I was accepted to a 'top/recognized' program in the US, coming from a 4-year arch undergrad in Canada. Went to the accepted-students open house, loved it, loved the student work, everything about the school was fantastic.

But the last session of the day was about financial aid and paying for school. They really got into the nitty-gritty of the cost of attending and were very up-front about it. Even going into this knowing full well the pricetag, I left that realizing there was no way I could make it work. I had already scheduled a sit-down with the head administrator of the school to see if I could get more scholarship funding (they had already offered me a decent/smaller one) but it didn't happen. It still would have been ~ $100,000 debt minimum. That seemed unreasonable to me.

I had 3 offers to Canadian schools as well and was able to leverage one to a full tuition scholarship + TA position + study abroad semester. I'll finish with no debt; when all of that came through it was an easy decision. I do wish I could have attended the US school, but I have no regrets about the choice that I made.

I'd highly recommend weighing your options state-side versus domestically. For nationals, there seems to be a decent amount of funding available to M.Arch students in Canada.