this thread is cracking me up.. :D  So is 'AIBD, Professional Building Designer' the substitute for 'AIA, Architect'?

Never have i ever had a restraining order against me.

Did you drink, Balkins?

Sexy use of them verb tenses, dude.

OP I'm pretty sure you can get licensed with just an insane amount of real world experience. Someone in my office just started out of high school as a drafter dude who took a CAD class. He was able to get the state to let him take licensing exams, this was in California so pretty strict standards. He also was way more knowledgeable than anyone else his age because he worked in the real world and skipped the useless tasks they give you in school, like making abstract models of "anger" or "blue." Also it seems you have a romantic view of the profession this will also save you the discouragement of spending so much effort to get a degree to become a CAD drafter. Architects simply perform the service of making building specs of other people's ideas. The only time they are "visionaries" are when they are working on a design competition for free to win a project, even then the project has mostly been figured out and the competition comes with all their stipulations. A MArc is nothing more than a masters of art, it's not gonna do much for you. 

My bad

Richard there's no calculus on the SAT at all - never has been, and the algebra is entirely 7th-8th-grade basic - nothing advanced.  There's no studying required.  Even if you're at all shaky on middle school math, you have the vocabulary to do pretty well on the verbal part.

Seems very weird that you regularly, eagerly spend your time researching the architecture licensing laws of other countries, but you didn't do your due diligence to research what's actually on the test that you refuse to take on principle, and let that derail your academic plans and sidetrack your whole career.

Original Poster:  try to use your tech school background to get a job in an architecture firm for a year or so, to develop some more portfolio material and to see if you really like working in architecture.  Then pursue the M.Arch route again.

On the SAT the test booklet has the scratch paper in it - that way everybody taking it everywhere gets the same amount. All SAT questions can be done without a calculator, but you're supposed to bring a calculator - the requirements for the acceptable calculators are provided in the test application materials.  Certainly the investment in an acceptable calculator is far less than the expense of 3 years of college in a major other than what you wanted to study!  

SAT math really isn't that complicated - it's primarily a speed test of basic math, not an assessment test of advanced math. The subject matter of the GRE math tested is exactly the same as the SAT math - though the question types differ in some respects.  On the GRE the scratch paper is provided in sheets or booklets by the test center (similar to the way it is provided for the ARE.)  

There's a disadvantage in taking the GRE instead of the SAT, in the sense that the same percentage of correct questions achieved on the GRE generally results in a much lower percentile ranking than on the SAT (i.e. a % correct that would put you in the 90th percentile on the math sections of the SAT puts you around the 75th percentile on the GRE). That's because the pool of applicants on the GRE tends to have higher aptitude, because it's made exclusively of those who aspire to graduate school.

why do u need to take sat?  I never took sats and still got into school

He needed the SAT because:  he was home-schooled and doesn't have a high school transcript.  Then he went to community college and had a low GPA that didn't satisfy the threshold for admission to his state university's architecture department  They offered him the option to submit SAT scores instead, but he wouldn't take it.  That resulted in his choice to major in geography, because he'd already enrolled in the university and accepted financial aid, so he was kind of stuck in limbo between having to stay in college but not being able to study architecture.

Welcome to another installment of Balkins-Makes-Excuses-About-Why-He-Fails.

Richard, I say this with all due disrespect, but you are a goddamned idiot through and through. This calculus excuse is so fucking stupid that I almost question whether you are just trolling the shit out of everyone, but that would almost be more depressing.

You post an SAT prep document that says nothing about calculus as proof that there is calculus on the test? I mean for fuck's sake man, how can a person possibly be that much of an imbecile? For a second I wondered if you were confusing integers and integrals, and I genuinely would not have been surprised if you had avoided this test for years because of your lack of basic reading comprehension.

I mean really man, it's just astonishing. Everything you do and say is so amazingly and profoundly wrong-headed. It's honestly fascinating. Like the "to catch a predator" or "where exactly on the spectrum is Balkins" kind of fascinating.

I mean really man, it's just astonishing. Everything you do and say is so amazingly and profoundly wrong-headed. It's honestly fascinating. Like the "to catch a predator" or "where exactly on the spectrum is Balkins" kind of fascinating.

I laughed quite loudly.

This seems like another of those situations where you argue about what you think to be true about something you haven't actually done (in this case the SAT), with a bunch of people who have real-life experience doing that exact thing.

I've taken the SAT, and the GRE, and gone to architecture school, and taken the ARE, and been an architect and I can tell you this from experience:  the math on the SAT and GRE isn't any more advanced than what anybody in any US high school would be expected to understand by the end of 9th grade at the latest.  These tests are reasonably good indicators of minimum competency for a reasonable chance of success in architecture school, and on the ARE, because the same level of facility with math is required for those.  If you're too rusty at basic algebra to score in the middle of the pack on the SAT, then you're going to have trouble with equations related to acoustics, electrical, in any architecture school with solid curricula on those.

In any case, the sensible course of action would have been to invest the test fee and the cost of a calculator and take the SAT back when you were arguing about your admittance to UO.  The worst that could have happened would have been that you scored low and ended up exactly where you are now, minus the $75 test fee and the calculator - but there's also the possibility that you could have scored well enough for the architecture department's purposes.  You argued yourself out of that possibility with excuses.

That's funny, I use high-level algebra/trig pretty much all the time.

