of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising is on par with California College of the Arts, the Rhode Island School of Design, and both the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design located in NYC.