what is the size of your firm?

12

OK. For this small-mid size firm, you might finish your idp quicker since you have chance to experience everything.

3 Year is doable.

Working in large corporate firm. 2 years and 3 months out of school. Already completed all IDP, CIDP (for california), and all divisions of ARE. Only waiting for the California Supplimental Exam. 3 years TOTALLY doable.

3 years is totally doable if you are motivated to get it done as quickly as possible

make sure to get as much experience as possible, as a lot of the questions come from actual work experience scenarios rather than just memorizing a bunch of terms

3 years is doable, if you lie on your forms and have someone willing to sign off on them.

Very doable, I'd say.

there is no reason to have anyone lie on your forms

3 years to complete the IDP requirements in a small firm that will give him a broader range of experience is completely doable

On the fence,

Are you implying that anyone completing their IDP within 3 years had lied on their forms?

Perhaps you've not heard of self initiative and over time. But I suppose it's hard to experience either when you work for the government.

Even in a large firm, you do not have to be pigeon holed if you push your superiors to get what you need and be willing to work extra to get it done.

yeah it is ridiculous to claim that anyone who completes their IDP within 3 years is lying. I completed mine in just over 3 years and had plenty of time to spare due to overtime.

All you need to do is be aware of your hours and keep an open line of communication with your boss. If you let them know that in the next couple months, you would like to gain some experience in a certain category, unless you work for a jerk, they will do their best to accomodate you.

Obviously you cant work for 2.5 years doing renderings, then complain you dont have all your IDP hours filled and blame your boss for not giving you more of a range of experience.

"Are you implying that anyone completing their IDP within 3 years had lied on their forms?"

No. It is doable. I'd guesstimate that 5-7% of interns could do it.

Unfortunatly I think more than 10% of interns get it done in 3 years and possibly even 20%.

And yes, I am saying that I believe there is a lot of stretching the truth, lieing, out there on the IDP forms.

To clarify, the word is "lying" - to lie. Not "lieing" - the misspelled version of the word lying. This word traces its roots back to Matthew who did not learn how to spell properly while attending University of Phoenix Online.

I'd say 5-7% bother doing it is more true than only 5-7% could do it. It's not something hard to do, its that most will not bother

I'd say, from my experience, most interns waste their first year and dont bother starting to track their IDP until then, which by that time, they are either stuck pigeon-holed doing one thing in their firm or they have just banked a years worth of CD hours and nothing else at all.

It's a shame, but its really no one's fault but the intern


It's not an impossible thing to accomplish at all, and if you work steady for 3 straight years, you should be able to get pretty close to completing the requirements.

Seriously though, you aren't kidding anybody if you get it done in 2-3 years. Possible? yes. Probable/feasable? no. And even if you do, you really are not well rounded. It takes more than the min. hours under each one of those catagories to fully understand them. The min on a few of them will give you a net result of bubcus. Meaning, you knocked out the hours but you haven't got a clue as to what the intent was.

Now, I'm not trying to rain on everyones parade around here. And I certainly didn't get er done in 3 years either. Actually from the time I became a third year student (allowed to get credit at this point) til the time I qualified, was 7.5 years (so 5.5 years full time work 45-50 hour weeks) and I worked for two small firms that allowed people to move around to get those requirements knocked out.

So it isn't like I haven't been there done that. Again you aren't kidding anybody. Stating on the IDP that you did 10 hours of contract documents because you fixed some redmarks on them, probably shouldn't count. And that is the stretching of the truth kind of thing I think goes on. I do not want to say that I know goes on so.....

Somebody, somewhere looked at the hourly minimums for each requirement, added them up and came up with this magic number of like 2.5 years and figured that should be what it takes. Well, yes in bizarro world, that makes sense. Not here though.

CMND,

Could you please spell check my above post.

Thanks.

well that is certainly true OTF, but thats kind of the same thing as passing the ARE's.
Passing the ARE's doesnt mean you are an expert or anything, it just proves you can pass a test.

If you have to wait until you fully understand everything about being an architect before you are allowed to take your exams, it would take a heck of a lot longer.

"Passing the ARE's doesnt mean you are an expert or anything, it just proves you can pass a test."

I agree with you. But it, passing the exams, means one more thing. You can now, after passing the tests, put peoples lives at risk, legally. And that is what does in fact happen.

but no matter what you set these "required IDP hours" at, it will still be an arbitrary number, since there is no standard minimum that would apply to everyone


there has to be some responsibility on the individual architect to make sure they get the required knowledge and experience for themselves

Perhaps now with there being this 6 month rule for posting hours and the fact that it can be done electronically will allow them to bump up the required minimum hours. It seems previously, it was such a mess to even get the 3 years worth of hours documented, that increasing the required amount would have made it so no one would have been able to get it done

It will always be able to be fudged though, since its just one person signing off on the hours. There's no way to really prove that you have the required experience other than someone in your firm signing off on it. If they want you to be eligible to take the tests, they will just sign off on it no matter what.

