Thanks a lot for the quick reply Phillip! :)

I had sent out a few emails but I received very generic answers like 'please check our website for more info'...  well perhaps I should have been more precise I guess!

did you email a generic departmental email or the head of the phd program? if the former, try directly contacting whoever is in charge of the phd programs that you're interested in.

Hey Phillip,

For example I contacted professor Ramesh Krishnamurti [http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ramesh/] for the The PhD program in Computational Design. [http://www.cmu.edu/architecture/academics/graduate/phd.html]

That is when I realised maybe I should be more clear about what I am asking for. But since I have no idea about the usual application process/ scholarship criteria in the USA, I thought of asking in this forum...

in my case i got a scholarship independent of the school offerings, coming from the japanese govt.  basically a visiting researcher grant.  getting the funds was dependent on getting a position at a university in japan.  it was all competitive and took about a year to do the phd application as well as the scholarship application (both at the same time).  i assume it is easier in most schools cuz the system i went through could not have been any more complicated without breaking ;-)

anyway, the point is not all scholarships come from the schools.

Hey I'm planning on pursuing an academic ms in architecture in environment design & urbanism. Which will lead to a phd, if I won't to. I'm interested in teaching, research, & exploring particular issues that I've come across. I want to know what are the different opportunities that I can have after graduating, besides academia, I don't meAn just the architecture profession, what other field could I be useful for. And also how easy is it to get a teaching job from the same university that you graduated from?