| The Princeton Review considered 700 schools in the U.S. and
Canada, surveyed 500 of them and came up with the Top 50 list. Administrators
at institutions offering game design coursework and/or degrees answered the
survey in 2009 and 2010. Its 50-plus questions covered academics, faculty
credentials, graduates' employment and career achievements. Criteria included
the quality of the curriculum, faculty, facilities and infrastructure. The
Princeton Review also looked at data on scholarships, financial aid and
career opportunities.
By Mike Snider
USC ranked No. 1 among video-game design
programs
Kyla Gorman, left, and Samantha Vick use character controllers at the
University of Southern California.
How To Make Money Selling Video Games. Wholesale And Dropship Source
Included
found at usatoday.com
Have designs on a career creating video games? Now there's a cheat sheet to
help you find the best schools.
Head west, to the University of Southern California's
Interactive Media Division, for the top undergraduate education in game
design. That's the finding of a new listing from test-prep company The
Princeton Review, known for its annual college "best" lists,
including Best-Value Colleges (BestValueColleges.usatoday.com) — and, let's
be honest, its best party school list as well.
THE RANKINGS: Top 50 game design schools
Seven other top schools are sprinkled along the East
and West coasts:
•No. 2: DigiPen Institute of Technology,
Redmond, Wash.(Graduate Kim Swift developed award-winning game Portal.)
•No. 3:Drexel University, Philadelphia.
(Alums include creators of Alien Hominid and composer for Myst III and
IV.)
•No. 4:Becker College, Worcester, Mass.
•No. 5:Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, N.Y. (Graduate Kathrik Bala is CEO of Vicarious Visions,
maker of Guitar Hero games for the Wii.)
•No. 6: The Art Institute of Vancouver,
British Columbia.
•No. 7: Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic
Institute. (Grad Mike Gesner is lead designer on virtual world Second Life.)
•No. 8:Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge.
"Our core mission is providing parents and
students with good admission advice," says David Soto, director of
content development at The Princeton Review. "We're hoping this can add
legitimacy to an emerging market."
After The Princeton Review collaborated two years ago
with game developer Ubisoft on its own My SAT Coach game for the
Nintendo DS and subsequently released test-prep apps for the iPhone, "we
got the idea that this seemed to be an emerging field," Soto says.
In all, The Princeton Review surveyed 500 schools
before arriving at its top 50 with game design studies.
Programs were evaluated on four main criteria:
academics (courses and skills fostered), faculty (especially the percentage
who had worked in the industry), infrastructure (technology and game
laboratories) and career (internships, job placement). "The schools that
scored exceptionally well, the top eight, were really top-notch when it came
to all four," he says.
GamePro magazine is publishing the list in its
April issue, on sale next week.
"Anyone who considers themselves a hard-core
gamer, pretty much their dream job is to get into the industry," says
editor in chief John Davison. "We wanted to look at finding something to
arm (readers) with the knowledge and information to do that."
Top school USC makes good use of its proximity to game
studios located in and near Hollywood. For instance, Electronic Arts has
donated $8 million to the university's interactive entertainment program and
an endowed faculty chair, currently held by Tracy Fullerton. Graduates Kellee
Santiago and Jenova Chen have created games such as flOw and Flower
for the PlayStation Network, and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom,
recently released on Xbox Live, was a thesis project for students Matt Korba
and Paul Bellezza.
"People are beginning to understand it really is
a career," says Elizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinematic
Arts, which houses the Interactive Media Division.
She cautions parents who overly fret about their
children's obsessions with video games. "This is a growth industry, a
big growth industry," she says. "And I think we are going to see
wonderful things happen that we haven't even imagined yet."
How To Make Money Selling Video Games. Wholesale And Dropship Source
Included
|
The survey results:
Eight programs were listed in order as the best programs
with the other 42 listed alphabetically.
1) University of Southern California, Interactive Media
Division
http://interactive.usc.edu
Los Angeles, Calif.
