On the first day of class, Stefani Bay asks her freshman students, "How many of you want to be famous designers?"

Most of them raise their hands.

Then she tells them to write down the names of 20 famous fashion designers — and they can't do it.

"I ask, 'Well, why do you want to be famous if you can't even really name the fashion designers who have made the biggest contributions to 20th century fashion?" says Bay, who teaches at Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago. "I think fashion has gotten confused with celebrities — that it's about being glamorous."

A career in fashion design does sound that way — designing clothes for the rich and famous and then watching beautiful models show them on the runway. Your name on billboards and in slick fashion magazines. Influencing the trends in stores ranging from Target to Bergdorf Goodman. Earning millions of dollars a year.

But for most designers, that's pure fantasy. The median salary for most designers is $56,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even a show at New York Fashion Week is not enough to catapult a designer to fame.

"It's been very hard," says Laura Poretzky, whose show for her Abaete collection was Thursday. "It still is. It's a struggle every day. There are millions of other designers doing exactly what I am doing, and everyone works like crazy, so it's not easy."

BREAKING IN

Each year, thousands of students graduate from fashion school with their sights set on becoming a Marc Jacobs. But breaking into a business where there are scant openings is tough.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 16,600 people working as fashion designers in the United States in 2004, the latest figures available. The Princeton Review reports that the odds of becoming an internationally famous designer are 160,000:1.

Those odds though aren't deterring students from choosing fashion as their major. Applications to the fashion program at Parsons have increased by more than 20 percent since 2004, a bump they attribute in part to the popularity of "Project Runway," which films there. The number of freshmen who declare fashion as their major has more than doubled since 2001.

YOUNG DESIGNERS

MFA graduates from Academy of Art University in San Francisco -- who debuted their collections during New York Fashion Week -- are not that starry-eyed.

"I don't want to move to Paris and be a huge designer with runway shows," says Christine Welcher, who showed casual women's sportswear. "I'm much more interested in doing functional type clothing like a great ski jacket. Now that doesn't mean if Ralph Lauren called me tomorrow and said, 'We want you to come work for us,' I would say no."

Academy is the only school to have a show at Fashion Week. Simon Ungless who runs the MFA program, says the event is a great launching pad for his students, but they will still have to pay their dues — long hours for little to no pay.

"We do this because it's important to give them a platform," he says. "But the reality is going to set in. Monday morning, they are going to be making phone calls and knocking on doors to get that first job."

Finding that job can be tough. Laurie Browne, 32, another Academy student, says she has found many designers want someone with two to three years experience, so it's hard to even get an interview.

THE MUST HAVES

A fashion degree does not guarantee success. Neither does being a shopaholic, loving Vogue magazine and knowing how to sew.

"I always tell my students that if you are the kind of person who sleeps on the subway, you are probably not going to be good at fashion," says Bay. "You should be looking at everyone. You have to have a certain awareness and a certain aesthetic orientation. You have to learn the technical skills and have a lot of business knowledge. And some of this is luck — being in the right place at the right time."

Many designers end up finding opportunities in interior design, graphic design, production and advertising. Bay says she works to expose her students to some of the less glamorous careers — working in textiles or production.

"The chances of being successful are great in fashion. But fame? Very few people become world famous," says Bay.

Still, she says, there are many successful fashion designers who are working behind the scenes and find their jobs rewarding.

"There are plenty of designers who are individually successful because they work for manufacturers. No one knows their names. But those designers don't care because they are doing what they love to do."

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Megan Scott is an asap reporter.

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