strawbeary,
some of the reasons i couldn't do it for a long time;
i tried in mid 80's once, when it was a week long affair,one time a year with 2 thousand people taking the 8- 9 tests back to back in large convention hall type of place with proctors and all walking around to make sure nobody is cheating and failed them all and lost interest, than, got set design jobs for music videos and lost my focus in professional architecture for a while, very messy, unsettled and toxicated frolicking life style, for a while i thought i could wing it without a license because i was mainly interested in residential scale, lack of professional environment and culture and mentors, working/associating with people who didn't care about license type of things, denial, finding the study material boring, lack of motivation and direction and losing more time thinking it was already too late anyway.
but, i also had a great time being a hobo and learned some other tricks that i value a great deal.
hotsies, there are only two levels of licensure here (like the UK, more or less, unless you count part I). one for small buildings, so you can do houses an the like, and then the full blown licence which you need to be a big building architect or a serious contractor.
my point wasn't that licences are bad, only that the process places interns in a position that makes it easy to take advantage of in offices. worse, the beauracratic nonsense wastes talent and energy away. It isn't about being fair or being a good measure of ability, and no one is whining that life is too hard without the licence. To the contrary it seems most are ok with the licence exams themselves, just feel the process leading up to it is a waste of time that does no one good.
i can count about a dozen archiects that i know personally who don't have licences, maybe three of them are famous here or internationally. Two of them skipped the licence thing as a protest and are doing well, the rest were just too busy to be bothered from what i can tell, and are doing huge projects without it, so likely never will bother. None of them are Ando Tadao (though he is at my uni often enough I have never been interested in meeting him). They are regular folk caught up in circumstances and opportunities which would never have come if they had spent their time working for an office getting their hours logged. What that says to me is that the legitimacy of the profession is eroding, and if the good folks runnung AIA and NCARB don't respond in a way other than defensively we are going to suddenly find the profession unprotected and wide open, much like what happened in the UK not os long ago. With AIA being as wek as it is we may not survive the challenge....as scratches said above the lack of intrest in going through the process is not indicative of laziness, it is indicative of a serious problem...
i bring up japan because the experimentation and the quality of work is quite advanced here and safety is I gurantee you very carefully covered (earthwuake and fire codes are very severe) in spite of a much more open system. ditto for NL and UK. I've worked in three countries now, each with different systems and am convinced that the more open ones's work better than closed ones...
wups, didn't mean to imply that the UK architecture profession is unprotected and wide open. Rather, just that the profession was challenged and very nearly made so. they escaped by a very narrow margin, or so i am led to understand...
how did your friend get into the chicago board of trade...did he/she have any prior experience in that area? education? what does your friend make now while still in training and how many years of training are necessary?
it sounds too good to be true....what does that person know that the rest of us don't to be making $100,000+ and working part time?!?
The exam itself isn't really very difficult. IDP can be restrictive and tedious but in time you find yourself finished with it if you try to finish. The whole NCARB paperwork process was for me the most upsetting part.
NCARB is VERY SLOW in everything it does. My exams themselves took only a few months, but the process of getting from my last IDP work report to the end of the exam - and then through the state to get the registration - took much longer than the testing.
There are multiple paperwork waits. Each one takes 6 weeks or longer: 6 weeks to be told that the last IDP report was complete and my record was in "final evaluation", then 6 weeks before it was complete and I was allowed to request transmittal of my record to the state, then nearly 6 weeks for NCARB to transmit it, then weeks to get an authorization to test. The waiting times on test results range from 2 to 9 weeks or more on each section of the test. At the end there was a wait of a couple months for the state to process my registration.
After all of that there was a wait of more than 6 MONTHS after I applied for NCARB certification (that's the mechanism that is supposed to streamline reciprocity with other states. You can't apply until you're registered in at least one state.) That part seems like it should be pretty much instantaneous for anyone who finished IDP and has an accredited degree - because NCARB has already evaluated all of that during the IDP process, and they know you've passed the exams, and most states' registrations are all listed right on their websites - but inexplicably this is another multi-month wait while you're once again "evaluated" for certification.
All in all I've spent years waiting on paperwork to be processed.
I never felt that IDP or the ARE themselves were especially difficult or a system that I was compelled to fight against. But the extremely long paperwork processing times - along with the tendency of NCARB to do nothing at all on each phase until prodded repeatedly - was the worst part.
IDP is mandatory for interns, but voluntary for firms. We don't tell students, "go to any school you want and try to get them to provide you with x, y, z education." Instead, we say, "go to any school you want, but here are the 118 that have to resources and the commitment to enable you to get the education you need." Firms should be certified to offer IDP, period. The point isn't that firms not certified can't offer any experience, just that interns would know what firms are both committed and capable of providing the range of experiences you need to get licensed. That seems to me to be the promise of an IDP requirement.