2) DigiPen Institute of Technology
www.digipen.edu
Redmond, Wash.
3) Drexel University, RePlay (Digital Media & Computer
Science)
www.replay.drexel.edu
Philadelphia, Penn.
4) Becker College, Game Design and Game Programming
www.becker.edu/gamedev
Worcester, MA
5) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Games and Simulation
Arts and Sciences
www.gsas.rpi.edu
Troy, N.Y.
6) The Art Institute of Vancouver, Game Art &
Design/Visual & Games Programming
www.artinstitutes.edu
Vancouver, B.C. (Canada)
7) Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Interactive Media and
Game Development
http://imgd.wpi.edu/
Worcester, Mass.
8) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore-MIT
GAMBIT Game Lab
http://gambit.mit.edu/
Cambridge, Mass.
The Princeton Review's other 42 recommended game
design programs
Adelphi University (Garden City, N.Y.)
http://home.adelphi.edu/~stemkoski/
Amherst (Mass.) College
https://www.amherst.edu/
Angelo State University (San Angelo, Texas)
http://angelo.edu/dept/computer_science/
Arizona State University (Tempe, Ariz.)
http://engineering.asu.edu/cidse/
Baker University (Baldwin City, Kan.)
http://www.bakeru.edu/faculty/vkolesnikov/
Baylor University (Waco, Tex.)
http://gaming.ecs.baylor.edu
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio)
http://www.case.edu
Clarkson University (Potsdam, N.Y.)
http://www.clarkson.edu/digitalarts
Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.)
http://www.tiltfactor.org
Full Sail University (Winter Park, Fla.)
http://www.fullsail.edu
Georgia Southern University (Statesboro, Ga.)
http://bcook.cs.georgiasouthern.edu
Hampshire College (Amherst, Mass.)
http://hampshire.edu/lspector
Indiana University, Bloomington
http://www.iub.edu/
Lewis University (Romeoville, Ill.)
http://cs.lewisu.edu
Lycoming College (Williamsport, Penn.)
http://www.lycoming.edu/ComputerScience/
Lynchburg (Va.) College
http://cs.lynchburg.edu/briggs
Marshall University (Huntington, W.V.)
http://www.marshall.edu/isat/cit/
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
http://aims.muohio.edu
North Central College (Naperville, Ill.)
http://northcentralcollege.edu/
Northern Michigan University (Marquette, Mich.)
http://www.nmu.edu/admissions
Oklahoma Christian University (Oklahoma City, Okla.)
www.oc.edu/academics/arts_sciences/art_design/
Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Va.)
http://www.ece.odu.edu/~yshen
Pace University (N.Y.)
http://vulcan.seidenberg.pace.edu/~skevoulis/
Polytechnic Institute of NYU, Brooklyn
http://bxmc.poly.edu/
Rice University (Houston, Tex.)
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~jwarren
Sacred Heart University (Fairfield, Conn.)
www.sacredheart.edu/gamedesign.cfm
Stetson University (DeLand, Fla.)
www.stetson.edu
The College of New Jersey (Ewing, N.J.)
http://www.tcnj.edu/~imm
The College of St. Scholastica (Duluth, Minn.)
http://www.css.edu/x864.xml
The Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio)
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/graphics
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://iiae.utdallas.edu
University of California, Riverside
http://www.ucr.edu/
University of California,Santa Cruz
http://ugrad.soe.ucsc.edu/
University of Delaware (Newark, Dela.)
http://www.cis.udel.edu
University of Denver (Denver, Colo.)
http://www.du.edu/
University of Illinois at Chicago
http://www.uic.edu/index.html/
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
http://art.umbc.edu/varts/faculty/mcdonald.php
University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, N.M.)
http://agl.unm.edu/games/
University of North Texas (Denton, Tex.)
http://www.eng.unt.edu/ian
University of San Francisco
http://web.usfca.edu/cs/
University of Utah (Salt Lake City)
http://www.eae.utah.edu
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
http://cnmtsrv4.uwsp.edu/ |
just
added:
