A lot of firms have prejudice about the software skills of older employees (they think they aren't as developed as that of younger employees) and most importantly how EFFICIENTLY you can design/draft CORRECTLY... time is money... 

Also, are you cool with taking direction from someone half your age?

^  Crissy, in some ways, that may have been a more humane way.

I've known firms to hire older career-switchers.  Generalizing, they tend to be more dependable, less attitudey, and more likely to stay in one job longer than their millenial counterparts.  The issues I've seen have had less to do with software and more to do with stamina and fitness.  At this point does it seem like you're headed toward being the type of 60 year old who will be able to climb onto roofs and crawl around in fire-damaged crawlspaces to do existing conditions dimensions and photos? Will you be ok with the occasional 90-hour workweek?  And will you be able to keep that up for at least a few years? And can you convince the firms that you really plan to stay in it long enough to make their investment in training you worthwhile? If so you'll probably be able to demonstrate that you'll be useful.  But if you're going to need to be mostly a desk person with a 9-5 schedule then you'd better get amazingly great at detailing or specs or something before graduation.

Find something to do with your life skills now. Don't blow dough and the next five years of your life studying stupid software so you can try to get a job as an intern.

A lot depends on your individual circumstances.  Do you have a high earning spouse?  Are you coming off a high income career yourself?  As you know, money is a major, major, major complaint in this profession.  If you have your retirement covered well, maybe it's an OK gamble.  If you are going to be spending your nest egg to do this thing, what will you do if the age discrimination thing kicks in on you?  Will you be able to write it off as an expensive but not fatal lark, or will you wind up on a park bench with a can of Puss N Boots?  The fact that you are contemplating student debt suggests to me that you're not necessarily swimming in coin.  Be very sure of your decision.

I would recommend not to do it, for the following reasons.

Your energy level will not be at a 26 year old level, think about how you were at 26 and are you the same?

Most architecture firms are "Churn and burn", they hire young eager workers and work them to death, or until the young intern figures out the game.

If you have the resources financially, just open a design shop in a nice part of town and use your social network to do interiors. Actually, it will be more stress free especially as you hit the age ceiling of late fifties-to sixties. 

Do not think that you will be the exception to the march of time!

You might consider getting some drafting skills (at a community college?) and working in a collegial architect's office. You could start logging your time toward the requirements to take the licensing exams. In many (14?) states you do not need ANY architecture courses to take the tests and become licensed. You could use your spare time to educate yourself on architecture history and theory. I would not spend any money on architecture schooling at your age, or even much younger, frankly. Schools are spring-loaded, for the most part, to teach that the world began with the Bauhaus and anything earlier is beneath study. Just my two cents.

I’d highly advise against the ‘traditional’ school to internship path. Especially if you’re in a situation where you need the future job in the field to pay back the cost of the degree. Volunteer’s suggestion is sound. Educate yourself via self guided reading and any cheap community college or vocational classes available. Make friends with someone closer to your age and work out an apprenticeship deal with that person. Network around your local AIA chapter or any other architectural clubs or groups in your area and see who is out there. Plenty of places need help in the current market and a person at the helm of a smaller operation may be willing to work with and guide you in your unique situation.

You’ll avoid both the college debt and the very many pitfalls of being a 60+ year old intern under the thumb of 30 something middle management who won’t know what to do with you and are likely to be hesitant in hiring you at all. While that hesitation may be partly ageist, as others have pointed out, the high cost of training someone who will only be working maybe a decade at most just doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint. Most recent graduates aren’t particularly useful until about 3 years in the field, and even then are far from experts with the ability to work autonomously.

I say 'Go for it!' I got my bachelor's in architecture at 32 and my Master's at 52 (stopped to raise a family in between). I am now licensed and LOVE my job! It is a dream job? No. But it is perfect for me. When I went to get my Master's my thinking was 'I could be 52 with a master's or 52 without one'. No matter what, I was pretty sure I was going to be 52! Also, the field is really starting to pick up. I was told that there is more work than there are people to do the work. So, employers aren't going to care how old you are, only if you can do the work. My advice, learn autocad and revit. They are really useful tools. Good luck and let us know what you decide!

Age is not just a number.

I would think the schools themselves would be a larger obstacle/point of warning.  We had a number of older people in college 30-60, maybe 10 people in total.  The school loved to pick on their preconceived notions of design and being an architect and worked hard to break them.  Only 1 stayed, and not because they liked his work, but because at some point he stopped caring what they thought.  It's not like the schools fail anyone anymore if you do the work.  He got straight Cs in studio though.  His background was stage design, on and off broadway, and he would have done wonderfully maybe 150 years ago, you know, pre-Gropius.  I'm sure his clients really like his work, as he became very knowledgeable in a myriad of architectural styles.  I could see him leading RAMSA projects.

physical fitness in imperative for architecture - 

JLC-1

print this and place it in front of the computer where you park your butt 9 hours a day. Look at it every 10 years.

That's how people burn out in architecture, they don't stay fit - 70% washout within 5 years after graduation - don't be one of them

be in the gym 6 days/week

run 35 miles/week or 10,000 steps/day(5 miles)

do crunches - core work is imperative to avoid back issues from parking your but for for 9 hours

The difference is 30k?  Per year?  How many years, 3, 4 or 5?

If you have that money in the bank, go for it.  Otherwise, public school.

No one should tell you that you don't stand a chance. And if you want to follow your dreams just do it. 

