Abertay breaks into global creative schools ranking for the first time

Abertay University’s School of Design and Informatics has been included in The Rookies Global School Rankings for the first time.

The prestigious listing, which takes in the best 50 creative education providers across the world, is globally renowned in the creative industries and aims to showcase the most distinguished educational institutions that stand out as leaders in nurturing and shaping the next generation of artists, designers, animators, and creative professionals.

^{Willowcrest Cottage by Daniel Tolland}

^{Durthane's Deep - Dwarf Forge by Alex J Wood}

In addition to breaking into the ranking at institutional level, Abertay’s games design courses were also ranked inside The Rookies global top 20.

The Rookies provides a trusted guide for prospective students seeking educational opportunities in the creative arts, helping them to identify schools that consistently produce top-tier talent across a diverse range of creative disciplines such as animation, game development, concept art, or any other creative field.

^{Freya by Paige W}

To formulate the rankings, a panel of 180 industry judges are asked to review portfolio work from more than 5,500 students participants, looking for creative skills, technical proficiency, presentation quality, diversity of skills, project complexity, raw talent, and employment potential.

Head of the Division of Games and Arts, Dr Dayna Galloway said:

Breaking into The Rookies for the first time is a huge achievement and the fact that this ranking is based on the quality of our student work is really pleasing, underlining the quality of our courses and the first-rate teaching offered by our academic staff. Abertay has always had a reputation for excellence in digital art and design and we’ve achieved this by keeping pace with advances in technology, responding of the needs of industry, providing great facilities on campus and ensuring the student experience here in Dundee is second-to-none. My congratulations go to colleagues across the School and also to our talented students who should be very proud their work has been judged to be of international quality.

^{Firearm study for games by Stuart McQuade}

As part of The Rookies, a series of individual student awards were included for different projects, with the Careers Opportunities Award sponsored by VR/AR software company, Realworld One, going to an Abertay Computer Arts student Berenika Zemanek for her Party at the Museum project.

_{Party at the Museum by Berenika Zemanek}

Lecturer Finlay Pearston who led on Abertay’s submission to The Rookies said:

It’s fantastic to see the talent of Abertay’s students reflected so strongly in The Rookies and to have their hard work receive the top-level recognition from industry that it deserves. Our graduates go on to work in creative studios across the world, so it’s of real importance to us that the University’s courses are seen to be held to high standard by respected external organisations such as this one.

Abertay created the world’s first video games degree in 1997 and provides graduate talent to games design studios in Dundee and other major city clusters across the world.

Visit our School of Design and Informatics pages for more information on studying our creative degrees.