It's crazy that the official NCARB answer for people having trouble completing IDP is to quit your job--at least without any direction whatsoever of where you should go next. We architects like to have champagne dreams on a beer budget, and that's what IDP is about. The problem with internship pre-IDP was that it was haphazard--the success of internship rested on the goodwill and the resources of the employer and the asseriveness of the intern. The fact is that IDP hasn't changed that equation at all, and the frustration is simply that it was supposed to.
The best thing about IDP is that you can just make stuff up, get it signed, and move on (how many people speaking out in support of IDP here have done just that?). As a result, whether you think IDP is crucial or irrelevant, I don't see how you can think that IDP isn't fundamentally flawed.
Very good post, scratches, and you're right about almost all of it. I don't think requiring firms to be certified for IDP is an answer though - as was pointed out earlier very few would do it and that would just limit opportunites for fresh grads to get jobs in the first place.
Sadly, your last paragraph is totally true. I floated through IDP in a firm that basically signed whatever I asked them to, and I know it's not that easy for everyone. IDP is pretty much a joke, but I saw it as a necessary inconvenience to achieve the greater goal - which is to get the damn license. Also, I wouldn't say I totally made stuff up for my IDP requirements, but I also don't think it's a stretch to say that reading Sweet's catalogue is "materials research" or relaying information between your supervisor/project architect and the mechanical contractor is "construction administration" - it's all exposure.
I also have to add that I didn't wait nearly as long as bloopox did. In Pennsylvania they must have it streamlined better - I don't think even a month passed between passing my final exam and getting the NCARB certificate and license. Additionally, although maybe one or two thinga got lost in the mail with them, I always got a fast response from NCARB whenever I emailed them with questions - especially if I sent a follow-up email three days after the first one. This was 3-4 years ago, I hope they haven't lost track of customer service so badly in that short a time.
Thanks to the recent posters for lengthy and detailed explanations of current IDP problems. This is so much more help than the merely plaintive rants (sorry) earlier in this thread.
I got my license pre-IDP, and so missed out on this particular batch of bureaucratic fun. (But, as Abracadabra refers to above, I did endure and eventually triumph over the week-long slog of 33 hours of testing --including the 12-hour building design excercise. So, perhaps it all evens out.)
I have a much better sense of some of the internship problem now. Thanks, folks.
citizen, even though i failed it, i do remember the 12 hour designorama exam very vividly.
a city hall design in an existing public park. with site, floors, roof plans, elevations, sections, mechanical systems, parking and all designed and documented in 12 hours with all the codes taken care of. everything in pencil and eraser on ncarb supplied sheets. t-squares or drafting tablet installed parellel bars hauled into the ballroom of some hotel near lax. all i heard were pencil strokes, paper crumbles, squicking sound of parallel bar slides, feriquent cursings of fuck and shit, and people asking practors for permission to pee. that hazing is now replaced by oral exam of california..
for what i know about IDP, if i was doing it, i would follow liberty bell's advice.
and, all that happened on the 5 th day, that is, after all other parts of ARE's previous 4 days. talking about endurance.
a personal secret;
i was stoned on 4 th and 5 th days on some thi stick..
Yes, there are differences in paperwork wait times by state. For one thing, about a third of the states (including mine) are so-called "direct registration" states - meaning the state doesn't process your record until AFTER you finish you last test, and all test scores are processed directly through NCARB instead of through the state. In theory this is supposed to speed things up, since the state doesn't have to log in and relay scores to you, and they don't even have to know you exist until you pass all 9 tests, finish IDP, etc. But this tends to cause a long delay at the end instead. Your state of Pennsylvania also processes registrations nearly immediately as they come in, whereas my state requires the formality of voting on candidates at a meeting that only happens 5 times per year, so this slows things down.
Liberty Bell, I'm quite suprised that you were able to get an NCARB certificate within a month of getting registered. NCARB won't even send applications for NCARB certificates until one is already registered in at least one state, and NCARB itself admits that the current wait for processing of certificate applications is several months - and that's been the experience of everyone I know who has applied, so my experience hasn't been unique. I too used my firm's address for all of my correspondence and email. I did generally receive quick email responses from NCARB - but often the response was that it was going to take another 5 to 6 weeks to process and basically that they'd "get to to it when it comes up in the queue." At one point I called 8 weeks after being told that something would be done in 5 weeks and was told that the person who'd told me 5 weeks had "no authorization to make estimates like that."