And I used it pretty much all the time too when I wasn't licensed X years ago. In fact, I probably haven't spent more than two weeks without coding something to solve a tedious task (even if it's something as simple at organizing backup archives and pushing them to Amazon Glacier).

What the fuck are you doing with that assembly programming background, Balkins?

This is why I don't believe an ounce of the shit you say you know. If you had that programming background that you say you have, you'd be unable to contain yourself. You'd see a problem and get that fucking tingle in the back of your head that says "I could write 100 lines of code to solve this" -- especially if you don't have enough work to garner enough fees to buy a goddamn calculator.

Getting the money means getting a full time job.  Now, in 2015.  

Anything else is another excuse.

The end.

I completely forgot to ridicule you for the calculator thing. The suggestion that not having a graphic calculator means you can't take the SAT, which means you can't go to a real college, is one of the most baffling things I think you've ever said here. 

BORROW A FUCKING CALCULATOR YOU KNOB. I'll lend you one. Seriously.

I would love to see an MRI of my brain when you write things like "I can't magically print money like the CIA and FBI or the U.S. Treasury," because I bet all the delicious schadenfreude centers of my brain light up like the goddamn fourth of July. 

I wasn't kidding when I said we should start a wiki about the wacky misadventures of Lil' Dickie B, Professional Pretend Building Builder. A beautiful comprehensive resource to celebrate all the bullshit and contradictions and excuses and ignorance and inability and shortcomings and conspiracy theories and misinformation.

The prospect brings a tear to my eye and a warm glow to my otherwise cold black heart.

I meant get a full time job, now, in 2015, and save money to go to college in the future.  You live with your parents - you don't have high living expenses (if any).  You should be able to save a substantial amount in a year or two.

I didn't have any parental support when I attended college.  I paid for the whole thing myself, by working and financial aid.  But I also had an apartment, a car, utility bills, etc.  You don't have those, so you should be able to save more and faster.

I had written a long diatribe.

fuck it.

this Balkins kid is a lost cause.

Where (and I mean I'm asking for an actual source, not just your bizarre and incomprehensible intuition) are you getting this idea that you need a perfect SAT score? 

And what is that GPA?

But you didn't, so the point is fucking moot.

How come you think it's ok for a C-student who didn't finish his bachelor's to be giving out advice on academics?

want a cookie for your mediocrity?

Dude stop making excuses for yourself, you will never do anything. I worked the whole time I was in school for both the BS and MArch it makes you want it more.Yes  I went to a state school and not an Ivy League program even though I was admitted to a few of them. However, I still work at an amazing published firm and they even pay well and the same type firm I would want to go to an IVY school to get hired and I sit right next to IVY kids making the same money. I just didn't have access to that amount of money I came from a regular family and would need to borrow and serve in the military and go to war to afford my masters so suck it up! So I don't think it is worth anyone giving any advise to you it is a waste of their time, you are hopeless you will never get out of the basement because you put yourself there and continue to keep yourself there.

Whatever, Dick, take out loans.

I did that (like 50k+ total), and paid it all off within 6 years of graduating. Yeah, I packed a lot of meals, but sacrifices are part of the game.

BTW, I started while living in bumfuck nowhere in Brooklyn, with an hour and 10 minute commute just to get paid 15 an hour with no overtime paid (shitty unscrupulous asshole employer).

You can bite the bullet and make it through or you can continue to make shitty excuses for while you're a failure.

Also, get a fucking therapist.

On the one hand I can understand why your parents would expect you to contribute more to expenses if you were making more money:  they've been letting you freeload for 15+ years of adult life and if you started to make some real money they'd certainly be entitled to it.  On the other hand, I would think that if they understood that you were saving it to finish your degree, they'd comprehend the value of that investment - it just might actually lead to you launching your adult life and getting out of their hair.

Have discussed this with them?  Or are you just assuming that if you had a full time job they'd wand a big cut of it, and so once again talking your self out of even trying?

As for architecture firms, many if not most have part-time student employees.  We have four in my firm now.  That's how most of us started out.  It's not impossible to find a job that starts as part-time, but it's easier to start full time (either for a summer, or working there for a year or so while not in school) and then talk to them about cutting back to part-time during school semesters.

You need to stop saying that you don't think things will work, or that whatever we're suggesting isn't "customary", and just get out there and talk to some prospective employers.   All the rest of us have managed to get jobs, get into architecture schools, get apartments, take tests, get acceptable grades, get licensed...  You claim to be a smart guy, you should be able to figure out how to get some of these things done.

The steps are going into legalzoom and filling out some forms.

But Balkins browser doesn't support Javascript, and he's waiting on the Vivaldi to be a more mature codebase so that he can finally switch from Netscape.

(How did I do?)

One of the steps is that the "architect" future-partner isn't even licensed yet.  So Richard's life gets to remain on hold while he waits for however many months or years it takes the "architect" to finish testing and get processed by NCARB and the state.  I suspect that once the architect does have a license in hand he will find that more worthwhile opportunities present themselves than forming a sham firm with Richard for the purpose of allowing Richard to accumulate IDP hours.

Richard, if your parents are going to demand a cut of your salary if you get a full time job, then find a way to move out.  Have you looked into a senior share situation? That's where elderly people provide you with a free room in exchange for providing some home maintenance and chores, so that they can live in their own homes longer.  Usually those situations allow you to have a regular full time job outside of the home - you just schedule the housework around it.