westlawn & europe

[acar]

i would really like to know whether westlawn institute is recognized in europe as well or not...i mean, not necessarily in academic circles but in the professional arena...

[ErikG]

I think any degree might be as good as the other.
Whatever the degree.
If you've graduated with a good grade it should help you to get to meet the people in charge of the big companies design departments. My guess would be that most of the work that you might get as a newcomer would probably be as a draftsman doing detailed verions of someoneelses work. Unless you could show a really interresting design concept that really blows their socks of, no one would hire a newbie designer to design a complete boat.

In Europe there are a number of ways to learn Naval design. But if you only want to concentrate on yacht design there aren't any options.

So get the best education that you can afford, my personal preference would be The Landing School, but since I have a family it's not that easy to just pick up all our belongings and leave. As far as the two distance learning schools I would guess that Westlawn might be a hair better than YDS.
But any education is what you make of it!

I'm going to join the YDS to begin with for a number of reasons.
1 you only pay for one lesson at a time.
2 the price difference is quite substantial in YDS favour
3 at YDS you know that Tom McNougton is the primary grader and teacher
at westlawn you get "someone" whom you dont really know anything about

The one BIG problem I can see with YDS is that noone has ever graduated! Why? because you can get a job before you graduate or because YDS isn't quite up to scratch? I don't know.

I might have given you more questions and probably no answers to your real question.

Best of luck!

Erik

to eric g I would also like to speak with someone that graduated from YDS is there any graduates out there????????

[ErikG]

As far as I know there are no graduates at all from YDS at the moment!

According to Tom MacNoughton the reason is that the ones that make it almost through the course get employed before graduation time.

The question does raise some concern if the course is the best way to go.
Because of my curent financial status I'll continue with YDS for the time being.
But if I could afford it I'd take westlawn instead.
The main reson for choosing Westlawn over YDS is that Westlawn is quite well known but YDS isn't.

I have no problems with YDS so far but the example drawings are on traditional type vessels so far, and they don't exite me that much.

Not that much else to tell about the course as I have used most of my study time reading and drawing on the computer instead of doing my lessons as I should. Hmm. I need to get more disiplined! I think it'll get easier now as I'll get a room of my own to have all my designstuff in where the kids won't be allowed.

If you have questions about YDS, do contact Tom, he answeres pretty fast to any questions about YDS via Email.