As for IDP: I didn't find it necessary to make up experience, or to switch jobs just for the purpose of getting other experience. But on the other hand I took about 6 years to get around to finishing the IDP paperwork - so naturally I had plenty of varied experience during that time.
Huh, funny, bloopox, I also took about 6 years to get my IDP file finished - or more - I suppose it is a much tougher process for those of us who want to get degree--3 year internship--license bing bang boom.
You've jogged my memory a bit, and I think what happened was I got the license from Pennsy very quickly, and almost immediately got a letter from NCARB asking me to pay their fee right away to save time later? Or something like that - I remember thinking NCARB was waiting like a vulture to draft me in. I actually resisted them until I moved to a new state, then had to pay two years worth of back fees to update my file to get reciprocity. I'm actually pretty fuzzy on a lot of it, it was not a pleasant process, so I've unconciuosly pushed a lot of it out of mind I guess - all I really remember is the pain of getting letters that I had failed two sections and would have to retake them, and then the incredible excitement at the big surprise party my husband threw me (and the Eames rocker gift he gave me, yes!) when I got the damn license.
abra, your story is hilarious, and more enjoyable now that you have the license - otherwise it would sound sorta tragic. I enjoy hearing stories from people who did the old 5-day once a year exam - truthfully, I am enormously thankful that I didn't have to take it that way! I have always joked with my registered friends who took the old exam that they are "more of a man than I am" for having done that - regardless of gender, that old exam seemed Herculean. I can imagine myself by the fourth day saying "F*ck it, I'm going in stoned - I can't take the pressure!!!" Thank goodness I got to take the newer easier version.
Upshot of all my posts is that IDP is an anoying pain in the butt, as are the NCARB records and AIA continuing education reguirements, but not so difficult that it negates the utter sense of accomplishment and freedom that a license gives you.
There seems to be some regional differences on the importance of the license and how fast you are expected to get it. Where I worked, I was good friends with interns in all the local firms and we all knew exactly where each other stood and compared notes. Most of the interns, except a few, where very determined to get the license ASAP and their firms tended to hold this opinion as well, not having much patience or committment to an intern that didn't hold it as the ultimate goal. The interns were starting to take exams 2 or 2.5 years after graduation. The firms would forget about "interns" if you wanted to take 4-5 years to get your license and you would be slowly demoted to draftsperson. Frankly, I wasn't in a position to take the exams that close after graduation and wondered how they were.
Where I am now, I am researching firms and in some firms only the principals are licensed even though the staff has degrees and sometimes 10+ years of experience.
On another note, I guess a played a little game, when my firm didn't allow me to record or do IDP corresepondence during work hours, didn't want to give time off for the exams, didn't give any reward for licensure, treated each intern differently (paying for someone's exams, and not the two other intern's), no help with study material, it made some real friction between me and them, although I might have held all the angst and they knew nothing about it.
So I used them for experience and then got out even though they were a decent firm otherwise, I didn't want to give them the glory of having my talents that I developed (thru them) and me as a licensed architect. This kind of thing doesn't allow for healthy relationships and is a big black mark in my experience, hence my statement that IDP detracted from my architectural experience.
Abra, I failed the first time around, too. Managed to nail it year two. What year did you take it? Mine were '88 and '89, I think--at the Hollywood Palladium, no less.
And the design-o-rama was on day 4, wasn't it? That means the day after three solid days of seven timed testing hours apiece. Oy. Day 5, I went out and got loaded, too.
mine was 85, i think, at a lax hotel. with 1500 ppl (candidates). few years later i scheduled the written part only in palladium and walked out after first 5 minutes monday morning with a huge hangover from the night before. never to return until years later, in front of a computer on MY decided time and subject which could be repeared in 6 months if failed. it was heaven at prometric test center in culver city. i think times changed for the better regarding the ARE.
however, i think the major drawback now is, people have to do IDP which, from what i understand is full of correspondences, approvals, homework, deadlines, and other people involved such as mentors, supervisors etc.. that would put the whole process in a different frustration level like voiced here by some.
strawberry, my apologies for posting after i said i was done.. but id just like to point out that your frustrations with IDP seemd to really be frustrations with the people you worked for. And they seem to be out of line....how does that really illustrate the difficulties/problems of IDP?
abra: while IDP is a pain, it isn't really quite as complicated as you might be thinking.
NCARB recommends that forms be filed once every 3 or 4 months. But a lot of people do this only once a year or so, and many of us waited until the end to do ALL of the years of paperwork at once (not that I'd recommend that.)
There are spreadsheets that NCARB provides to count all your hours in the various categories - but they aren't required and they aren't submitted to NCARB. The only required forms are the employment records, which are just a few pages long. On these you just write your totals in each experience category, for the period of time you're reporting. You get your supervisor (generally your boss) to sign the form. If the experience you're reporting is from 2002 or later then you need to have a mentor sign as well - but the mentor is allowed to be your supervisor.
