A senior comprehensive project is a requirement for any degree awarded by Allegheny College. Students usually refer to this in its shortened form “comp”. A close equivalent of a comp at other places would be a senior thesis.

A comp is a way for a student to do their own self guided research into an area of their current discipline. In the studio art discipline the comp takes on the form of a body of art work and a written report of the techniques, artist research, and documentation of the project. This project is chosen entirely by the student but must be accepted by a panel of professors chosen by the student. These professors serve as advisors and ultimately judge the project to determine the grade on your comp.

The comp is the student’s chance to take all of their accumulated knowledge in a discipline and apply it to an original project. The pace of the project and the motivation is solely up to the student, although a schedule and timeline are required by the panel. A midsemester review is also held to provide the student with feedback on how well the project is progressing and also actively critique the current state of the project. The outcome is quite simple; you must successfully finish your comp to earn your degree.

For my senior comp I chose to reverse engineer video games.