/digipen/ - DigiPenitentiary

If you are from a wealthy family, go for it. If you are not, do not. It is that simple.

You can get a BSCS or BSCE degree anywhere else and get into the industry just fine. Save yourself a ton of money and years of stressing yourself to death. I'm not even going to get into it all right now, you can scan the rest of this board and read for yourself if you'd like.

As much as people on this board like to dump on it, the honest truth is that, whatever its flaws, DigiPen is a highly regarded school. When you graduate, the industry knows at least one thing about you: you can handle the worst of situations that they will throw at you. Working 20 hour days for weeks on end is not uncommon, and there have been times when I've gone several days without sleeping.

Yes, you CAN get a CS degree from anywhere else and still make it in the industry. But being a DigiPen graduate carries a lot of heft to it as well.

If you're not interested in CS, and are thinking more towards the BAGD or BFA paths, then I might suggest looking at USC as well. They have a higher rated program, and have the resources of a fully funded college.

An unfortunate reality of DigiPen is that a lot of the people in other majors, particularly in the RTIS, tend to think that Designers aren't worth as much. By the time Junior year comes around, they start to realize that's not the case.

>>2334

>Working 20 hour days for weeks on end is not uncommon, and there have been times when I've gone several days without sleeping.

You're only alive for like 80 years or so, why spend four years of it doing this to yourself? Maybe some people have a higher tolerance for this kind of unhealthy behavior, but I sure as fuck don't.

>An unfortunate reality of DigiPen is that a lot of the people in other majors, particularly in the RTIS, tend to think that Designers aren't worth as much. By the time Junior year comes around, they start to realize that's not the case.

Designers are valuable, but only if they have qualities as a designer that they learned outside of DigiPen. Every design class that you take in the first two years of DigiPen (at least, I can't speak beyond that) is absolutely worthless bullshit, at least for the price you're paying. You could turn all of the useful bits of every GAT class into like a 100-page book. DigiPen does not teach you how to design things well. This is a fact, and anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.

>>2337

Senior RTIS here, the times I've pulled '20 hour' nights were when I was being a lazy piece of a shit and pushed everything off. Everything ended up being due +- a day from each other. My fuck up and I didn't do any of that last year.

If people do that beyond their freshman year it's absurd and they need to learn time management. If you're a BFA then drop out and go to anywhere else to be an artist. That degree has unreasonable expectations.

>>2383

You and your Actually Somewhat Well-Established Degree Program privilege. Just because you had a manageable time in RTIS doesn't mean that the rest of the school gets fucked over hard by other degree programs' bullshit.

>>2413

I don't disagree and I only spoke from my perspective in the degree which is why I mentioned that rather than just saying I'm a senior. I'm ignorant in the demands of the other degrees, but to me it more or less sounds the same. "I waited til last minute" along with a couple 'bullshit' courses. But again I have no idea.

As much as people on this board like to dump on it, the honest truth is that, whatever its flaws, DigiPen is a highly regarded school, in the worst ways. When you graduate, the industry knows at least one thing about you: You have social problems and are stupid to know you've been taken advantage of right in front of your face.

>Working 20 hour days for weeks on end is not uncommon, and there have been times when I've gone several days without sleeping.

You're bad at life if you can't manage to get that 20 hours down to 6 or 8.

>Yes, you CAN get a CS degree from anywhere else and still make it in the industry. But being a DigiPen graduate carries a lot of heft to it as well.

It'll be the opposite actually as most companies do not actually care for DP students because of they're inability to fit in. CS students from accredited colleges actually learn to communicate on a more social level than a DP student. Most employers in the industry know this.

For example, of all the employees of Valve, I believe there are like 2 DP students and they were from 10-20 years ago.

>If you're not interested in CS, and are thinking more towards the BAGD or BFA paths, then I might suggest looking at USC as well. They have a higher rated program, and have the resources of a fully funded college.

Agreed

>An unfortunate reality of DigiPen is that a lot of the people in other majors, particularly in the RTIS, tend to think that Designers aren't worth as much. By the time Junior year comes around, they start to realize that's not the case.

Designers are needed, but they're the low man on the totem pole and are relegated to shit jobs before they get to actually pull any weight.

>>2417

In reality most don't give a shit where you came from. It's what you've made and how you talk during the interview. The entire "Why are Digipen students are better?" thing is bullshit and I don't even know why that was asked during company days. Those are the people that'll have troubled getting a job.

>2417

>>Working 20 hour days for weeks on end is not uncommon, and there have been times when I've gone several days without sleeping.

>You're bad at life if you can't manage to get that 20 hours down to 6 or 8.

Do you mean while at school? And if so, by "bad at life" do you mean "not crazy rich?" Because man, I probably wouldn't have dropped out if I could take it slow and graduate in like six years or something. Two years in, I realized I would be here for at *least* another three, and I was already out of money, so I decided to call it quits. The default course schedule (for BSCSGD at least) is fucking stupid and unreasonable. But maybe that's just because I was a BSCSGD who was a core programmer on the team and not just some designery type who could only write Zilch?

>>2420

I didn't have money. Still don't.

However, if it takes you 20 hours to do something should/could be done in 8 you need to rethink your strategy.

A lot of students would ask the question, "How long is a reasonable amount of time to do the assignment"? That's because want to know if they're doing something wrong.

>>2424

You're not wrong, but I don't think you know what the BSCSGD program has you do, at least in the first two years. Basically take all the BSCSRTIS stuff, get rid of programming the car with asm, and the graphics stuff sophomore year, but keep all the math and other CS stuff. You are still expected to be a programmer in GAM. (Not a problem, because I love programming.) Then toss in the time-consuming GAT shit, the exact same stuff that the BAGDs are doing. You're judged on the GAT stuff just as equally as if you were a BAGD.

So yeah, basically you get the worst of both worlds, and nobody gives a fuck because you're not Ellinger's favorite pet degree program, you're just the weird bastard child that DigiPen still keeps on life support for no discernable fucking reason. I mean, it's a great idea for a degree program; I love programming, and I love game design. I wanted to learn "real programming" (which I already knew, but still), not fucking ActionScript and Zilch. But I also wanted to learn about how to make fun video games. Turns out DigiPen doesn't know shit about the latter anyways, but even if they did, BSCSGDs get fucked in the ass more than any other degree program except BFA. But at least the school pretends to care about that degree program.

>>2425

DP sucks, they should be sued.

>>2425

The depressing part is that I went into BSCSGD for the exact reasons you did, but after my third year of assfucking with no end in sight, I transferred my ass out of there. I'm one of the lucky ones, though - it turns out I'm going to graduate in only 2-3 years with a business degree since I breezed through my calc courses, had all my gen eds covered in high school. But still, that's going to be 5 or 6 years for a 4-year degree, plus mucking about in an aborted program.

My biggest gripe was that some of the GAT professors (LOOKING AT YOU HOLCOMB AND MORRISON) didn't even know that there were two design degrees at the school or what was expected of those BSGDs in the other half of their classes.