There aren't really any deadlines (it's up to you to finish in as much time as it takes.) There's no "homework" other than keeping records of your employment and filling out the forms. I filled out all my years of experience at the very end and submitted all the forms at once. It took a total of about 8 hours to go back through 6 years of timesheets and fill out the forms. I had to send a form to each former employer to sign off. All of them did this within a few weeks, though I had to send reminders to some. I had to have official school transcripts sent to NCARB. I had to fill out a Council Record application and have it notorized. I had to send a fee. Then I just had to wait for NCARB to approve everything - which was the longest part. That's all there was to it.
hotsies - perhaps, but IDP still wasn't a good experience and it created a lot of tension and distress for me and put up a brick wall between me and my employer. the experience I got wasn't because of IDP, so I don't get (understand) IDP, it really is just paperwork to me.
Here's an epiphany (ha) I had about the exam, why is more importance placed on the exam than the degree? maybe it's not. seems like it is. Senior draftspeople could probably take the exam and pass. The difference is that they don't have the design degree. The degree is what really makes you the architect. The licensure procedure is set up to belittle the education and emphasis the exam, which as discussed here shows minimum competency.
That's why I want to be an architect, and then a licensed architect upon passing the exam. Its not like every joe-schmoe will be calling himself an architect, joe-schmoe won't have a degree. Drawings still must be signed by a licensed architect. It is a slap in the face to recent grads that think they are architects upon graduation, until they start practicing architecture and realize they are not. Some employers recognize that the degree is what makes the architect, some recognize it as the license. It's their choice.
ee- it is taking me 5-6 hours to do one workbook (18 weeks) of IDP retroactively. I must be doing it wrong. But I know my firm is going to challenge it when I ask them to sign off on it. I want to pass the "audit".
this topic gives me a headache. we should let it die.
all of this talk of the 12 hour design-o-rama (i took mine in the basement of the fashion center(?) in downtown LA in 95 during finals week while still in grad school) reminded me of one other aspect of the exam. once you're assigned a candidate number, you keep it for life, and everyone was seated in the hall according to their candidate number. within a couple of minutes of seating, i realized how they had arranged us, so it was inevitable that i look up and over to see who had the lowest candidate number. just before starting off on the exam i'm thinking to myself, "man i hope i don't end up down there in few years..."
it had all the stigma of a perp walk.
Umm... well if you want to let the thread die why'd you start it up again when it was about to fall off the first page?
I filled out all my forms retroactively too and it didn't take long. I just went through all my old timesheets and transferred work hours into their approapriate categories. The timesheets in all the firms I worked in had spaces for writing what you'd been doing that day, so it was pretty easy to sort it all out, even many years after the fact. There was sometimes some apportioning of things that could potentially count as more than one type of experience - but otherwise it was pretty straightforward and if anyone had questioned it I had my old timesheets to back me up. I didn't actually use NCARB's 18-week workbooks. Those are optional and aren't seen by NCARB or the employers, so I didn't see the point. I just kept a running tally of units on a pad of graph paper as I went through the old timesheets, then filled the totals in on the forms.
Why would you employer challenge your report? I've known other people who thought that for one reason or another their employer would question their report or give them a bad evaluation on it. But it always turned out that the employer just signed it without comment.
I was addressed and wanted to respond I guess.
bloo- The employer took some convincing to agree to sign off retroactively. They want to see the workbooks. Whether or not they will look at them, I don't know. I offered to write little notes about what I was doing each week alongside the numbers because they were so hesitant, and they almost held me to that, but then decided it was OK not to. That would have taken much longer.
Its not like every joe-schmoe will be calling himself an architect, joe-schmoe won't have a degree.
made me think of this: A local home magazine here lists the credits at the end of every featured project and frequently the builder/designer is listed as the "architect". Often it reads like this:
Builder: Joe Blow Builders
Architect: Joe Blow; homeowner
Seems unlikely that every builder out there has an architecture degree (though I know a few of them do), and even more unlikely that every homeowner does!
I can't help it, it just pisses me off when I read things like that. It renders my 9 years of school and 6 years of internship and passing the exam and constant continuing education efforts as about as valuable as someone who can clip pictures they like out of design magazines. Grrr.
