Cogswell College, the fusion of art and engineering

[redaxxe]

Howdy everybody,

I have been perusing through the forums here and haven't seen anyone asking about my school, Cogswell Polytechnical College, so I decided I should make a post and represent in case anyone had any questions about it.

Cogswell is a four year WASC accredited college in Sunnyvale CA (in the heart of Silicon Valley) that offers degrees in Digital Art Animation (with focus' in entertainment design, modeling, animation, and game design) and Digital Art Engineering (with focus' in animation, and game engineering). It's a small private college (I think we have under 250 students throughout the whole school) so you really get your money's worth in one on one teacher interaction. The teachers have all worked in industry and have a really positive "I want to be here sharing what I know with you" feel to them that seems rare in most colleges and Universities these days. The classes really emphasize classic fundamentals in art(drawing, painting sculpting), core computer fundamentals(from clean programming and networking for engineers, to flexible artistic pipelining between programs for animators and modelers), and comprehension of game mechanics (from basic breakdowns of your favorite tabletop and childhood games like Dungeons and Dragons or Risk, to the more complex balancing of modern video games).

I am currently a Senior and have had an excellent experience in both artistic and engineering sides of the school. It's been a really organic environment for me and I would highly recommend it to anyone trying to get into games.

If you have any questions lay 'em out.

Cogswell College Site (http://www.cogswell.edu)

[Nepenthe]

Heh, I wish you'd been around back in June or thereabouts! If you do a forum search there actually are a few posts asking about Cogswell (a couple of which were mine). I never got replies, but just in case someone reads through your post I'm going to back you up.

I was torn between Cogswell, Expressions, and Art Center. I went out to visit Cogswell and was immediately impressed by some of the work I saw around the school, especially the sculpts. I also liked how on my tour with one of the head honchos he was able to greet all of the students by name and ask about their projects. Everyone seemed happy to be where they were so I applied.

I couldn't be more pleased with Cogswell. I came in with a four-year art degree so they let me exempt all of the core classes and some of the beginner level courses so I don't have anything to say about those. However, the classes I am in are worth my time, which is more than I can say about some of my undergrad classes. Yeah, there are a few profs that are boring (still vv nice though), but I know the classes will be useful (such as Final Cut pro and video editing to eventually make my demo reel). There is a core set of EXTREMELY strong professors here who will beat you down on crits if you didn't put in the time, but will be around and happy and enthusiastic about helping whenever approached. They genuinely care about how well you do. Heck, I got great help on doing car perspective homework from my figure drawing prof when I couldn't find the perspective prof. When I asked the figure prof if he knew where the other guy was he asked why I was looking for him, then showed me what he knew and some older sketches of his, helped draw a car from the ground up, lent me a book and told me to watch a video at the library. For anyone who's wondering, no, being that amazing isn't typical of all profs.

I'm getting a bit wordy so I'm going to finish up by reconfirming that yes, Cogswell is worth a visit and you'll end up with a group of people who want to do the same things you do and a faculty and staff that really wants you to get out there and succeed. There are also multiple opportunities like Game Club, field trips, contests, and mock interviews with big companies to get you out there and doing whatever it is you love. Feel free to drop questions on me as well.