Renderings are easy-peasy and anyone can press the render button.  One good hand sketch is worth 5 shiny renderings.

You pick the jobs you're hunting for.  Some firms want the cheapest staff to be pumping out renderings, other firms already have graphic departments.  Some firms want people who can think their way out of a creative problem.  Some firms won't care because they need warm bodies to copy details from previous projects.

If renderings suck, they really bring down the project. If they’re good, they can supplement the project well. They aren’t necessary for a really good visualization of a project, but they do effect the reader’s mood and flipping through the portfolio.

Somewhat agreed above. 

It depends on the place. In my experience a lot of times the way firms will use interns often revolves around renderings and presentation materials. If you can do them they will likely be helpful. And if you're just desperate for a job... they will help. 

However, if your materials are good otherwise, I think it's less problematic and you may find yoruself doing something more meaningful to future Carrere development. As stated above a lot of firms can just use warm bodies and will pick whoever seems exceptionally competent. 

I would expect everything else to be really good though to hire someone without any renderings at all, because it's one of the few mostly developed skills you can have at the start.  

I'm an employer / firm owner and I agree with you that renderings aren't the highest priority. However, if you can't show me that you can press the render button, then I'm going to need to have someone do it for you. I need my staff to render. Outsourcing renderings to rendering firms is hugely expensive and wasteful. Not only do they charge a ton, but the coordination between you and them takes about as long as you just doing it yourself. So now I'm paying you to coordinate with the renderer on top of paying the renderer's fee.

This arrangement also assumes renderings are made after the design is fixed, as you'd be paying the rendering company for every iteration if you had them rendering design iterations. This just isn't the way it's done. We use 3d models and renderings in the design phase, so it's essential that our designers are doing the renderings themselves. Good, bad or ugly, it has to be done in-house. More and more, rendering is almost automatic, so it's really 3d modeling that's the important skill set here.

If you want to work only at a large firm, you'll never need to render if you don't want to. But you likely won't be hired as a designer there.

All this said, there are still some firms that don't use renderings at all, but as an applicant, why limit yourself? Make yourself look like a valuable addition to the broad spectrum of firms out there.

it all depends on what hole you want to be pigeoned in...

Hey all, thanks for the feedback! Sounds like including 0 renderings would be a mistake, so I'll include a few strong ones of my best projects to demonstrate I'm capable of producing them, but I'll still keep the focus on my drawings and physical models. Like I said, I understand why rendering is important in practice. I don't expect never to do it, it's just not a part of my typical academic workflow and definitely not my strongest skill.

I think a strong rendering or two can strengthen a project, but since real estate is valuable in portfolios, I'd recommend rendering some technical drawings like axons, section perspectives, and obviously site plans. Perspective renderings have their place but you should only include them if you personally worked on it and it adds to the story. As others have said, gear your portfolio toward what you want to do and what you excel at.

The follow up comments made me think about this a little differently. I'm curious.... do you just mean the image output type renderings, or any kind of perspectival view? I find a lack of perspectival images of any kind to be more problematic than lack of true renderings.