You, me and billy mcgee all know the system isn't perfect. People lie, er I mean stretch the truth. It is going to happen today, tomorrow and and has happened in the past. I find that when I see things being bent at an easier level, I don't lower the bar. I raise it. Way back in the day, lol, I didn't here so many interns talking about how to knock out the min. requirements in the min. amount of time. Nobody I knew suggested it could be done in 3 years. Just wasn't happening. Now that is most what I hear. I think interns truthfully feel entitled to just be done in 3 years and become licensed. And even then they feel put off by the whole thing.

i think you are right with a general attitude change, though i wonder how much of that is a sign of the times changing everywhere

kind of like how you used to only need a high school degree to get a job
-then it was just having a 4 year degree was good enough
-now today it seems you need a masters degree at a minimum for a lot of fields


I do seem to notice a lot of people maybe taking the exams a bit too early in their career, experience-wise. I am 4 exams in, so i have spent a lot of time on the ARE forumn while studying. And i see a ton of people who fail an exam talk about how all the multiple choice questions completely baffled them. I think part of this is because a lot of the multiple choice questions are real world scenario type questions rather than standard, what is the definition of X. So if you dont have actual real world experience, or enough of it, you are not going to do as well on those parts.


So hopefully, if nothing else, the exams themselves will weed out people who are just fudging their way through their IDP. Because if you fail 1 or 2, then you are set back 6 months or so, which is 6 months more experience, etc.

Licensed in 3 years ..hmm ... i guess that depends on if your state lets you test concurrent with IDP ....if so then YES ...if not then a definite NO

Fortunately for me they do and I'm working on my exams now

I'd say it's a stretch to complete IDP in 3 years no matter what the firm size is if you are working standard 40 hour weeks. It's difficult for a business to shift an employees job around to meet the hourly requirements of IDP. Small firms are better since you'll see more of the process, but even at that, there will be times when you just have to get the job done and not add needed IDP hours.

Personally, I finished in about 4 years with a very attentive employer and lots of OT. Didn't lie about any of my hours either. Still finished with many many many units over on CD, SD, DD phases.

Also lost 6 months to the tranferring my record to the state, etc. Actual testing took me about 16 months with the old 9 exam ARE.

5 years for IDP and ARE's is aggressive IMO, but realisitic. 3 years is insanity. Remember that you also need to keep life balance.

I finished IDP 2 years and 3 months out of school. I did have an addition of 6 months of summer internships during school.

I have to admitt, I was lucky to work on several (6) small projects in a large firm, and I was also lucky to have a non-performing project manager, so I ended up doing EVERYTHING. Did not lie about the hours. (However, I did consider picking up redlines as CD hours. But I sort of felt that's justified.) So with about 3 months of over time per year, I was able to finish my IDP in that time.

I took an ARE every 2 weeks. (IMO, most people over study these things.)

I have a family life and I'm not crazy. I also don't expect to be a well rounded architect until I have about 10 years of experience. But I don't see the point of waiting that long to get licensed.

Having a license doesn't mean one is a better architect. But it does mean that one is diligent about one's professional development to get it done!

IDP took me 5 to 6 years. I believe mainly because I worked in a small office. The owner architect could have cared less about my desire to become licensed. ARE's took me three years. Could had easily finished 1 1/2 years.

one every 2 weeks ..thats pretty intense ...i need atleast a month of study time ..then a month to take practice exams and review ..then a couple of weeks to relax

i cant imagine doing this once every 2 weeks while working full time

my second one is coming up soon but i think i should average 1 every 3 months ..so total time for the exams would be 21 months

I have been doing 1 every 2 months, which works out to about 4-6 weeks of studying and 2-4 weeks taken off after each exam before getting back into studying

I got through the first 4 ok and passed, and hopefully the last 3 will be the same, to finish in a little over a year



Every 2 weeks is tough if you are working. Great if you can get through them that quickly though.



I do agree though, most people definitely over study for these.
My 4-6 weeks studying usually consists of at most an hour a night, 3-4 nights a week after work. My weekends are usually booked seeing family, so i dont get the lump 8 hour study days i have heard my friends taking.

I suggest scheduling a bunch if not all, spaced out on how you want to study all at once. That forces you to buckle down and get it done. Otherwise you will get paranoid and study until you have it all memorized, which will take forever just to do one.

5 years and counting, 2 tests to go, plan to complete (& pass) by the end of the calendar year. In sum 5.5 years after m-arch graduation. This includes two summers of IDP time while in school.

I worked for 2 small firms, and now a large institution. I also became a parent in there, and essentially lost 18 months.

