Education?

Get a standard Com-Sci degree, not a game-development one. You will thank me in four years.

Just curious as to why ChemicalImbalance? Most CS courses at a normal university dont focus on C++ and dont have very many Computer Graphics courses.

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Original post by dpadam450 Just curious as to why ChemicalImbalance? Most CS courses at a normal university dont focus on C++ and dont have very many Computer Graphics courses.

it seems alot of people don't take the opportunity to minor in related fields to CS. 45 to 60 is gonna be CS related. The rest you decide. So you can minor in computer graphics and SE (depending on what your college considers a minor based on amount of graphics). So yeah, definitely consider a getting a CS degree.

Is Full Sail's program more rounded than Brown College's program? My guess is that Brown College is more rounded, but that is the biggest difference. They are completely different programs. One is game design and programming and the other is art.

Brown College:

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Students can learn how to use design software, programming languages, modeling and animation skills, networking principles, level and world editors, and game engines used to design and develop games. This game design and development program also explores market research and business concepts related to game production and distribution processes, along with project management and creative design.

Full Sail:

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Maybe you are looking for a school tha teaches graphic design. ... Digital art production, digital publishing, interactive media design, and 3D computer graphics. ... DVD authoring, web design, digital video editing, and multimedia production...

You learn far more important things that will help you later in your programming career. Highlights are programming languages, data structures, algorithms, C++ (though in my experience to learn it well you need to do a lot of work outside class), user interface design, computer architecture, graphics, artificial intelligence, and operating systems. Of course some of these are optional and there are other good courses to take too, like parallel programming and networking. Overall you'll get a more rounded knowledge of computer science, and you may find something else to interest you besides graphics. I find algorithms and AI extremely interesting.

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Original post by dpadam450 Just curious as to why ChemicalImbalance? Most CS courses at a normal university dont focus on C++ and dont have very many Computer Graphics courses.

Game programming involves much more than just C++ and computer graphics. If all you want to learn is C++ and computer graphics, buy some books. The right way to do it is to get a broad computer science education and then specialize, not the other way around.

Isn't Brown an Ivy League school?

Seriously, who would go to full sail over Brown?

I think that would be the worst mistake of your life, personally. Many people do not respect full sail/digipen. Everyone respects a strong university.

Edit: As chemicalimbalance said, you will thank me in 4 years.

Giving yourself tunnel vision by looking only at C++ is likely to be a good way to find yourself out of work after awhile if you don't learn to work with other systems.

Get yourself a CS degree, but here is the kicker, just doing the work you are assigned in most of your classes isn't likely to cut it unless you have proffessors that are real slave drivers. Pick up extra projects on your own, test out things, and PLAY with it!

Code is an art, and it should be fun. If you don't have fun doing things (provided it isn't 'unknown errors') then you might be in the wrong field.

A proper 4-year CS degree doesn't focus on C++, for the reason that your CS degree will still be valuable even long after C++ has disappeared off the face of the planet :)

With a degree in CS from any decent school, self-learning the basics of any programming language should not be a challenge.

Standard university > full sail + digipen

enough said...

I can understand why people are knocking full sail, it's the TV school for video games. Digipen is spread almost entirely through word of mouth. I thought it was common knowledge that it is essentialy Nintendo U. Unless that's changed since Nintendo Power reported that in 1993...

I would like to know the job placement rate from these two schools though. We haven't heard from any disgruntled former students in this thread yet.

Well I see people getting jobs left and right out of DigiPen. I'm thinking about moving back home but some of the curriculum is html and they only have like 1 computer graphics class. By all means I know alot as a Freshman and am going to work on a full 3d game this summer with my friend, but does anyone here have a job at a game company, and what do you think. I mean I would rather have spare time (unlike digipen) to hit up books on my own and rock out some demos. But I contacted that university and they said most students get IT jobs :(

As captaincommunist said, digipen grads are all getting jobs.

Personally, I say go for the least expensive one. School is a joke - you don't need school to learn, and thus the only real benefit that you couldn't easily get without school is the paper that says you went. That paper, along with competence in your field (obtained on your own time, reguardless of the school you choose), will give you a shortcut to job opportunities that would otherwise have taken far more work.
You confuse school and education - the two are not the same.

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Original post by Extrarius Personally, I say go for the least expensive one.

I must strenuously disagree; in a very real sense, you often get what you pay for. Or as Derek Bok said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

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Original post by Extrarius Personally, I say go for the least expensive one.

I must also disagree. I am attending my current school due to the fact that it is the least expensive, and they are not only dangerously incompetent (losing marks, bungling exams) but their incompetence has cost me at least a semesters' worth of work to try and catch back up from my attempt to compensate for their idiocy.

The lecturers are dull, there are hardly any courses open, the commute is miserable, the facilities are rotting off the walls and the university seems happier dropping stacks of oil money on pointless pie-in-the-sky projects rather than hiring some professors.

You do get what you pay for.

I have a four year CS degree and an associates of Game Development from Full Sail. I got the CS degree first and couldn't land a job I wanted, so I went back to school. This is what I would recommend, as it is MUCH MUCH easier to find work if you have a four year degree. I couldn't find a game development job right away after graduating Full Sail, but I was able to fall back on the CS degree and still landed a decent programming gig.

YMMV I know a few dudes who went to Full Sail with no education other than high school who were still able to land awesome jobs.

"Before I went to Full Sail, I didn't even know what a software engineer was. Now I are one!"

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Original post by Extrarius School is a joke - you don't need school to learn...

For some people, school is not an effective way to get an education. Lots of people flunk out all the time. School just doesn't work for them. Those people should not bother going to college because it will be a waste of time and money, or maybe they should take Extraius' advice and get the cheapest degree they can find.

However, that is poor advice for most people. Like everything, the education you get out of going to school depends mostly on what you put into it. When you are paying for school, you are paying for opportunity. You are paying for guidance and assistance in your education. Generally, the more you pay, the more opportunity, guidance, and assistance you will get. It is a great investment. Get the best education you can afford.

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Original post by dpadam450 Well I see people getting jobs left and right out of DigiPen.

A professor from Digipen posted in another thread that 50% of freshman eventually drop out, and 70% of graduates have a job lined up. A 70% placement rate is not that great for such a specialized school. And if you do the math, you will see that only 35% of people that go to Digipen end up with a job. Those aren't great odds.

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Original post by Ravuya You do get what you pay for.

Not completely true. There are good cheap schools. I went to the University of Minnesota, Morris campus. It cost the same as going to the Twin Cities ("main") campus and compares favorably with many of the private colleges that cost a lot more. I remember one of the ones I toured (Carlton College) said, "Don't worry about cost, we'll help you find a way to pay for it. For example, if your parents can only pay $10,000 a year..." I stopped listening at that point, but I think it cost something like $30,000 a year there. UMM might not quite measure up to Carlton, but Carlton isn't 3x better than UMM.

Hey, it says the OP is from MN. Have you looked into the UMTC, UofW-Madison, or NDSU? SDSU, SD School of Mines, UND, UMD, and UMM would also be worth looking into. You'll get a good price because of in-state/reciprocity (I think we also have reciprocity with the U of Iowa system which wouldn't be a bad choice, either) and a good education (most of these schools have a very good reputation academically and the rest certainly aren't bad).

Also, I recommend getting a CSci degree with a minor or second major in Art. You'll be at least as well prepared and with an education that's more broadly applicable (i.e. more options for plan B if plan A fails or turns out not to be what you want).