"they" above refers to one architect, not a slew of them. But I did pick the most agreeable, non-anal retentive architect to sign off on my IDP. One flat out told me I couldn't do it retroactively, one would have questioned me to no end (not to be facetious, just his nature. It takes 1.5 hours to say good-night to the guy.) Three others didn't know me as I rarely worked on their projects, one I just didn't get along with, and the last one was just not interested in IDP whatsoever.
this has been a great thread ... so great, i downloaded a complete copy and sent it to ncarb ... thought they ought to know what on the minds of this crowd
Another thing 'against' the process is that, at least from my point of view, the most significant reason that architects are becoming obsolete is the lack of quality design. How can the AIA promote architecture when most of the design is crap?
Personally, I'd rather see a there be some kind of criteria for design. No suggestions what that would be, beyond the education.
Too many bad designs makes anyone that has some talent and worked their ass off in school look bad to the general public. It's all marginalized.
If there was more effort placed on good design, via sponsored competitions, etc. (that rarely require everyone to be licensed, if anyone) or other promotional incentives. Just ideas, but this is a real problem.
trace ... i too find the level of design in our society to be poor ... but, that's not really the point here, is it ?
a license is not about "design" per se -- design is fundamentally a subjective endeavor and can never be put to a test that more than two people could ever agree about ... the a.r.e. is fundamentally about life-safety issues and other professional competencies ... those technical aspects of professional knowledge and judgement that the public has a right to rely upon when they hire you ...
i for one would hate to practice in a profession where there's a "design police" ... i really don't mind being held to a high standard on life-safety and technical matters, because there's generally an objective basis for decisions in those areas ... to suggest that the state should regulate design at a higher level has the stink of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany about it ...
design is not about aesthetics per se. the architect's purpose is to design and construct spaces for human habitation which are of value to the user/client. professional license in hand, an architect will be able to legally guarantee his ability to meet these goals, whilst ensuring the health and safety of the general public who so inhabit the spaces he creates. thus, the purpose of the architect relative to the building trades is understood in its full necessity.
Licensure ... the case for / the case against
strawbeary,
some of the reasons i couldn't do it for a long time;
i tried in mid 80's once, when it was a week long affair,one time a year with 2 thousand people taking the 8- 9 tests back to back in large convention hall type of place with proctors and all walking around to make sure nobody is cheating and failed them all and lost interest, than, got set design jobs for music videos and lost my focus in professional architecture for a while, very messy, unsettled and toxicated frolicking life style, for a while i thought i could wing it without a license because i was mainly interested in residential scale, lack of professional environment and culture and mentors, working/associating with people who didn't care about license type of things, denial, finding the study material boring, lack of motivation and direction and losing more time thinking it was already too late anyway.
but, i also had a great time being a hobo and learned some other tricks that i value a great deal.
hotsies, there are only two levels of licensure here (like the UK, more or less, unless you count part I). one for small buildings, so you can do houses an the like, and then the full blown licence which you need to be a big building architect or a serious contractor.
my point wasn't that licences are bad, only that the process places interns in a position that makes it easy to take advantage of in offices. worse, the beauracratic nonsense wastes talent and energy away. It isn't about being fair or being a good measure of ability, and no one is whining that life is too hard without the licence. To the contrary it seems most are ok with the licence exams themselves, just feel the process leading up to it is a waste of time that does no one good.
i can count about a dozen archiects that i know personally who don't have licences, maybe three of them are famous here or internationally. Two of them skipped the licence thing as a protest and are doing well, the rest were just too busy to be bothered from what i can tell, and are doing huge projects without it, so likely never will bother. None of them are Ando Tadao (though he is at my uni often enough I have never been interested in meeting him). They are regular folk caught up in circumstances and opportunities which would never have come if they had spent their time working for an office getting their hours logged. What that says to me is that the legitimacy of the profession is eroding, and if the good folks runnung AIA and NCARB don't respond in a way other than defensively we are going to suddenly find the profession unprotected and wide open, much like what happened in the UK not os long ago. With AIA being as wek as it is we may not survive the challenge....as scratches said above the lack of intrest in going through the process is not indicative of laziness, it is indicative of a serious problem...
i bring up japan because the experimentation and the quality of work is quite advanced here and safety is I gurantee you very carefully covered (earthwuake and fire codes are very severe) in spite of a much more open system. ditto for NL and UK. I've worked in three countries now, each with different systems and am convinced that the more open ones's work better than closed ones...
wups, didn't mean to imply that the UK architecture profession is unprotected and wide open. Rather, just that the profession was challenged and very nearly made so. they escaped by a very narrow margin, or so i am led to understand...
After reading all these posts, it seems that more folks are complaining about the IDP (office) part of the process than the exam itself.
lletdownl
how did your friend get into the chicago board of trade...did he/she have any prior experience in that area? education? what does your friend make now while still in training and how many years of training are necessary?
it sounds too good to be true....what does that person know that the rest of us don't to be making $100,000+ and working part time?!?
