SOUTHFIELD – Lawrence Technological University is ranked 17th on the Princeton Review’s just-published list of 2016’s top 50 undergraduate schools to study game design.  The Princeton Review chose the colleges and universities based on a survey it conducted in 2015 of 150 institutions offering game design coursework or degrees in the United States, Canada, and several other countries.

The company’s 40-question survey asked schools to report on everything from their academic offerings and faculty credentials to their graduates’ starting salaries and employment experience. Among criteria the Princeton Review weighed to make its selections: the schools’ academics, facilities, career services and technology.

LTU’s College of Architecture and Design offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in game art, graphic design and interaction design. LTU’s College of Arts and Sciences also offers a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science with a concentration in game software development. Computer science majors can take game art courses, and game art majors can take software development courses.

Amy Deines, interim dean of LTU’s College of Architecture and Design, said the LTU program is unique because the college “houses a variety of design programs that offer opportunities for collaboration” with designers in other fields. Deines and Thomas Goulding, acting chair of LTU’s department of mathematics and computer science, also said the program was unique in that it includes both art and computer science.

Said Goulding: “In their freshman year, our students are in classes where you have computer science majors interested in gaming along with art majors interested in gaming. Beginning freshman year, they are working collaboratively in teams, with art experts and software experts. That’s amazing. That just doesn’t happen anywhere.”

The Princeton Review’s full report on this project at www.princetonreview.com/game-design also features a companion list of “Top 25 Graduate Schools to Study Game Design for 2016.” It includes profiles of the schools with application information and links to the school sites.   

For the fourth consecutive year, the Princeton Review teamed up with PC Gamer, a monthly magazine published by Future plc (www.futureplc.com) as its reporting partner on this project. PC Gamer has a feature on the list in its May issue, available on newsstands March 29. The feature has information on some of the schools’ unique programs, class offerings, prominent professors, and alumni.

This story was published by Lawrence Technological University.