As stated above, if you have a cooperative/supportive employer, and YOU take on the initiative to bug them until you fill all the experience categories, you can complete IDP in 3 years. the time it takes to test is entirely up to you and your circumstance.

I had unexpected difficulty with an employer that was reluctant to sign off on IDP time near the end. It took him 10 years to obtain licensure, and thought it should take his interns a similar span of time. The difference in perspective was that, while he assumed I thought gaining licensure = I know everything now Architect, I thought it was a step in my professional journey, and had no intention of coming to work the next day with my fancy-pants on.

Be fully aware of the seriousness of stamping drawings, and don't do so (for yourself or your firm) until you feel comfortable accepting the liability. It's true, if you surf the ARE forum it is SO CLEAR that young architects are learning this stuff out of a book, and not professional experience, and thus the panic-ridden and clueless posts. If you are not scared about being licensed, then you don't understand yet what you are signing up for. In that view, I would say work hard to finish IDP, but it's not a race - the exams will be much easier for you if you have true, advanced professional experience to draw from.

I cannot imagine passing these exams by studying out of a book. There is so much info on those tests that is not even remotely covered in the exam books, or that is so subtle you truly need to have experienced the situation in practice in order to know how to handle it. (Or that is so particular and detailed that even if you did read it in a book, you wouldn't remember that particular detail from your studying!) Anyhow - all this to say, I don't really see why the whole thing needs to be so rushed. I think every architect should be licensed, regardless of whether or not they will actually use it, but I also don't see why you need to wham-bam kill yourself to complete it in a certain set amount of (miniscule) time. To my way of thinking, that's only setting yourself up for frustration when life inevitably intervenes...

I moved around from job to job (and city to city) as necessary... I lost a lot of hours working under an unlicensed boss, from whom I learned almost everything I know about actually building a building... then when I was actually ready to take the exams, I was working overtime like crazy and then working 2 jobs to make ends meet and didn't have time to study... and then I lost time waiting for all the paperwork to go through... and then I started taking the exams. Total time... oh, I don't know. 7 years? Thank goodness I wasn't trying to keep myself to some kind of insane schedule, or I would be severely disappointed with myself right now.

I also have a best friend who has worked at the same gig since we graduated. Never got laid off, never needed to move cities for any of the many reasons that happens, never worked too much overtime, and cranked his shit out in about 5 years on the old 9 test formula. I guess it depends on how your life goes, eh?

manta, did I miss an announcement that you are licensed, or am I just not remembering it?

I can't imagine that either, but I know people that have done that. There are firms that will sign off an interns hours regardless, even if they lied about what the units were in. Then those same people go on to study the ALS/Kaplan books cover to cover.

I fully admit that I was lazy when it came to studying. Quick browsing of some outdated ALS books. Took a few practice exams and then went into for the real deal. A lot of what I fell back on in that actual exam was my professional experience. I believe that's what the IDP process is for. You shouldn't have to memorize a study guide to pass the ARE's.

For those that lie on the IDP hours and pass the ARE's by memorizing books, you are diluting the value of the registration. By no means do I know everything just because I'm registered, but I do feel confident that I could quality review a set and sign it, taking liability, without hesitation. That came not from passing a test, but by having well rounded professional experience.

Well said, Aquapura.

However, to put up with job title such as "senior intern" in the 5 to 10 years when one defers licensing in order to become well rounded is beyond the tolerance of most of us young professionals.

In some other countries, young professionals coming out of school gets to take on real responsibility for projects and grow exponentially. In the US, if we have to memorize a few book in order to get this piece of paper that allow us to be taken seriously and not as drafting monkeys, we will proudly do just that.

I am only 4 exams in, but if i didnt have my work experience and just memorized the Kaplan book, i seriously doubt if i would have passed.

It was surprising how little of the actual test consisted of "book" study material


then again, the vignettes are so basic on some of these tests, that is half the battle

The vignette software is the OTHER half of the battle!

Anyone get the vignette software to run on 64 bit machine without it being buggy? The default 32 bit emulator isn't working for me.

I have literally kept a windows MILLENIUM computer around (ha! remember those?) solely to run the vignette software on. That's pretty sad.

Downloading Virtual PC now... Shouldn't I be studying content right now instead? Sigh...

OK, I didn't want to fill this thread with software issues, but just in case others run into this, I did get the vignette software working on a 64 bit machine with Virtual PC software from Windows. Had a little trouble with the default "Windows XP Mode" English version (Corrupt!) but was able to get it working with the "English - Not with Windows Media Player" version.

Anyway, I'm glad I'll be able to focus on other things to prepare for the AREs. The thing is, I don't know when I'll ever feel confident about my knowledge. But I don't know if that is a personality thing or something I'll grow into (or both). I'm hoping the AREs will bring some confidence in myself. Or at least confirm I still have much to learn.