The exam itself isn't really very difficult. IDP can be restrictive and tedious but in time you find yourself finished with it if you try to finish. The whole NCARB paperwork process was for me the most upsetting part.
NCARB is VERY SLOW in everything it does. My exams themselves took only a few months, but the process of getting from my last IDP work report to the end of the exam - and then through the state to get the registration - took much longer than the testing.
There are multiple paperwork waits. Each one takes 6 weeks or longer: 6 weeks to be told that the last IDP report was complete and my record was in "final evaluation", then 6 weeks before it was complete and I was allowed to request transmittal of my record to the state, then nearly 6 weeks for NCARB to transmit it, then weeks to get an authorization to test. The waiting times on test results range from 2 to 9 weeks or more on each section of the test. At the end there was a wait of a couple months for the state to process my registration.
After all of that there was a wait of more than 6 MONTHS after I applied for NCARB certification (that's the mechanism that is supposed to streamline reciprocity with other states. You can't apply until you're registered in at least one state.) That part seems like it should be pretty much instantaneous for anyone who finished IDP and has an accredited degree - because NCARB has already evaluated all of that during the IDP process, and they know you've passed the exams, and most states' registrations are all listed right on their websites - but inexplicably this is another multi-month wait while you're once again "evaluated" for certification.
All in all I've spent years waiting on paperwork to be processed.
I never felt that IDP or the ARE themselves were especially difficult or a system that I was compelled to fight against. But the extremely long paperwork processing times - along with the tendency of NCARB to do nothing at all on each phase until prodded repeatedly - was the worst part.
IDP is mandatory for interns, but voluntary for firms. We don't tell students, "go to any school you want and try to get them to provide you with x, y, z education." Instead, we say, "go to any school you want, but here are the 118 that have to resources and the commitment to enable you to get the education you need." Firms should be certified to offer IDP, period. The point isn't that firms not certified can't offer any experience, just that interns would know what firms are both committed and capable of providing the range of experiences you need to get licensed. That seems to me to be the promise of an IDP requirement.
It's crazy that the official NCARB answer for people having trouble completing IDP is to quit your job--at least without any direction whatsoever of where you should go next. We architects like to have champagne dreams on a beer budget, and that's what IDP is about. The problem with internship pre-IDP was that it was haphazard--the success of internship rested on the goodwill and the resources of the employer and the asseriveness of the intern. The fact is that IDP hasn't changed that equation at all, and the frustration is simply that it was supposed to.
The best thing about IDP is that you can just make stuff up, get it signed, and move on (how many people speaking out in support of IDP here have done just that?). As a result, whether you think IDP is crucial or irrelevant, I don't see how you can think that IDP isn't fundamentally flawed.
Very good post, scratches, and you're right about almost all of it. I don't think requiring firms to be certified for IDP is an answer though - as was pointed out earlier very few would do it and that would just limit opportunites for fresh grads to get jobs in the first place.
Sadly, your last paragraph is totally true. I floated through IDP in a firm that basically signed whatever I asked them to, and I know it's not that easy for everyone. IDP is pretty much a joke, but I saw it as a necessary inconvenience to achieve the greater goal - which is to get the damn license. Also, I wouldn't say I totally made stuff up for my IDP requirements, but I also don't think it's a stretch to say that reading Sweet's catalogue is "materials research" or relaying information between your supervisor/project architect and the mechanical contractor is "construction administration" - it's all exposure.
I also have to add that I didn't wait nearly as long as bloopox did. In Pennsylvania they must have it streamlined better - I don't think even a month passed between passing my final exam and getting the NCARB certificate and license. Additionally, although maybe one or two thinga got lost in the mail with them, I always got a fast response from NCARB whenever I emailed them with questions - especially if I sent a follow-up email three days after the first one. This was 3-4 years ago, I hope they haven't lost track of customer service so badly in that short a time.
Oh, I should add that I always emailed NCARB from my firm's email/web address, not from hotmail or whatever - that may have helped.
Thanks to the recent posters for lengthy and detailed explanations of current IDP problems. This is so much more help than the merely plaintive rants (sorry) earlier in this thread.
I got my license pre-IDP, and so missed out on this particular batch of bureaucratic fun. (But, as Abracadabra refers to above, I did endure and eventually triumph over the week-long slog of 33 hours of testing --including the 12-hour building design excercise. So, perhaps it all evens out.)
