When I changed my degree from the online game design degree to the on-campus game development degree, my advisor told me that I would have to take a math test to get into the game development degree. Luckily for me, I wasn’t too scared given I had taken a pretty hard math test to get into college when I was a Sophomore in high school, and then after that, I took college math classes.
Still, it was a bit scary because my grade on it would lead to 3 outcomes.
- Getting a 70% or above would allow me to enter the degree with no strings attached.
- Getting between a 30% and a 69% would allow me to enter the degree, but I would have to take two additional classes: Pre-Calculus and Calculus.
- Getting below a 30% would not allow me to enter the degree that month, so I’d either have to retake the test the next month or change degrees.
This wasn’t too scary, though, because I had the whole summer before me to study for the test by doing the practice test I was sent. On it, there was trigonometry, basic arithmetic (PEMDAS), graphing, and algebra. All things I had already learned in college luckily.
Now, I said I had the whole summer to study for it, but I didn’t do that. Really, what happened was I took the test when I received it, and I studied it until I knew how to get all the answers right. I didn’t touch it again until I moved down to Florida. A week before the test was scheduled, I completed the test and retook it until I got above a 90%. Then on the day of the test, I looked over the practice test until I felt comfortable.
When I was in line to get into the room where I would take the test, most of the people I talked to seemed confident they would do good on the test. And there was a decent amount of people there (about 30-35 people). We had 3 hours to take the test, and I utilized most of that. A lot of the time I spent was on the graphs because they were a bit trickier than what I thought they would be like. Still, I felt that I should’ve gotten at least a 90 even if I messed up the graphs.
Even better, I got a 94%, the highest grade in the month (another person got a 94% as well though). So I didn’t have to worry about taking a Pre-Calculus class or a Calculus class at all, which meant I didn’t have to add an additional month onto my graduation date.
This was just days before my first week of classes, and I now didn’t have to be stressed about having to waste a month of my time taking some basic math classes. Also, because I was officially in the degree, I was finally able to pick up my degree specific laptop: an HP Zbook.
I was now ready to dive into my degree at Full Sail, which started with some basic non-degree specific classes: Psychology of Play and Creative Presentation.
Interesting Note: I said that people felt pretty confident about how they would do on the math test, yet the amount of people that didn’t have to take the Pre-Calculus class and Calculus class was very small (I think about 4 or 5 people). There was also a small amount of people who dropped game development because of it (I suspect one person who I saw was in Game Design classes). The majority of the class had to take an online Pre-Calculus class during month 2 and then Calculus in month 3 instead of Discrete Mathematics, which is the regular month 3 class.
The crazy part about this is that we had the whole summer to study for the test. For anyone that didn’t know any of the stuff on the practice test, a couple of weeks of work or so would’ve prepped them for the test. But I guess video games are more important? Maybe I’m generalizing, but the test should be a home run for most of people who have to take it it with a little bit of studying.
So whoever is reading this: if you have to take the math test, don’t push off studying for it. Instead, do something along the lines of what I did: study and work on the test until you get above a 90%, then take off the rest of the summer (or do the test every once in a while). Then study for the test the week before you have to take it.
Another Interesting Note: It is definitely okay to take the Pre-Calculus and Calculus class. For anyone who feels like they need a refresher, I’d recommend you take them. Months into the degree, there is Physics and Linear Algebra, which require a basic understanding of Calculus and an understanding of algebra, so if you don’t have these fundamentals, they could be tricky classes.