Where Your Final Exam Ends With 'Game Over'

Where Your Final Exam Ends With 'Game Over'

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Story Published: Dec 6, 2002 at 3:42 PM PDT

Story Updated: Aug 31, 2006 at 12:54 AM PDT

By Joe Furia

REDMOND - It's exam time at many local colleges.

Students are cramming for tests, finishing up papers, and ... playing video games?

Well, they do if they want to make the grade at a school in Redmond.

Imagine a college where you build and play video games, and get a degree for doing it.

Welcome to Redmond's Digipen Institute of Technology.

"You get to make something really amazing and people enjoy using it and that's the coolest thing," said Christian Crowser, a sophomore.

But you know, there's a serious side to all this fun.

One student said: "People don't know what we're doing. They think we're playing video games all day long," which, of course, they are. But: "It's a lot of work though to make these things happen - tons of work."

The students here have an incredible workload: Calculus, physics, computer science -- on top of their video game work. Students have to spend 13 hours a day about six days a week while school is in session.

There are 450 students currently in school at Digipen, and 436 of them, are men.

Anna Brunoe is one of the school's 14 women. As a long time video game junkie, she knows gaming is dominated by men.

"It's always been that way," she said. "It's never bothered me though - I'm used to it."

Whether women or men, the real world is clamoring for these techno brains.

The college claims 92 percent of the students from Digipen secure a job within three months of graduation.

Serious business for a college where final exams end with the words: Game Over.

Some 25,000 people request admissions information from Digipen every year, but the school can only admit about 200 new students.

For More Information:

DigiPen -- www.digipen.edu

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