The four-legged friends have it figured out. Maybe see what they do.

student loans - get deep into debt then hope you can pay it off in this profession.

sell your body or mind or both

Going to a cheaper school not in LA where the rent is even cheaper.

Easy: don't go if you can't afford it.

Man... students these days, amIright?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSdtKls9AXs

Actually met the dude one time.

student loans and cup noodles. accept the fact you'll have to take out a large loan. I go to sci arc for grad and I basically take out all of the money they will give me for a loan and after deducting just my rent the remainder will have to go to the random supplies they make us buy in studio including TVs, Monitors, ridiculously expensive custom materials. The very little I save up goes to my food. 

 

There a huge difference between top schools like columbia, gsd, sciarc, yale and some crap state school still churning out yellow trace and graphite...Not sure if the debt is worth it, but the education is.

Seems like all the firms in SoCal get a hard on for SLO kids anyway, switch mabye? But in all seriousness, it doesn't matter where you go to school it matters what your experience is, intern in school, network in school, I actually wish I had just gotten an associates and starting working. 

Chigurh, there are plenty of other options for a good education. Heck, all three of those other schools you listed are similar price points, but from what I can gather offer better scholarships/grants. Also substantially harder to get into, but there are other options that are just better price points too.

The horror of going to a lame state school is almost too much to bear. It is odd, though, in the rankings of engineering schools a lot of state schools like Michigan, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Illinois, ect. clean the clocks of Ivy schools that have tuitions four times as high. I'm sure the rankings of the Architectural schools are much more rational and accurate, though, and the innate superiority of the Ivys win out. And you can always go down to Mory's and sing the Whiffenpoof song if you feel you have been screwed out of a quarter of a million dollars.  

^Yeah, there are plenty of high quality and good reputation architecture schools that cost half as much as the Ivys... and Sci-arc.

Sci-arc is just notorious lololol

yea you guys are right, all schools are the same.  My attorney went to the abraham lincoln college of law...I'm sure he got the same education as somebody at harvard. 

Good thing architecture grads are not the same as lawyers.

Before he taught himself law and passed the bar exam, Abraham Lincoln taught himself surveying and platted out several towns in the Midwest. Guess he was short $200,000 to go to MIT and short $200,000 to go to Harvard Law. Old Abe couldn't even afford a lowly state school. Obviously he had a stunted career ahead of him. There is no justice!

shit man, MIT and Harvard were only a nickle a year back then.

you don't need the added stress of not being able to make ends meet when you're in grad school. Cal Poly. 7500 a year for a masters. can't beat that. If you really want to learn you will learn anywhere you go 

3 months later and you guys are still talking S***?! I didn't think this thread would have gone far, let alone gave a crap about other ppl's financial situation, even worse, mines! lol I am here now, and there was nothing you guys said that we all don't already know, the fact that we need to take out a loan -_- No S***...Where is the wisdom at, the gets passed on from one person to the next?    

^ The wisdom was to avoid expensive schools at all cost if one's financial status isn't steady.

You went ahead anyway and hear you are whinging about how there aren't any good advice for the next guy? Methinks your stupidity is a good lesson for posterity.

For all you haters: Sci-ARC doesn't give a sh*t. All they care about is architecture and they're ferocious in design. They'll rip you a new one in order to get you up there. If you can't handle, you can try a different school. 

The majority of students are well-off so they don't have problems paying rent. To make ends meet, there's a bulletin board where you can find a few roommates (usually 2-4) after acceptance. Some apartments have wall partitions or rent out living rooms to cut cost. You can definitely find roommates but you'll have to take extra effort to reach out.

Blood, sperm donations.

On garbage day, drive around picking up scrap metal and sell it.

Totally unrelated but I met a student who was studying in South America for a full year I think and instead of cashing out for her accommodations, she struck a deal with a hostel in the city where she was studying. In exchange for free accommodation, she agreed to work part-time for the hostel at hours that didn't clash with her classes. So she would have classes at night, sleeping in the morning, then scrubbing floors or putting beddings or do receptionist stuff in the afternoon. But she wasn't studying architecture so she was able to balance it out because the time demand was less intense.  If you have friends or relatives who live nearby, or if you can strike a similar bargain, that will surely help cut costs for you. LA is a great city (or "laboratory" as they say) to study architecture, and the best schools in the US to rival the Ivy Leagues in the east coast are in the west coast, particularly in LA.