Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
Pratt Institute
Tulane University
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Temple University
University of Oregon
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Grad School Deferral
First of all, I will be asking this question to each school directly, but I just wanted to see if anyone had been in this particular situation before or could offer some insight.
I've already submitted my applications to M.Arch I programs for Fall 2019, with my top choice being NCSU. My ultimate goal is to go into civic and public-interest architecture. I finished my BS in interior design about a year and a half ago, and have since been working as a designer at a DIRTT partner doing prefab interior build-outs. I've been looking to get more hands-on work before diving into grad school, like spending weekends with Habitat.
This week I was introduced to an opportunity with a local Americorps host, where I would be coordinating and actively assisting with repairs/improvements on homes in low-income neighborhoods in my city. The thing is, the service runs from January-December 2019.
I may just be a naive, starry-eyed millenial but I'm more than willing to leave my job/salary to get this experience because I will have aged out of Americorps by the time I finish grad school.
tl;dr assuming I get accepted to M. Arch I programs, does a year of construction service with Americorps seem like reasonable grounds to be granted a deferral? I know DAAP, for example, explicitly states that they do not offer deferrals.
It varies by school - you really do need to discuss it with them directly. Most programs really don't care about your reason for deferral - they either allow deferrals or they don't.
If their policy is to always allow them, then presuming you request it within their specified time period and fill out the right form, they're not going to care whether your deferral is to do Americorps or if it's to lie on your couch watching As the World Turns for a year.
If their policy is not to allow deferrals at all, then they're not going to care about your reason either, because they don't allow it at all. If you decide to do the Americorps gig then you'll have to reapply to schools with that policy.
A few schools allow deferrals in select cases only - typically serious illness, or national guard service. (There are also some that will require a deferral if you fail to meet their prereqs prior to registration.) In schools with that type of rule, it does matter to them what your reason is. Yours is iffy - because it's elective. While it may be a thing that you decide to prioritize, it's not something that the school will necessarily view as essential and unavoidable, so they may or may not grant a deferral.
deferrals are very uncommon, and those that are granted are based on significant and unexpected life events (accidents, illnesses, deaths, etc). you will almost certainly just have to apply again next year.
but if you are flighty enough to decide on a week-old whim to put off graduate school for a year after you've already applied (not to mention the remaining months of portfolio revision that you've opted not to use), you're probably not ready for it anyway.
It's not that unusual to defer for a year. Different universities have different policies. When I was teaching we counted on about 60% of accepted students enrolling, and another 5 to 10% of the accepted students requesting deferral (all requests were always granted, because students who'd really rather be somewhere else aren't good to have around). Of those who took deferrals, about half never did enroll in the next year, so just forfeited their deposit. In some ways it's a good last-ditch screening mechanism or escape hatch for the uncommitted.
how many years ago were you teaching? currently it’s not common at all.
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