your post is in dire need of editing. It would be nice if you outlined your questions instead of stringing them into one sentence. no pun intended, maybe im a neat freak.

1. are you going to drop out of your M.Arch in the US?

2. AA has a sustainable environmental deisgn M.Arch and MSc course, met a guy from there once, he was a bright one.

3. UK vs US - depends which schools, some are vastly different

4.if you do an M.Arch in the UK i dont know how you could get licensed in the UK. since it seems a lot of the UK masters courses are experimental, and not for getting licensed. If your licensed in the US you have to take the Part 3 exam or something like that in order to get licensed in the UK. If you dont have the professional degree, you go to the diploma school, which is undergrad arch. There is messy reciprocity going on now between the US and the UK, they dont make it easy.

5. job market in the UK sucks right now. maybe worse than in the US.

Thanks for the input, FTB.

1. Yes, I was intending to drop out/transfer. I'm assuming the alternative would be a study abroad program (which is not offered by my school, for the U.K.)

2. AA is actually a school that I am interested in. I've heard good things about it.

3. As for US vs UK, i was trying to get a general sense of how top UK schools fare against those in the US (Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, etc.). I was also curious to see if there were any strong differences in methods and areas of study.

4. How long is the Bachelor's program? I understand that it is some sort of a three-step process that involves a year of professional work(?).

5. Yeah, I've heard things in the UK may be tough -any idea of what the forecast is or what the rest of the EU looks like?

UK sucks right now if my friends are anything to go by. same for the netherlands. the rest of europe I don't know.

for school AA is very different from anything you will find anywhere else. there are lots of different themes to study there, but the focus is on theory more than in usa schools, i would say.

reciprocity from the uk to usa will probably be hard. the other way around is more likely

in uk the system is three parts, with a year out between ptI and pt II. an m.arch is equivalent more or less to the pt II degree, which means you get to be an architectural assistant in an office. After that you work for a year and study for pt III then take a final exam which includes a real project as a case study. then you will be licensed in the UK, but s.o.l. in the USA.

I guess there are people who go to usa after finishing archi-studies in the UK but of the folks i know of (who went to bartlett, etc) the barriers proved impossible and they gave up. I don't know if that is because bartlett was not recognised as having accreditation or not. probably best to check about that before making the leap. no idea where. AIA maybe?

about visas, it used to be easy but i hear you need to be offered a position earning 75k pounds or more now (or something like that). which is quite high for an architect and not bloody likely for a fresh graduate. which means no young people allowed from now on...

you will need to do some research before making a choice but in general the stars are no aligned for global-minded individuals nowadays. damned protectionists.

archster,

That 75k/yr rule is keeping foreign architects out of the UK.

AA is an amazing place, and there are ppl with other undergrad degrees that start off in the undergrad program. The director of the school now is an American guy. For how long he's been in the UK he might as well be British. If you decide to go to London for undergrad studies, keep in mind it could be for a while.

The AA masters classes on the other hand are specialized and the students in them already have the professional degree from their own countries. A lot of them go back home or stay in London.

If I were you I would finish your M.Arch course in the U.S., and if you're feeling ambitious, go for another M.Arch at the AA or a Phd, i've heard of ppl doing both. 2 M.Arch's isnt that unusual.

I dont know if the UK has an equivalent to the US's 3-year M.Arch program. The AA doesn't have something like that. But it does have some serious connections to really great firms, even if they dont pay as well. its for the love of the game

regardless UK architects are starved right now.

I recall seeing some articles where the English were complaining it's easier to get licensed in the UK if your degree is from elsewhere in the EU.