My best friend was part of this program... it helped him greatly though he was not an architecture student. He received money for school and it surely was a factor in helping him become accepted to Columbia for his graduate work. The McNair program that he was in was specially catered to psychology students.

I was in the McNair Scholars Program, and it helped me get into an M.Arch Program. Although I did not study architecture as an undergrad (I was actually an Economics major). The program helped me to pay for graduate school applications, the GREs and other expenses that accumulate while you are applying to different grad programs.