I have a much better sense of some of the internship problem now. Thanks, folks.
citizen, even though i failed it, i do remember the 12 hour designorama exam very vividly.
a city hall design in an existing public park. with site, floors, roof plans, elevations, sections, mechanical systems, parking and all designed and documented in 12 hours with all the codes taken care of. everything in pencil and eraser on ncarb supplied sheets. t-squares or drafting tablet installed parellel bars hauled into the ballroom of some hotel near lax. all i heard were pencil strokes, paper crumbles, squicking sound of parallel bar slides, feriquent cursings of fuck and shit, and people asking practors for permission to pee. that hazing is now replaced by oral exam of california..
for what i know about IDP, if i was doing it, i would follow liberty bell's advice.
and, all that happened on the 5 th day, that is, after all other parts of ARE's previous 4 days. talking about endurance.
a personal secret;
i was stoned on 4 th and 5 th days on some thi stick..
highly not recommend it.
Yes, there are differences in paperwork wait times by state. For one thing, about a third of the states (including mine) are so-called "direct registration" states - meaning the state doesn't process your record until AFTER you finish you last test, and all test scores are processed directly through NCARB instead of through the state. In theory this is supposed to speed things up, since the state doesn't have to log in and relay scores to you, and they don't even have to know you exist until you pass all 9 tests, finish IDP, etc. But this tends to cause a long delay at the end instead. Your state of Pennsylvania also processes registrations nearly immediately as they come in, whereas my state requires the formality of voting on candidates at a meeting that only happens 5 times per year, so this slows things down.
Liberty Bell, I'm quite suprised that you were able to get an NCARB certificate within a month of getting registered. NCARB won't even send applications for NCARB certificates until one is already registered in at least one state, and NCARB itself admits that the current wait for processing of certificate applications is several months - and that's been the experience of everyone I know who has applied, so my experience hasn't been unique. I too used my firm's address for all of my correspondence and email. I did generally receive quick email responses from NCARB - but often the response was that it was going to take another 5 to 6 weeks to process and basically that they'd "get to to it when it comes up in the queue." At one point I called 8 weeks after being told that something would be done in 5 weeks and was told that the person who'd told me 5 weeks had "no authorization to make estimates like that."
As for IDP: I didn't find it necessary to make up experience, or to switch jobs just for the purpose of getting other experience. But on the other hand I took about 6 years to get around to finishing the IDP paperwork - so naturally I had plenty of varied experience during that time.
Huh, funny, bloopox, I also took about 6 years to get my IDP file finished - or more - I suppose it is a much tougher process for those of us who want to get degree--3 year internship--license bing bang boom.
You've jogged my memory a bit, and I think what happened was I got the license from Pennsy very quickly, and almost immediately got a letter from NCARB asking me to pay their fee right away to save time later? Or something like that - I remember thinking NCARB was waiting like a vulture to draft me in. I actually resisted them until I moved to a new state, then had to pay two years worth of back fees to update my file to get reciprocity. I'm actually pretty fuzzy on a lot of it, it was not a pleasant process, so I've unconciuosly pushed a lot of it out of mind I guess - all I really remember is the pain of getting letters that I had failed two sections and would have to retake them, and then the incredible excitement at the big surprise party my husband threw me (and the Eames rocker gift he gave me, yes!) when I got the damn license.
abra, your story is hilarious, and more enjoyable now that you have the license - otherwise it would sound sorta tragic. I enjoy hearing stories from people who did the old 5-day once a year exam - truthfully, I am enormously thankful that I didn't have to take it that way! I have always joked with my registered friends who took the old exam that they are "more of a man than I am" for having done that - regardless of gender, that old exam seemed Herculean. I can imagine myself by the fourth day saying "F*ck it, I'm going in stoned - I can't take the pressure!!!" Thank goodness I got to take the newer easier version.
Upshot of all my posts is that IDP is an anoying pain in the butt, as are the NCARB records and AIA continuing education reguirements, but not so difficult that it negates the utter sense of accomplishment and freedom that a license gives you.
There seems to be some regional differences on the importance of the license and how fast you are expected to get it. Where I worked, I was good friends with interns in all the local firms and we all knew exactly where each other stood and compared notes. Most of the interns, except a few, where very determined to get the license ASAP and their firms tended to hold this opinion as well, not having much patience or committment to an intern that didn't hold it as the ultimate goal. The interns were starting to take exams 2 or 2.5 years after graduation. The firms would forget about "interns" if you wanted to take 4-5 years to get your license and you would be slowly demoted to draftsperson. Frankly, I wasn't in a position to take the exams that close after graduation and wondered how they were.
Where I am now, I am researching firms and in some firms only the principals are licensed even though the staff has degrees and sometimes 10+ years of experience.
On another note, I guess a played a little game, when my firm didn't allow me to record or do IDP corresepondence during work hours, didn't want to give time off for the exams, didn't give any reward for licensure, treated each intern differently (paying for someone's exams, and not the two other intern's), no help with study material, it made some real friction between me and them, although I might have held all the angst and they knew nothing about it.
