College- What should I look for?

[Squirt]

My time has finally come to start looking for a college .
I've been advised to start searching and applying to colleges early on, rather than waiting for the last minute to submit my applications.

What I need help on is what exactly am I looking for?
By that I mean that I want to go into the video game development field. Not the graphic designers but the coders and the ones that make up the AI and any other coding behind the game.
What am I suppose to study in college in order to be able to do those things? What specific computer languages/sciences should I look for in a college? What math/science fields should I also look for?

I know that Full Sail offers a program that sets it all up for us, but i've read reviews that they are a for profit school and most that graduate don't get very far as the "quality" didn't match the price they paid ironically.

Also How many majors/minors can I have? What is a major/minor? What would you recommend I major/minor in if I am going into game coding?
Also, any college recommendations?


(An alternative for me is studying Biology if I can't find any code development schools)

[dom]

Pick a program you like at a local university so you can live at home. You graduate with a lot less debt.

[aznronin]

Where do you live?
GPA?
SAT?ACT?
Extracurriculars?
Class Rank?
You should check out some schools in the northeast but start by looking at your state university/safety school

[NuclearSilo]

My time has finally come to start looking for a college .
I've been advised to start searching and applying to colleges early on, rather than waiting for the last minute to submit my applications.

What I need help on is what exactly am I looking for?
Ask yourself what domain you really want. Before I wanted to be a game programmer too, but after years of study codes, mixing different languages, I ended up loving programming website.


By that I mean that I want to go into the video game development field. Not the graphic designers but the coders and the ones that make up the AI and any other coding behind the game.
What am I suppose to study in college in order to be able to do those things? What specific computer languages/sciences should I look for in a college? What math/science fields should I also look for?
C++/C#, logic, math application in computing, LISP, AI programming

I know that Full Sail offers a program that sets it all up for us, but i've read reviews that they are a for profit school and most that graduate don't get very far as the "quality" didn't match the price they paid ironically.

Also How many majors/minors can I have? What is a major/minor? What would you recommend I major/minor in if I am going into game coding?
Also, any college recommendations?


(An alternative for me is studying Biology if I can't find any code development schools)
There's also computing and science apply to biology

[Goseki]

I'll say this, if you go and live in a dorm, apply ASAP. Late applications get shitty dorms.

[SM-Count]

Computer Science, as for what languages you will learn that in school, it depends entirely on what field you'll eventually go into. C or C++ are safe bets. (actually, any language with memory management is a safe bet) Discrete mathematics and logic, lambda calculus, basically computer science stuff. You should focus on algorithms/optimization and stuff like that or else you'll end up like the developers of magicka. No idea what full sail programs. Major minor just means you take whatever classes happen to be in the program and they give you another degree, you can do as many degrees as possible but there's usually a semester limit on credit hours so something like 3 is very hard to pull off. If you're doing comp sci degree then CoE, robotics, digital circuits are the 'logical' choices, but you can do double major bio and go to grad school and focus on bioinformatics.

Last part has two very different answers. The basics is if you want to go to grad school undergrad school isn't as important as long as you do really well and do a lot of research at prestigious places. If you want to get a job with just bachelors then undergrad is very important. Usually, if you can't get into a really good school for your major (top 25ish) put more emphasis on price than prestige.

[BuDo]

I think its time to get in touch with people who are already working in that career field. Time to start asking around about how to get in touch with these individuals. Send out e-mails with a list of questions. Conduct informational interviews if you can.

You'd be surprised to learn how some of them end up as video game coders. Doing this can be a source of inspiration as well. I think this will help you in deciding what the next move will be.

[ZaKnighT]

Pick a program you like at a local university so you can live at home. You graduate with a lot less debt.

[EvGa]

My time has finally come to start looking for a college .
I've been advised to start searching and applying to colleges early on, rather than waiting for the last minute to submit my applications.

What I need help on is what exactly am I looking for?
By that I mean that I want to go into the video game development field. Not the graphic designers but the coders and the ones that make up the AI and any other coding behind the game.
What am I suppose to study in college in order to be able to do those things? What specific computer languages/sciences should I look for in a college? What math/science fields should I also look for?

I know that Full Sail offers a program that sets it all up for us, but i've read reviews that they are a for profit school and most that graduate don't get very far as the "quality" didn't match the price they paid ironically.

Also How many majors/minors can I have? What is a major/minor? What would you recommend I major/minor in if I am going into game coding?
Also, any college recommendations?


(An alternative for me is studying Biology if I can't find any code development schools)

SM-Count covered it, but I'll add some more / repetition.

You'll want to major in computer science. Find out what language your program uses primarily and get started learning and using said language. For game development I personally would focus on C++, but the language isn't as important as learning the programming concepts and theory. I say get a head start on learning your program's language because after a class or two of introductory programming the classes will shift heavily into computer science theory, using said language to implement the theory learned. In other words, they will stop teaching you how to code and expect you to implement the concepts using the code. Getting a head start will help you out down the road and translate into a few easy a's at the start of your undergrad career. (I saw wanna-be comp scientists flunk out of CSC 102...)

Obviously choosing the most prestigious college you can get into and afford is the best option. Meaning it's comp sci program is prestigious. That said, I'm a firm believer that even if you don't go to a top tier school you can have success. The school is only part of the pie that employers look at. They'll want to see internships, research, open source work, extra curriculars (ACM / IEEE / comp sci club, published work, programming contests..etc), and can you actually apply what you've learned during an interview...

I'm a senior with 20hrs left on a B.S. in computer science and a minor in information technology. I believe sm-count is also a cs major/student. (judging by previous posts and the discrete math / logic in his avatar...)

[SneakyBanana]

I was in your shoes two years ago, I was thinking about the following course's for University;

1. Game development
2. Software development
3. Computer science

I decided Game development was really something I would love to do but you have to think realistic, game development industry is really hard to get into and get a decent job that you will enjoy like a massive game company, you probably could land a job for a small broswer game company but I doubt that would be fun, big game companies like Infinity ward etc almost never have opening and if they do hundreds and hundreds of people apply for them.

Computer science I think is amazing, the stuff you cover during the course is interesting but the amount of work within the course is crazy, I am not sure how american university is but here in the UK you only go in for lectures and then you go home and do the work, you basically never get 1 on 1 help as there is 70ish people in your lecture.

Software development is great and you can also get into game development in a way, learning C++ and d3d you could create you own game hacks like COD4 wallhack, aimbot etc etc and the money is made there, I am currently working for two of the major game hack websites and making quite a bit of cash on the side. Also here in the UK software engineers are needed the most and the pay is around 27-30k which isn't bad for someone who is 21.


I ofcourse did Software and I enjoyed it a lot, my 2nd year is finishing this month, course was easy enough, coursework was hard as I did party a lot and left everything to the last minute, for example I am sitting now with coursework for 2 units to complete for next week and I have not touched anything -.-