I am pretty sure it mostly relates to prerequisite classes required for accreditation.

oh, and squeezing money out of you...

 

Penn gives very few students advance standing. Almost everyone is in the 3-year program.

Pretty sure it's really really rare at the ivies. 

I go to Pratt, and they seem to basically have done away with advanced standing, I have a 4yr Architecture undergrad, as do many other people in Pratt's 3 year M.Arch.

Parsons did however give me advanced standing. University of Washington Seattle also offered me a 2 year program, but I think that was because they have a separate track for people with 4year undergrads rather than an "advanced standing".

This seems to be a distinctly American thing. I've often felt that it probably has to do (at least in part) with getting more money from a student in 3 years of tuition rather than 2 years.

I finished a 4-year undergrad in Canada, worked for a year, and then applied to American and Canadian masters programs. For some reason the American schools I was accepted to wouldn't accept me into the 2-year program, even after an appeal and portfolio review. Meanwhile, there appears to be a very transparent interchangeability in the Canadian schools, for the ones that have accreditation. Some might require a 1-term qualifier, but thats it. I didn't require any additional time, and I wasn't really interested in doing that (it would have been a deal-breaker, personally).

Don't expect to be able to get out of that first year in the states. Elsewhere, no problem.