Nagooyen - nice choices. why MIT in that bunch?

A part of it is the inner nerd in me (not a good reason in and of itself, I know). I'm instinctively drawn to technically novel solutions. Another thing is that MIT seems to be more attentive to international issues than other schools (with a faculty to match). It pairs well with my interest in site-specific design.

School is for nerds (and I think some posts here clearly demonstrate that).

True visionaries don't end up as graduate students.

20/Male/BEnvd from CU Boulder/USA/Possible Internship this Spring

Top Choice:
UCLA

Also applying for:
UT Austin
USC
Berkeley

Progress:
-I took the GRE before it changed and got a decent score, but I could've done better
-I'm only 1/4 of the way done with my portfolio
-Have 3-4 studio teachers that will definitely give me recs
-Haven't fully completed any applications (I hate the writing sections)

If I don't get in, I'm going to travel.

i feel tempted to respond to thehero, but i'm gonna let that pass.

btw, i read an article on NYT via gothamist regarding how 2011 enrollment is at the lowest point compared to a few years ago, inspite of the hike in applications.

i was hoping to read that the applications are down and enrollments up. hoping more space for everyone/ less applicants for 2012 batch! here's to everyone getting their no.1 choice. keep up the good faith

.

Hi everyone,

23/m/ba arch /international student

I am applying for grad schools this fall and I would like some input on this topic as I am a bit in limbo about it.

Quick intro: international student applying to quite a few grad schools, need massive financial aid. Do you guys know any particular details about the schools listed below in terms of financial aid and whether they give out full scholarships etc or not?

Princeton, Sci-Arc, Harvard GSD, Yale, Penn Design, MIT, UT Austin, Wash U, RISD, UC Berkeley, IIT Chicago, Parsons, U Mich, Syracuse

Thank you. 

nicknack- post your portfolio.
 

you're also missing UPenn too.

Nagooyen, 

I'm not sure why the class size was smaller. The girl who was giving me a tour said "There are usually a lot more M.Arch 1 students, but this year there were only seven." I do believe that many of the schools exaggerate their acceptance rates. A rep from NJIT told me in earnest that they let in 75% of M.Arch students, either full or conditional. I've read stats that said 36% for them. CU-Denver told me they let in about 1/3 and I have read that they actually let in 80%. By making a school sound difficult to get into, you go a long way in making it sound prestigious. Sure architecture schools aren't banging down the door for people YET, but I bet in the future they are going to have to come up with some better marketing schemes. Unless you have a full scholarship, or a fully funded education by other means, you are really setting yourself back financially by taking three more years off to go to school without pay, and then enter a volatile market where you could realistically make 40K/year or even nothing in 2014.  This is something I am finding out now. Again, I am speaking for M.Arch1 students. A B.Arch is still a viable degree in my eyes. I believe getting a B.Arch and finishing in your early 20's actually opens you up for a ton of opportunities if you're smart about it. 

I think it's axiomatic that we should take what schools say about themselves with a coarse grain of salt. The best way to research schools is to talk to their students (less so the student representatives they send out to sell the program).

Regarding the cost of going back to school, I guess I'll just have to eat the cost of whatever M.Arch 1 program I end up in. When I first started college, I had no idea what I wanted and jumped around from major to major. By the time I was committed to architecture, the best option was to get my school's BA in Architectural Studies and go for an M.Arch later (there was no B.Arch at my school and to transfer meant another 5 years starting over).

I would like to know which US universities are not too much into parametrical architecture... because i'd like to apply for March II but I can't show any high level 3d modelling/parametrical architecture in my portfolio... I've seen the works of some Ivys March II and it looks all about that! So i think also the selection might be...

@agbc

parametrical? You mean Revit or Zaha-ish design? In the US, I believe parametric means the ability to use revit or other parametric software, it's not necessary a style... I doubt the schools would ignore you just because you can't use a software... But if you mean slick and spaceship-ish design, then as long as it's not columbia or sci-arc, you should be fine... As far as I know, M.Arch II is focused more on research... So, I think your portfolio just need to focus on what you're going to research on and some construction detailing depending on your work experience... 

yes I mean exactly the second thing... parametric as in generative architecture.

