Set up residence in Maryland and apply after residency is obtained. College Park is a burb of DC if you have a job there. My wife got her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland (although not in architecture) and her graduate degree from Johns Hopkins. She liked Maryland better. Fear the turtle.  

Kudos for considering one of the oldest HBCUs for an arch degree! More people should consider it as it is one of the most affordable programs in the nation- the other program you might consider is Howard University.

That being said, UMD or UVA will be considered more prestigious by many companies which really is unfortunate because it just perpetuates classism in Architecture.

Good luck-

part time/full time at the same time because that requires real life time management skills or if they volunteered for a certain philanthropy because it shows you have interests outside of design and want to have impact in other realms of life or if a person was a team leader in a sport or created a community project because that also shows initiative/leadership and collaboration skills. A good company can always teach software and design best practices, it is more difficult to teach community-minded attitudes, collaborative skills and initiative.