princeton review video game design

Film Clips lovers parents are always asking us what schools we would recommend their children apply to if they want to learn how to make video games.

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Parents are always asking us what schools we would recommend their children apply to if they want to learn how to make video games. Now, we have the perfect answer: The Princeton Review's Top 50 Undergraduate Game Design Programs, created in partnership with GamePro magazine.

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Some advice to prospective students from top-ranked University of Southern California:

Elizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, which houses the Interactive Media Division: "One of the things we tell every student who comes to see us when they are still in high school is to get a very broad education. If you want to go into computer games or video games or you want to make immersive media, one way or another it is about the world you live in and extending that world," she says. "We always recommend exposure to music, art ... (and) history. When the faculty sees an application that says, 'I've never done anything but make movies all my life,' the usual reaction is 'You should have had a life.' Because you need something to make a film or a game about. Making games is hard work. I would suggest they get as broad education as they can and it's a very good idea to have had some training in math. You don't need to be a mathematician, but you certainly ought to get a good grounding in math. And foreign languages are great because it trains the ear. The broader-educated a student is the more interested in them we are usually."

Logan Olson, second-year Masters of Fine Arts student at USC. "The tools are out there right now that anybody can start to learn to make their own video games. Every one can easily download tools and start making video games," he says.

"Somebody who is just getting started try out Adobe Flash Pro CS4. It is a really big one and another really big one is Unity 3D is free and simple to use," he says. "Take a day and make a video game and see if this is actually something you want to do with your life. And on top of that you are building yourself a portfolio that will help you get into these programs." Then Profit Big Selling Video Games!

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.

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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."

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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/