The concept is that the form is derived by mathematical functions elaborated by the computer for example with Grasshopper for Rhino.

If you see the works of the students of the M.Arch II GSAPP for example, as you were saying, much of their research is based on this. So of course the knowledge of this stuff is useful to succeed in such a program and probably also to be admitted... but I'm not sure... that's what I'm asking....

The research at AA is also going in this direction apparently (with Patrick Schumacher and company)... 

So I would like to apply to "safe" universities...

I believe if you're applying for M.Arch II to schools famous for their spaceship research like Columbia, of course you'd need to show some of that stuff on your portfolio. M.Arch II is a post-professional research degree. I think you're expected to be ready for research when you're admitted.

yes so which are the spaceship producers in the us? Everybody says Columbia but I'm sure it is not the only one...

The two that I know is columbia and sci-arc... Go through past comments and look at the list of schools by a post from 'Dr.Architecture'... US schools seems to focus more on sustainability than parametrical... You would probably have better chance of doing this kind of stuff in europe...

again.  i'm back again..

i tested the waters last year with a few last minute grad apps, but didn't have the funds to go to the ones I wanted to...so I just wrapped up bachelors in the summer and gonna work a year for the experience (and paying off some student loans) and try again!! 

I'm 25/ M/ BAS COOP(Hons) from UWaterloo SoA/ 2 years interning in NYC, LA, DK, HK, TO/ currently employed as a Designer

Schools to apply to:
USA/ Sci-Arc, GSD, Princeton, Berkeley
EUR/ London MET, Bartlett, Delft...IoA?
CAN/ UofT, McGill

I'm still researching, I guess, so if anyone has any suggestions, my list changes weekly.

Gotta take GREs still and probably redo my portfolio soon.   I have one I quickly updated for employment...but it's not very thorough.  Here (issuu).  I think it'll have a complete overhaul (feel free to comment!).  My webpage is at commacomma.com. 

I'm hoping get some financial aid since I'm an international student, or I'll stay in Canada or apply to some cheaper schools in Europe.

hi guy!

I remember going through this same process that year, and it sucked. I've gotten some crap about this on other discussion boards, but I didn't have an architecture background and I wasn't really sure about what to include in one so I used this admissions group:

Arch + Design Admissions (http://www.archdesignadmissions.com/).

I had a great experience and they helped me get into my dream school and gave me great advice about what work to use and what to edit out etc.

I think people give me crap about it because they feel like this is a creative field and I am cheating or something. But they don't give you a design or essay template or anything they just give you unbiased option about your work. I wanted to get into the best possible school and I did so it worked!

dionysus - interesting portfolio. where did you get into last year?

Hey.  seems quiet this year.  And it seems like mostly non-arch backgrounds...and hi to the fellow canadians. 

Hm.  Batman.  I got in at CCA and got called in to do interviews at AA...but...I couldn't afford to do either so I pulled out.  Oh well...

And on qtip's point, I hope people aren't scared to post up their work even after everyone was going crazy about idea-stealers last year.  Yeah, people rip layouts and such, but people are always going to copy, whether it's online, or in the studio, or in the office.  And most likely you've lifted ideas from others'.  After a while, you give up the designery-instinct to keeping things secret and even start to share your techniques - push the whole community forward (or inspire a few people) and hope they don't get better at it then you?  The only thing you can do is keep moving forward so the copiers are always behind...or push ahead so far they can't even understand you.

But anyways, gluck all...how were the revised GREs?

The revised GRE's weren't bad (for me anyway, I took both old and new versions). The added context for vocab questions helps, but that doesn't mean you can ignore it while studying. Math felt a bit easier, almost too easy as I grew increasingly paranoid during the test. Being able to skip hard questions and come back is pointless, in my opinion, since harder questions weigh more heavily on your score. But to each his own.

They only give you a score range at the end, which can be quite vague.

