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Where did people who work as game designers at Microsoft go to college?
| College | Location | % of College Degrees |
|---|---|---|
| DigiPen Institute of Technology | Redmond, Washington | 6% |
| University of Washington (UW) | Seattle, Washington | 5% |
| University of Waterloo | Waterloo, Ontario, Canada | 2% |
| Carnegie Mellon University | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | 1% |
| University of Southern California (USC) | Los Angeles, California | 1% |
| Full Sail University | Winter Park, Florida & Online | 1% |
| Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) | Rochester, New York | 1% |
| University of Utah | Salt Lake City, Utah | 1% |
| Stanford University | Palo Alto, California | 1% |
| Vancouver Film School | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | 1% |
| Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) | Atlanta, Georgia | 1% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | Cambridge, Massachusetts | 1% |
| University of Texas, Austin | Austin, Texas | 1% |
| University of California, Irvine (UCI) | Irvine, California | 1% |
| University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | Los Angeles, California | 1% |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Urbana-Champaign, Illinois | 1% |
| University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, Michigan | 1% |
| University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) | Santa Cruz, California | 1% |
| Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) | Savannah, Georgia | 1% |
| Simon Fraser University | Burnaby, Surrey, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | 1% |
| Western Washington University | Bellingham, Washington | 1% |
| Brigham Young University (BYU) | Provo, Utah | 1% |
| Cornell University | Ithaca, New York | 1% |
| University of British Columbia | Okanagan and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | 1% |
| University of California, Berkeley | Berkeley, California | 1% |
We analyzed the academic backgrounds of over 2400 current and former Microsoft employees who worked as game designers, or in game design related jobs, at Microsoft. The percentages of the schools and colleges listed above represent the amount of current and former Microsoft game designers that have a bachelor’s and/or master’s degree from that institution. We listed only those schools and colleges above 1% in our analysis. In total, the 25 schools listed above represent 29% of the colleges we considered. The remaining schools and colleges represent 71%.
DigiPen Institute of Technology, University of Washington, Vancouver Film School, Simon Fraser University, Western Washington University, and University of British Columbia are each in the same major metropolitan area as Microsoft.
Notes:
- For the purposes of our analysis, we only listed above the colleges offering game design and computer science related bachelor's and/or master’s degrees.
- Many current and former Microsoft employees have academic backgrounds that include unfinished degrees, associate degrees, diplomas, certificate programs, and other continuing training programs. While these are all relevant and important educational experiences, we excluded them from our analysis in an effort to focus on degree granting programs.
- While many professional game designers have a formal college degree majoring in game design, there are some professional game designers who studied a major other than game design in college. These people are included in our analysis.
- This data is not meant to indicate nor suggest that Microsoft actively recruits from any of these schools or colleges. It only conveys from which schools and colleges current and former Microsoft game designers earned their degrees.
- This analysis is as of April, 2023.