for fashion, you have two major choices. FIDM or OTIS. There have been numerous articles in the LA times, OC Weekly, OC Register, and other newspapers & magazines about the two battling it out, for which one has more "Fashion" related classes, careers, successful graduates, etc etc.
Typically, people that go to FIDM and graduate are pretty successful in their own right. A handful of my HS friends went there and now they're doing very well.. doing makeup & hair for Ford Modeling Agency and other big names. One of my exes goes to FIDM and he made it on the cover shoot for a magazine article of "OTIS vs. FIDM" (man he looked good too! *drool* at that moment i forgot why we split. lol) and has done numerous fashion shows for LA fashion week and whatnot.
One of my best friends goes to FIDM right now and she has bout a year or so left and she'll be done. Grueling work and lots of all-nighters, but it's totally worth it in the end.. everything she does looks freaking amazing - even though she says it isn't.. we artists are always so self-critical. lol.
I know tuition is killer.. especially since it's a private school. Private fashion is expensive as it is.. then you have to buy all sorts of supplies/etc. I think FIDM you get everything (mostly) in a supply package at orientation.
I went to the Arts Institute of OC, and studied interior design.. i dropped after a year and half, but even then my tuition was still expensive. It's in the near 18k for my 1.5 years there.. which would've equated to about 40k for the AA.