Mine was V: 590-690 Q: 750-800

On another topic, did anybody applying to GSD note the new portfolio requirements? Either most people don't know about the new all-digital format or they refuse to talk about it.

@nagooyen I knew about it, but didn't think that it's such a big deal...

It's a bigger deal, than you would think. A portfolio for digital viewing on a monitor is completely different from a print portfolio. Fonts and line weights that look great in print might not work so well on screen (actually, vectors don't have good anti-aliasing in PDF form so you might want to rasterize your drawings to reduce jagged edges). You may have to condense your text descriptions since you need a larger font size to maintain legibility (you can get away much much smaller font sizes in print).

The tech specs for their viewing monitor is quite vague as well. They describe it as a "typical computer screen" with no reference to resolution or aspect ratio (even assuming it's been optimized for their recommendation of 12" x 18" -- not a standard display format).

The lack of an ICC profile troubles me a little. I don't even know if their monitors will have been calibrated at all, which could really screw up the color balance. Different monitors display colors differently if they haven't been calibrated. Your images might appear drastically warmer or cooler to them than it does to you on your screen, even if you embed your own profile into the PDF. Their eyes will naturally color correct for them, but it will take a few minutes for that to happen (it's why I've never trusted software calibrators).

Anyway, just my list of grievances with digital portfolios.

Well... They already write down specifically how they want it... There's nothing much we can do about it...

I am less worried about the monitor, but more about how they are going view my work... I called slideroom (yes, I was that panic) asking them how the reviewers will view my artwork and they vaguely answered, "Just like how you view it." A really vague answer... I don't even know whether they will download the .pdf or view it on slideroom... and if they view it on slideroom, how will it look like, will it be converted to book-ish like issuu, will the reviewers view just the portfolio, or will they also see some kind of border... I was hopping that I could preview my portfolio, exactly how the reviewers will see them, before I hit the submit button so I could edit them... I'm going to try to contact slideroom and get more detail out of them later...

If you are that worried about the monitor, one thing is you could just keep the graphic simple with 2-3 color palette max...

I don't think it will be book-ish like issuu. 12 x 18 is pretty close to a widescreen monitor's aspect ratio (you'll get thin letterbox bars on either side when they see your portfolio fullscreen). Trying to use a two page book view would really shrink the entire portfolio. Judging from the guided tour on slideroom, it looks like they'll be viewing it page by page with the fullscreen option (like issuu's fullscreen mode). The reviewer can choose between black and white backgrounds. Not too thrilled about the numbered rating system they have, but it doesn't look like the reviewer is required to use it.

You do bring up a good point about conversion. If slideroom's PDF conversion is anything like issuu, vector line drawings will look like crap and it would be best to rasterize everything before submitting (I do this for complex drawings anyway to reduce loading times).

Also, using 2-3 colors won't help much for the monitor thing. Calibration affects all colors, so the 2-3 colors I choose might not look the same to them. Colors will maintain their hue relative to each other, which is why your eyes can color-correct what you see. I've got some print graphic experience so color accuracy is my own paranoid issue.

I double-check about the file format, that image that you see there is a .jpg not .pdf... Slideroom doesn't seem to think that .pdf is an image... Also, if one .pdf has more than one image, what would happen to the other images? How would they view the other images? I didn't see anything on slideroom's website that says how multiple images in one pdf will be viewed... This makes me to believe that they will download each pdf and view them on desktop or something...

As long as white looks like white and blue looks like blue, I could care less... I'm not applying to an MFA program... Architecture programs care more about concepts anyways...

My concern is exactly that. White may not look white on an uncalibrated monitor (most often it looks yellow). Don't underestimate the effects of color in your portfolio. I think it's part why so few architects make good graphic designers despite the assumption otherwise. Bad color   in representation could seriously hurt a good concept.

I'm waiting on an email from GSD on whether they plan to download the PDFs we send and view them directly (probably won't hear back til Monday). If they won't be viewing PDFs directly, this page from slideroom's website says you'll be able to preview your portfolio before submission. (scroll down to "Multimedia Portfolios")

http://slideroom.com/tour/receive/

Ignore everything I said about viewing on slideroom. Turns out my email to GSD was utterly pointless. I just tried uploading a small test PDF to preview and slideroom doesn't support PDF viewing and forces you to download it.

