RIT ranked as a top video-game design school

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Tona Henderson, director of RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media

Rochester Institute of Technology is one of the top schools to study video game design for 2014, according to new international rankings from The Princeton Review.

RIT’s game design and development program was ranked seventh at the undergraduate level and eighth at the graduate level. RIT’s program is housed in the School of Interactive Games and Media within the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

“RIT is one of the top 10 schools in the country based on the quality and caliber of our students, faculty and staff in the gaming school,” said Tona Henderson, director of RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media. “As a large program with more than 600 students, the support of the Golisano Computing College and RIT has been instrumental in our continued role as national leaders in game design.”

The Princeton Review, one of the nation’s best known educational services companies, partnered with PC Gamer to produce the “Top 25 Undergraduate and Graduate Schools for Gaming 2014.” The fifth-annual list is published in the May issue of PC Gamer magazine.

The Princeton Review selected the schools based on a survey of 150 institutions in the U.S., Canada and abroad offering video game design coursework and/or degrees. To make its selections, The Princeton Review weighed a number of criteria, including program curriculum, facilities, career services and technology.

RIT has been a pioneer in the field of video game design and development education. Gaming students work with RIT's Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC), an on-campus research laboratory and production studio that helps students bring ideas from prototype to commercial production in the marketplace. Graduates of RIT’s game design and development programs have gone on to work at companies including Microsoft, Sony Playstation, Zynga, Arkadium and Google.

RIT’s Bachelor of Science in game design and development provides a broad-based undergraduate education in computing while exposing students to the breadth of game development processes. Students are required to complete coursework in the liberal arts, social sciences and the laboratory sciences.

Students who pursue RIT’s master’s degree in game design and development take a series of core courses in such areas as emerging technologies, electronic entertainment and history of games. Students can focus on game engine development or artificial intelligence for games while supplementing these studies with courses in a variety of other areas. The degree culminates with a capstone project in which students create their own games.

The Princeton Review’s rankings for the top 10 undergraduate and graduate schools to study video game design for 2014 are listed below. To see the full list, go to the Princeton Review Website.

Top 10 Undergraduate Schools to Study Video Game Design for 2014

1. University of Southern California (Los Angeles, Calif.)
2. University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah)
3. DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, Wash.)
4. Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.)
5. Hampshire College (Amherst, Mass.)
6. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, Mass.)
7. Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, N.Y.)
8. The Art Institute of Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia)
9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.)
10. New York University / NYU-POLY (Brooklyn, N.Y.)

Top 10 Graduate Schools to Study Video Game Design for 2014

1. University of Southern California (Los Angeles, Calif.)
2. University of Central Florida (Orlando, Fla.)
3. Southern Methodist University (Plano, Texas)
4. University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah)
5. DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, Wash.)
6. Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.)
7. University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, Calif.)
8. Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, N.Y.)
9. New York University / NYU-POLY (Brooklyn, N.Y.)
10. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.)