Curious to hear NS' view on this one.

Hi lavarch,

I studied at the Waterloo Planning school. I found the academic rigor to be to a very high standard, with a good diversity of industry leaders running key courses. Classes were well-planned and had decent support overall. There are many course options, especially throughout the ES faculty. You also have a lot of leeway to develop your electives as you choose; I was able to declare a double major in studio fine arts with positive support from both schools. Other friends minored in a number of other subjects.

My one caution is on the choices of specializations. There was a clear trend that many of the students in the program were rejected from both the UW architecture school as well as other architecture programs - ie, this was a definate "B" choice. Many students were seeking to do the urban design stream as a kind of pseudo-architecture program (admittedly, myself included). I quickly became somewhat disillusioned with it, as too many students tried to turn the projects into architecture projects when that really wasn't the point of the course. Those who took it at face-value excelled much better than the ones I described. That being said, I enjoyed the urban design studios and did very well in them.

I received a transfer to a different architecture school after 2 years at UW planning. The vast majority of my old classmates found excellent jobs in urban planning, especially throughout Ontario and Alberta. The ones who pursued strictly 'urban design' positions don't seem to have found those, as it seems that most architecture schools produce much more capable graduates for those roles.

My point is: its an excellent school, and I genuinely mean that. But go in with realistic expectations about what you want to study, what you want to focus on, and what kind of work you want to do after. Planning (even the urban design stream) is not an architecture course.

(I don't have much insight into the Ryerson program.)

If you have specific questions feel free to post here or drop me a line.

Thanks for the response.