Well, judging from all those fancy robots they have over at the gsd, I'm sure they have excellent tech team that takes care of their digital stuff...

This downloading portfolio thing seems worrying... So they'll probably view it on adobe reader/acrobat by sliding it down... 20MB max per pdf and I'm paying $12 for this... Man, this is so useless... I could just send it over gmail for free...

It's still cheaper than a printed portfolio (including mailing). I can only imagine they're using slideroom to organize applicants. Their system actually seems pretty good for handling large numbers of applications, though I am apprehensive of the numerical rating system they use (feels like yelp for prospective students).

My complaint is that if they're going to use it, go all the way. Right now only portfolios are submitted to slideroom. It'd be nice if they used it for everything so we wouldn't be shuffling between two sites for the application. Or at least embed slideroom's site into their application (within one of those dreaded html frames even).

Some general information on portfolio expectations and financial assistance available to M.Arch II applicants to NJIT's College of Architecture & Design.

We do hope that portfolio from pre-professional degree holders' portfolio show evidence of three-dimensional digital design, including parametric-modeling and digitally generated designs, but we recognize that not all undergraduate programs emphasize these elements. In cases where the overall application is strong but the digital design skills (either representative, generative, or both) need upgrading -- which was true of a very high proportion of our M.Arch II applicants in the past year -- we insist that incoming students take our foundation design studio to bring their design skills into the 21st century. Although though placement decisions are made on an individual basis, typical length of program for such students remains two years.

Base tuition and fees for out-of-state students, whether domestic or international, currently run about $12K/semester. However, students who have a 3.0 or higher undergraduate gpa -- which is the minimum for admission, in any case -- are typically awarded a Masters' Fellowship, which reduces tuition by $2K/semester. Additionally, because CoAD has a very large undergraduate program, we need a significant number of graduate students to work as graders and the like for our history and building systems courses, under the job title "studio assistants." In return for a work commitment of five hours/week, students working as "studio assistants" receive a 25% reduction in tuition and a stipend of just over $1K/semester. Roll it all up and the full package of insitutional support reduces tuition for out-of-state students to about $7K/semester.

We do expect a hard copy portfolio -- though we're not unwilling to look at a digital supplement if the portfolio is compelling -- and we do expect the portfolio to have been designed and crafted as a project in its own right. But if you would like a preliminary review of a digitally-delivered portfolio, feel free to contact me at the e-mail address below.

Our admit rate for M.Arch II applicants in 2011 was about 50%. 

If you haven't looked at NJIT's College of Architecture & Design, you might want to do so. We're minutes from Newark Penn Station and less than half an hour from mid-town Manhattan; while there are a number of fine schools in the NY Metropolitan region, I feel comfortable with the assertion that our facilities are second to none, our faculty is drawn from the same pool of design professionals as that of our peer institutions, and we offer the best value in design education in the tri-state area.

Hope this is helpful and best of luck to you all!

Fred Little, Manager of Graduate Program, NJIT College of Architecture & Design

little (at) njit.edu 

i have a question regarding portfolio: 

by now we all know that best projects are usually placed first & last in the book to leave a memorable impression. now my question is, what if what i deemed the best projects are both from academia, and i want to place them first & last. thing is usually academic projects & professional work are grouped separately. is it advisable if i don't use any groupings, instead place projects based on their own merits.

for example, 

1. academic project

2. professional

3. professional

4. professional

5. academic project

or would that be too disorganized & confusing?

thanks for any response beforehand

Just took the GRE today. Based on the computer's estimate at the end of the test, I did significantly better than I was expecting. It's a relief. Now there's the matter of finishing my portfolio that really does not want to be finished...

snail-

congratz on finishing the GRE. what did you use to study the GRE and did it help?

batman,

I used the Kaplan books, but kind of approached it in my own way. For the math (my weaker area) I took a practice test and made notes about which mathematical principles I seemed to be rusty at based on my pattern of wrong answers. Then I looked up the explanations of those principles in the book and practiced problems involving those concepts until I was able to consistently get them right. I've always been naturally good at the verbal side of such tests (at one point I considered becoming an English major) so for that I just memorized some new vocabulary words.

