The Princeton Review has hailed DigiPen as one of the top five game design schools in North America and abroad for the 14th consecutive year. The education services company ranked DigiPen No. 5 on its 2023 list of the top 50 undergraduate schools, and No. 8 on its list of the top 25 graduate schools.
“I am super thrilled for our community to be ranked again in the top five game design schools in North America,” Christopher Comair, Chief Operating Officer for DigiPen’s Redmond campus, said. “It’s a recognition of the passion and hard work of every single student, faculty, staff, and alum here at DigiPen.”
The school rankings were the result of a 2022 survey of administrators at 150 institutions in the U.S., Canada, and abroad offering courses and degrees in game development. Schools were ranked based on responses to over 40 questions collecting data on school curriculum, facilities, research, student awards, faculty achievements, graduate salaries, alumni success, and more.
“Students work together to navigate the challenges of creating game and interactive media projects for the next generation,” Rob Franek, Editor-in-Chief of The Princeton Review, said of DigiPen. “Their hard work, without a question, pays off, and they’ve got the accolades to prove it.”
Indeed, in the last year alone, DigiPen students globally have won multiple awards at the GDC Narrative Analysis Competition, top placements in the World of Warcraft Student Art Contest, first place in the NAFIPS Explainable AI Challenge, and a range of superlatives at the global Rookie Awards. One student team recently garnered over 2 million unique downloads for their game on Steam, and another team saw their project fly aboard a Blue Origin rocket.
DigiPen became the first college in the world to offer a four-year degree in game development in 1998 with the BS in Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation. Since then, alumni from DigiPen’s programs in computer science, art and design, and music and audio have been credited on over 2,000 commercial video games, including three of the 2022 Game Awards’ nominees for Game of the Year — Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarök, and Horizon Forbidden West.
For more information, you can view the full rankings and report on the Princeton Review website.