Portfolio School/Post-grad ideas

Yesterday I got a rather hefty package from the Chicago Portfolio School in the mail. It had information from the school, a blue Sharpie with the school logo on it and an issue of the Chicago Reader, a free weekly newspaper in Chicago. This is a great way to get students interested in your school. I requested info from five portfolio schools in total and this was by far the most elaborate setup that was sent to me. The other schools included Brandcenter, Miami Ad School, Brainco and the Portfolio Center. Although I recieved really well put together brochures from Brandcenter and the Portfolio Center, the Chicago Portfolio School got me extremely excited about the prospect of portfolio school. I was actually looking up apartments in Chicago and was really pleased to discover that Chicago apartments are far cheaper than those in Boston or NYC (sidenote: Why are there no portfolio schools in Boston?).

So back to the main point of this post...With all of the work and portfolio building I am doing before graduating here at Ithaca, will I still need to go to portfolio school to get a job as a junior art director? I look at the books of students who are just graduating from portfolio school, and I can't really measure myself against them. I see some good work and I see some bad work. I am working hard right now on not only coming up with a bunch of new campaigns, but working with my professors and other creative students to make sure my work is worthy of going in my book. I have two campaigns in there already, but throughout the next three semester I should work on at least four or five more campaigns in class alone that will worthy of going in my book. However, this still bring me to my question of whether this will be good enough to be able to make it into advertising without having to shell out another $15-40k in school fees.

After talking with my creative professor, I have started searching for a summer internship for summer '09. I have already been in contact with Modernista! in Boston and have sent out several other e-mails to agencies such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Strawberry Frog, Cowboy and Wieden Kennedy. My professor told me that getting an internship would be the most important thing (besides a solid book) that would get me a job as a Junior AD. Hopefully this will all pan out and I will be able to get an internship, do some great work and after graduation get into the industry.