I know that many of us here on the forum are students, so I was just wondering where everyone is studying and what you're pursuing. As for me, I'm in my 3rd year in the animation program at Northeastern University in Boston, mass. Its a decent program - we exclusively use Maya for our animation studios and the professors are usually knowledgeable and sometimes taken directly from local game companies. I'm considering a graduate degree in animation, but I haven't really started looking around yet, as Northeastern has a five year program so I still have over two years to go. My main beef with the school is that besides the animation studio classes (which introduce the students to modeling and focus heavily on character animation), they offer very little in the way of specific courses oriented towards advanced 3d modeling, texture creation and lighting. Most of what I have learned about these topics has been through the online community.

So what about you?
 

I´m finishing my graduation in Physics in UFRJ -Brazil (4 years total) , and I will start my after graduation in 3D game development in the UVA university (1,5 year), it covers programing and a bit of modeling too. It seems a bit short but it requires full dedication.

After that I  intend start working with game development. If I don´t find a company that will hire me, which is very likely to happen, I will try to create a small company, since I have a few friends with the same desire.

I'm studying general computer programming and web design/development. Pretty standard stuff for the wanna-be professional code monkey :). When I finish up (two years left), I plan to head out to Washington and try to get a job for either a small games company, Microsoft (in either their Xbox or XNA areas would be sweet), or start my own little game development studio.

Its awesome to hear that other students are interested in starting up small studios. Im hoping to use my experience in art direction for my XNA game as a launching pad for future work with the same team of friends. I really think that indi development is going to keep growing and the members of forums like this will be well known in the industry down the road.

I start my classes with Devry University in a couple of months. I'm taking their Gaming and Simulation Programming. I have been programming for years but without a degree. I figure that I wanted to learn to program games and Devry was the best place to start.

Currently I am taking the XNA Foundation course from PixelBox Academy. I am planning in work on the gamedev industry in a couple of years. Forums like this one are really cool for people who are starting to work with XNA.

Cheers 

-j 

I'm doing a Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment- basically three years of game programming with XNA, at QUT.

I'm study computer programming in the University [Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana - México City], and now, i working in the creation and launching [in the next days] of the Videogame Laboratory.

This project is not only to create professionals, also glides to enter in the market developing games.

I'm currently at Brunel University West London studying straight Computer Science BSc with Digital Game Theory MA. Just about to finish my first year!

At the moment game development is just a casual hobby, although I would really love to get into the industry once I graduate. Unfortunatly I don't really have much of a portfolio, a text-based adventure game here, a tetris clone there, etc.

I just finished a computer science degree from Florida State, and in the fall I'm going to start at FIEA (fiea.ucf.edu), which is a grad school in Orlando with a master's in interactive entertainment.

They offer 3 tracks, programmers, producers, and artists. The real bonus is the student to teacher ratio is excellent and all the professors have real world experience, many of them coming from (or still working at) Electronic Art's Tiburon studio which is only a few miles from here (they make the Madden games among others) so when you graduate, they have excellent job placement.

Wow, that sounded like an advertisement. :)

art4drunk:

As for me, I'm in my 3rd year in the animation program at Northeastern University in Boston, mass.

I know a gal who goes there with you. She loves Boston.

As for me, I study Computer Science at CU Boulder.

I am currently in my Final Project (design and build a 3-D game in 5 months) at Full Sail in Winter Park, Florida.  The specific degree program that I am in is a Bachelor of Science in Game Design and Development (almost all completely programming based, very little in terms of design which is probably why it is now called just Game Development).  Not a bad program at all, and you really do learn a whole lot.  As for length, this degree program is short by normal standards (21 months) but you go to class for 40 hours a week.  Not that bad of a program over all.

I attended both Florida State and Full Sail.