Subject: Re: ARCHITECTURAL SCHOOL ADVICE?

From: [email-masked] (Curlyindy)
Date: 12 May 1995 11:03:11 -0400

I also did not see the original message but I would strongly advise a
co-op school.  Being an architect who went through a five year program at
Ball State University in Muncie Indiana, I have often stated that if I had
it to do over again, first, I wouldn't, second, I would have gone to a six
year co-op program such as is offered at Cincinnatti.  Cincinnatti's
program, at the time, required that a student go six months to school and
then six months on the job.  You can pay for your schooling and acquire 3
years of valuable experience by the time you graduate.  I have heard
rumors of graduate students being able to sit for the NCAARB exams and
become registered soon after they graduate.  Otherwise, a five year
program will net you a degree and 6 months of internship experience and
require you to have 2 1/2 years more IDP training.   The math is simple: 
six years vs. 7 1/2 ... if your lucky.  I am not certain how the IDP
program plays in to this issue.

Good luck , expect to work very hard, forget sleep. 
Design studios are a T R I P.

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From: [email-masked] (Beertender)
Date: 12 May 1995 23:40:16 -0400

I must agree with [email-masked].  Any school worth its weight will
integrate practical experience with the "schooling" which you can get.  

I graduated from Iowa State University's B.Arch program.  Typically in a
state run institution, you either will find the "unsuccessful local
architects trying to make an extra buck" instructors, or those
"Architects" who are either so burnt out or so unrealistic that they can't
find or support a job anywhere else in the marketplace.  The demise of
state and federal govenrment funding for large universities, and the
constraints caused by budgeting woes, has only hurt architecture schools. 
Most try to maximize the number of students qualified to enter the first
years so that they can justify the still inadequate level of spending the
governments bestow upon them.  

Best architectural education???  Get a degree in CAD drafting, find a job
for a year in architecture--make a decision to pursue architecture, and go
to school and blow away those stupid a$$ kissing Licensed "instructors."

Architectural education needs to be reformed.

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From: [email-masked] (Arc501)
Date: 13 May 1995 17:26:06 -0400

The best advice I could give to anyone entering the profession is work in
construction, getting  practical training, THEN enter a school that
emphisizes theory after which the person can blend the two. That's the
hard part.
Allen