But being well informed also helps. One thing not mentioned yet, is that there aren't that many people who are in architecture at 60. It's like a funnel. With each age year there are fewer people in architecture. A lot end up moving to adjacent fields that offer more stability, perhaps better pay, and fixed hours. But that was no one's plan A. To go to architecture school in order to become facility coordinator at a local bus terminal. Primary architecture field is comically unstable. If you don't progress regularly from arch 1 to 2 to 3 to PA to PM to associate to partner, you will get squeezed out in the process. And that entire process takes decades. 

Now that process is for major architecture that draws in people to wanting to be architects. You can also be a single practitioner, and work on stuff that doesn't even require licensure. At that point it's about who you know, and wealthy people trusting you to remodel their 3rd pool house. And if you do good work, more work will come your way. 

But architecture is still like stock market. Time in the market beats timing the market. If you are 60 and have no retirement savings, then starting now is better than nothing. But if you started at 20 you'd have been a millionaire by now. 

Lastly, there are a lot of careers where you are useful right out of the school and pay is decent. Architecture is not like that at all. It just takes time. A lot of mindless repetition before you can call yourself Karate Kid AIA. 

Lisa

I can be done - I know someone who went to arch school at 50, graduated at 55, then started at a major arch. firm - how did he do it?

Physical fitness, and a long background in 3D modeling - he had a niche in BIM, and at the time he started, few had that background, so he became useful by default. He is now at long last, a senior designer after 10 years(normally it takes 5 years)

its very very important to have a skill or niche people need to distinguish yourself.

It can be done

the odds are against you, and you have at best a 2% chance of success

how do you beat those odds? do what the top 2% in any field do

it's simple:

don't do your best - do what it takes

Everyday, I sit on the steps of a building in Rockridge, Ca. designed by Julia Morgan - Julia faced much longer odds than you ever will. She attended the Ecole beaux arts back in the late 1890s, was the only female architecture student then. She became the first female licensed architect in California.

If she can do it - so can you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Lots of things have been covered already - I just have 2 thoughts to add:

1. I always heard in architecture school and early on in my career that architects don't really hit their stride until their mid 50s. I'm around that point now and I guess I'm finally starting to feel generally competent and confident - so it's held true for me (though of course I did have the 2-years-out-of-school-and-I-thought-I-knew-everything phase too). That rule probably assumes that one graduates and starts working in the field in one's mid 20s to early 30s - so a 20 to 30 year learning curve.  Perhaps it's accelerated for someone who enters the profession older and wiser, but you'd still be looking at a long newbie phase that might take you all the way through your 60s.  It probably depends a lot on your personality whether that would be a great new adventure for you, or drive you insane, or some of each.

2. On the other hand, some of those who are advocating that you skip a degree, focus on immediately gaining some experience with a firm, and pursue an unlicensed residential designer path (and/or whatever light commercial your state may allow unlicensed people to do) seem to be forgetting that they themselves have despaired many times on this forum about their difficulties in getting their own foot in the door of a firm, due to many employers'  preferences for NAAB-accredited degree holders.  Some unlicensed designers have documented their own struggles on this forum at length - such as spending over a decade struggling to make even a few thousand dollars per year in residential design independently, because they have little experience and no portfolio, and yet are unable to find any local firm willing to consider someone without a degree, or even take them on as an unpaid intern as part of a community college sponsored co-operative program.

I'm not saying don't try that route.  Just take into consideration that the math looks good in advance, but it's not always a cut-and-dried savings of 2-3 years of tuition, plus an addition of 2-3 earning years.  We've seen here that for some that no-degree "short cut" turns into a decade or more of sub-poverty under-employment and frustration.  If I was at that crossroads at this point in my life I might put some feelers out to local firms, and if that pans out then great, career launched!  But if it doesn't, and I was still set on architecture as a career path, I'd take the fastest route to an NAAB-accredited degree, and start as soon as possible.

More on me.  While I have some age related aches and pains I am in pretty good shape.  I dance a couple hours a day five days a week and plan to continue with some level of exercise after I leave school.  I have teens at home so staying in shape is a matter of self mechanism.  My spouse does have a good income and we have a substantial retirement fund, However we have that fund because we have been very financially prudent over the past 30 years, living very modestly. 

In my twenties I worked construction, starting as a laborer and working my way up to framing.  In our house mom is the one with the power tools. While raising the kids I worked part time for a general contractor an, an Interior Designer and freelance for my next door neighbor who is an Architect doing very small residential projects.  As a volunteer for a couple of non profits I shepherded several projects through the zoning and permitting process here in Los Angeles.

I have thought about interior programs, that would certainly be logistically easier.  I can finish my BA in Art/Architectural history in one year at a local school (public) and enroll in a  Interior Architecture program Masters program close to home as well.  That would take less time and cost a fraction of the Ivy league school I am considering  but I worry about being spending my days choosing paint colors and fabric swatches which I have very little interest in.  I am interested in the built environment and think that an architectural education gives one a deeper and more holistic understanding of it.  

There are much more effective and productive ways to have a positive effect on the built environment than architecture.

Based on your expanded description of past experience it sounds as though you could already be hired at an arch firm. Or even better at a construction firm where egos around ivy/degree status are far less of an issue. Do some research around this forum on how little most us schools do to prepare architectural students for practice and decide if it’s worth the cost. An interiors degree is even more useless in your situation.

LA is currently booming and it appears there are far more positions available than talent to fill them. Have you tried applying for anything with your current credentials?