So far I hhave been looking at this school (UAT) to pursue a degree at and was wondering if this is a good school or not so far I have heard great things about it but thought that I should come here to get some more views about the school or any other schools that may be better. Thanks, Allen PS I have heard of Digipen and it's expensive and I know college is expensive but UAT is cheaper.

What is your goal?

Attending a game-specific school will not guarantee a game development job.

Attending a game-specific school will limit your choices, and exclude you from the full job market.

If you are going for programming, I recommend a traditional computer science degree. Not computer technology, not computer systems, not computer programming, but computer science.

If you are going for art, I suggest a a traditional BFA degree.

Quote: I have heard of Digipen and it's expensive and I know college is expensive but UAT is cheaper.

State universities are cheaper than both of them, and the degree works just as well for employment purposes.

If you still can't afford it or don't want the student loans, get an associates degree at a community college, then transfer. Some community colleges offer full bachelors degree programs. If you qualify you can get scholarships, federal grants and state grants that fully pay for community college tuition. The same is true for state universities, although usually they don't cover quite as much of the bill.

It doesn't matter if you pay $500K or $50K for your degree. All that matters is that you have the full college degree.

Quote: Original post by frob
All that matters is that you have the full college degree.

Of course in the eyes of a potential employer any degree is rendered meaningless if the candidate's resume reflects an inability to properly construct a sentence using commas and periods properly I think you know what I mean it's not to say that the candidate doesn't have the ability but it sure would be nice if they took two seconds to communicate their thoughts using the basic protocols have a good day thanks for listening yes i made an awful joke but look at it this way i could have been someone in the position to hire this person and instead of having to deal with a bad joke this person would have had to deal with starvation and homelessness heck some people might even assume that this person will never make it through college with such poor language skills but I'll give this person the benefit of the doubt since this person's only spelling mistakes were typos that said if this person wishes other people to give up their time and thought then this person should probably also make that same kind of investment in the first place. :)

My goals are to become a programmer,designer,or developer for a game company. Hopefully Blizzard(W.o.W)But that will take lots of work I know.

By the way I'm not even out of high school yet. I was looking for colleges to apply to.

Quote: Original post by allenburcham
By the way I'm not even out of high school yet. I was looking for colleges to apply to.

I'm glad that you didn't take offense. Have you also investigated Full Sail?

I'm sure that all of these schools are excellent. The main thing about going to university is that it should teach you how to learn on your own. Have you tried learning how to make games on your own?

Well I just bought the book Beginning C++ Through Game Programming. So I guess you could say yes but not really I'm learning C++ right now and have no other programming experience. I feel I am picking it up fairly well though. Also I have investigated Fulsail, SCAD, RIT, and UAT. Those are the colleges that have interested me but UAT seems best fit right now. The only problem so far is I don't really know what to do to prepare myself for the ACT and SAT. I took the prctice ones already but i need to get at least a 25 or around there for the ACT and I got an 18 without studying. I really don't know how welll I did on the PSAT.

I really have nothing specific to offer in terms of how to study for the ACT or SAT. I'm sure there's lot of study guides that you can get though. The only way to get better at any test is to practice the appropriate kinds of problems until they feel like second nature.

If you want to do anything in life, you will need to keep your eye on the target while you slog through all of the boring monotonous parts of the learning process. It seems like you have what it takes. At the very least, you seem level-headed and realistic, and that's pretty much the hallmark of a born professional.

That said, if you don't make it into college for some unforeseen reason, don't throw away a career in programming. Just teach yourself. I am curious if places like UAT teach about generally useful topics like runtime complexity with any real depth, like a "real" university does. If they don't, then they wouldn't really be churning out game programmers, but simply half-baked hackers who won't have a chance when it comes to solving problems of any real difficulty (being on the forefront of game programming means being constantly bombarded by difficult problems that require general scientific knowledge).

[Edited by - taby on January 30, 2010 6:34:38 PM]

Yes, I try to be as realistic as possible so I don't get to ahead of myself and forget about what is needed. Here is the link to the UAT site http://uat.edu/
I'm also considering the idea as I think is stated above by someone else to just get a Computer Science degree. I'm also going to go to community college for basics, free due to the A+ program I am in.

Hi Allenburcham, I see your great interest in making computer game. In university, I have plenty of friends studying computer science. Studying computer science may not teach you have to program with different consoles, but will tell knowledge in such as: computer architecture, algorithm, artificial intelligence, and nowadays hotspots. I think that computer science will provide a deep and wide fundamental to medium computer knowledge. After all, the IT world changes so rapidly, a solid grabs of fundamentals may prepare you to waggle less in face of the changes tomorrow.

I'm sorry about that I sound like conservative. But I'm just one who loves to make computer games too.