I feel the nerves about the two year period with no breaks and the lack of financial aid packages upfront. I too am wondering how I will pay for whatever grad program I decide to go to. I heard through the grapevine that if you are serious about attending and talk to FSU about your financial situation, they will work with you. There are also assistantships that basically cut your tuition in half (and if you are hired to do an assistantship the first hear, you can apply for in-state residency the second year which cuts your overall yearly tuition down from ~49,000 to ~$20,000). Point being if FSU is your dream school and you are truly invested in attending, there are ways—probably more than other institutions—to seriously lessen the financial burden.
Now for my experience with the school: when I first landed in Tallahassee for the interview process, I thought to myself "WTF am I doing in Tallahassee?" Florida is a weird place, no doubt. That feeling quickly went away when I entered the holding room for the interview process and there were several amazing current students to greet us and answer questions. They were thoughtful, extremely generous with their feedback, I could tell they all got along well, and their way of analyzing stories was holistic, consistent—and impressive. After the interview experience, I was extremely impressed by how well the program is run. I applied because I had heard from a friend how community focused they are—and my experience on campus proved that to be the case. They do things like have the students write feedback to everyone in the cohort at the end of each semester so that everyone can work on improving together and they make sure everyone is really helping each other out on their sets. Popularity contests don't exist here–because the structure of the program literally doesn't allow it. I loved how seriously they take leveling the playing field for everyone in the program by pushing everyone's skill and funding student projects outright. If people raise money for their projects, the rule is that the funds need to be split among the rest of the cohort (which I would hate in the real world but I think is great for the sake of an educational environment). They have classes like "production ethics" that teach things like chain of communication on set and how to solve complex production problems. There are no children of billionaires spending $200,000 on their productions. Everyone has the same resources, which in my opinion puts the focus back on learning and honing your craft.
One thing that I will say (perhaps the only thing that I saw as a major weakness) is that the student work at this school looks and feels like student work (whereas NYU, USC, AFI, and Columbia films mostly look and feel very distinct). There isn't much variation in terms of visual style and the stories are pretty similarly constructed. What this could mean is that FSU focuses more on production process and getting people ready for the industry...and less on cultivating the individual artist. That said, if you are an artist with a real creative vision you can succeed anywhere (Barry Jenkins loved his time at FSU) and perhaps this environment could even be seen as an advantage since you'd have an incredible crew of people to reliably make art with during and after the program (whereas at some of the other schools, the percentage of prima donna artist types is likely higher). On the flip side, for some, consistently being around a bunch of brilliant artists has its advantages and can often push the artist's overall vision further. It really depends what you're looking for.
So to answer your question, I've got decisions to make. FSU definitely caught my attention and once I hear back from all of my schools, I am going to seriously consider it as an option for my graduate film education. I've been in this industry or years and understand the business so my goal is really to further my artistic vision, strengthen my understanding of story, and build a community of collaborators. I think FSU could be a great place to do this.
