I'm boredddd so I made this post. I was wondering what the GPA is for my dream college - Full Sail University in Florida. As I googled on some information about it, I learned alot of people had 3.5+ GPA but then one student on a forum, who did 14 months/21 months for his bachelor (this was 2 years ago when he posted this) at Full Sail said the following:
Hi,
I'm DJ Hirko and I am a current Full Sail Game Design and Development student. I am in my 14th month (out of 21) in the bachelor's program. I have yet to fail a class and have only received one grade lower than an A/B.
I've wanted to be a game programmer for years, and Full Sail is helping me achieve that. I've learned much more at Full Sail than I would have learned on my own, and I've gotten valuable experience from the team-oriented classes.
I programmed in C++ for about 4 years before coming to Full Sail, so the programming courses have been pretty easy for me. In high school, I was a slacker. I didn't care about high school, because it wasn't focused on what I wanted to do. I had a 2.2 GPA in high school. I went to Full Sail straight out of high school, being one of the youngest in my class (I'm now 20).
It really irked me when someone said "Show me a guy straight out of high school with a 2.0 GPA, and I'll show you a guy that won't make it through a competitive academic program." Well, that's me. At least the former half. I'm doing well here because game development is something I care about and am extremely interested in. Just because someone did poorly because they did not care, does not mean they will do poorly when they do care. Unless, of course, you're implying that Full Sail is not a competitive academic program.
It's the curse of the geeks to be extremely focused on certain things, and not so much on others. I love games and programming, and I work extremely hard at programming. As I said before, don't judge someone only on grades.
Full Sail is amazing because it is not a purely academic institution. We get a "real world education" with an emphasis on applying what you learn, right then and there. In the physics class, you learn all the physics and then you apply it in an application in which you have to write the physics library. In OpenGL, you write programs using different OpenGL techniques every day. So on, and so forth. Yes, you probably won't have as well rounded an education as someone who went to a general education school, but you will have the knowledge, experience and specialty to work in the industry.
Yes, it is true that there are some "bad apples" that get through, but on the whole, most of the people in my class are great programmers and people who can work in a team. There are probably companies that have had bad experience with Full Sail grads, but the ones I've talked to, and I'll admit it's only been a few, have been happy with the grads they've hired.
Somewhat of a rant, but I needed to get that off my chest.
If anyone has any questions on Full Sail, feel free to ask and I'll answer them the best I can. I also saw Keith Staines and Tamir Nadav (hoped I spelled your name right) posting earlier, so I assume they'd be happy to answer questions also.
- DJ Hirko
It really inspired me, and from that point I knew that was my college (9th grade my GPA was a 2.5!!!!@!#). Anyway, you can post what makes you want to go to your college, or you don't have to, I also want to go to Full Sail because it's great for Game Design.
P.S. Whiteboy, if you ever read this, THANKS FOR TELLING ME ABOUT FULL SAIL