Are you taking the GRE soon? If so, good luck!

Hi everyone,

I applied last year to four schools UNC Charlotte Got in Colorado University Denver Got in, UT Austin Rejected, and Rice-Wait listed but didn't get in. 

I am applying again this year to a bunch of schools. I was hoping fellow applicants would post their portfolio for M. Arch first professional degree applications to get some idea of what they look like.

Good luck to everyone applying this year. And keep the posts coming this is a great place to release stress. 

nagooyen -

did someone from your year get into MIT? if so, what was his/her stats?

I don't know his stats, but I can tell you that he could probably convince you that gravity was a hoax.

Hi everyone, I'll post my info soon, but wanted to share an amusing account of the SCI-Arch graduate world. Posted on Archinect a week or so ago, its from one of the school's founders, Glen Howard Small, and chronicles his return for grad crits. 

Hey guys,

I'm a Bahraini graduate of Georgia Tech for undergrad, and will be applying to grad schools this fall. Heres my info , would appreciate any advice you guys can give me .

Schools -   GSD, GSAPP, Sci-Arch,UCLA, and Unknown fifth (maybe Princeton, Yale,or U.Mich)

GPA - 3.78

Portfolio - http://issuu.com/sogkarimi/docs/karimiarchportfolio

Resume -  http://issuu.com/sogkarimi/docs/aikresume

Good luck to all  !

Karimi,

These are just some quick first impressions. Your portfolio generally looks good. I like it that you have a distinct visual character in the first few pages which will help set your work apart. However, I think that you need to rethink some of your subsequent pages to make sure that the tone is carried throughout your portfolio with the same level of strength. The style of the last project seems particularly inconsistent. You should also break your text into smaller segments, with more headings and give particularly informative sentences hierarchy over others - I think that portfolio reviewers will just flip past your current large paragraphs. ~30% of the amount of text that you currently have would not be too little.

Hope that helps!

snail ,

Thank you ! I'll make those changes, the last project especially has been bugging me for a while, so I'll try to fix that. Think I've got a shot at getting into those schools ?

To Karimi,  Thanks for posting your portfolio.  I really like the figure/bird theme.  

Everyone else:  
I am applying for M.Arch 3+ for 2012.  My undergrad is Design Management.  My GRE scores were fairly average, although I really messed up on the written portion.  I have received a scholarship based on my essay writing, so I am not sure where I went wrong.

I am applying to Arizona State and University of New Mexico so far.  The choices were based on proximity, my husband is in electrical engineering so the decision on where to go is more complex.  Also, I don't want to finish school with a ton of debt.

I have been struggling with what to include in my portfolio.  I have a lot of sketches, and a couple of models from a community college architecture course, but I don't have much else.  I am wondering if I should include some creative writing samples to offset my poor GRE score.  I don't have a huge body of work to pull from, unfortunately.

Hi guys .. Can some you share what softwares did you use for preparing your portfolios ..?

Microsoft Paint

just kidding. 

photoshop, illustrator, indesign

I am sorry I have never used these softwares ... so am I supposed to use all three for different aspects of my portfolio .. or just one will do ... in which case .. which one is the most used .. ?

I  use photoshop for photo/image editing, illustrator for creating graphics and editing architectural drawings (which are drawn in autocad and imported) and indesign for layout. I imagine most people use them similarly. did you mostly do hand-drawing in school?

^ photoshop to edit my images for any renderings or photos to fit the mood or tone of each project layout.  So if you scans of hand drawings/sketches then photoshop will be your ideal photo editor. 

and I actually use illustrator to do layout and edit drawings. I find illustrator to be easier to layout and do things efficiently. 

I also really prefer Illustrator over InDesign. Find it much easier to work with in terms of laying stuff out, InDesign has always been a big boon in my mind.