So I used them for experience and then got out even though they were a decent firm otherwise, I didn't want to give them the glory of having my talents that I developed (thru them) and me as a licensed architect. This kind of thing doesn't allow for healthy relationships and is a big black mark in my experience, hence my statement that IDP detracted from my architectural experience.
Abra, I failed the first time around, too. Managed to nail it year two. What year did you take it? Mine were '88 and '89, I think--at the Hollywood Palladium, no less.
And the design-o-rama was on day 4, wasn't it? That means the day after three solid days of seven timed testing hours apiece. Oy. Day 5, I went out and got loaded, too.
mine was 85, i think, at a lax hotel. with 1500 ppl (candidates). few years later i scheduled the written part only in palladium and walked out after first 5 minutes monday morning with a huge hangover from the night before. never to return until years later, in front of a computer on MY decided time and subject which could be repeared in 6 months if failed. it was heaven at prometric test center in culver city. i think times changed for the better regarding the ARE.
however, i think the major drawback now is, people have to do IDP which, from what i understand is full of correspondences, approvals, homework, deadlines, and other people involved such as mentors, supervisors etc.. that would put the whole process in a different frustration level like voiced here by some.
strawberry, my apologies for posting after i said i was done.. but id just like to point out that your frustrations with IDP seemd to really be frustrations with the people you worked for. And they seem to be out of line....how does that really illustrate the difficulties/problems of IDP?
abra: while IDP is a pain, it isn't really quite as complicated as you might be thinking.
NCARB recommends that forms be filed once every 3 or 4 months. But a lot of people do this only once a year or so, and many of us waited until the end to do ALL of the years of paperwork at once (not that I'd recommend that.)
There are spreadsheets that NCARB provides to count all your hours in the various categories - but they aren't required and they aren't submitted to NCARB. The only required forms are the employment records, which are just a few pages long. On these you just write your totals in each experience category, for the period of time you're reporting. You get your supervisor (generally your boss) to sign the form. If the experience you're reporting is from 2002 or later then you need to have a mentor sign as well - but the mentor is allowed to be your supervisor.
There aren't really any deadlines (it's up to you to finish in as much time as it takes.) There's no "homework" other than keeping records of your employment and filling out the forms. I filled out all my years of experience at the very end and submitted all the forms at once. It took a total of about 8 hours to go back through 6 years of timesheets and fill out the forms. I had to send a form to each former employer to sign off. All of them did this within a few weeks, though I had to send reminders to some. I had to have official school transcripts sent to NCARB. I had to fill out a Council Record application and have it notorized. I had to send a fee. Then I just had to wait for NCARB to approve everything - which was the longest part. That's all there was to it.
hotsies - perhaps, but IDP still wasn't a good experience and it created a lot of tension and distress for me and put up a brick wall between me and my employer. the experience I got wasn't because of IDP, so I don't get (understand) IDP, it really is just paperwork to me.
Here's an epiphany (ha) I had about the exam, why is more importance placed on the exam than the degree? maybe it's not. seems like it is. Senior draftspeople could probably take the exam and pass. The difference is that they don't have the design degree. The degree is what really makes you the architect. The licensure procedure is set up to belittle the education and emphasis the exam, which as discussed here shows minimum competency.
That's why I want to be an architect, and then a licensed architect upon passing the exam. Its not like every joe-schmoe will be calling himself an architect, joe-schmoe won't have a degree. Drawings still must be signed by a licensed architect. It is a slap in the face to recent grads that think they are architects upon graduation, until they start practicing architecture and realize they are not. Some employers recognize that the degree is what makes the architect, some recognize it as the license. It's their choice.
ee- it is taking me 5-6 hours to do one workbook (18 weeks) of IDP retroactively. I must be doing it wrong. But I know my firm is going to challenge it when I ask them to sign off on it. I want to pass the "audit".
this topic gives me a headache. we should let it die.
all of this talk of the 12 hour design-o-rama (i took mine in the basement of the fashion center(?) in downtown LA in 95 during finals week while still in grad school) reminded me of one other aspect of the exam. once you're assigned a candidate number, you keep it for life, and everyone was seated in the hall according to their candidate number. within a couple of minutes of seating, i realized how they had arranged us, so it was inevitable that i look up and over to see who had the lowest candidate number. just before starting off on the exam i'm thinking to myself, "man i hope i don't end up down there in few years..."
it had all the stigma of a perp walk.
Umm... well if you want to let the thread die why'd you start it up again when it was about to fall off the first page?
I filled out all my forms retroactively too and it didn't take long. I just went through all my old timesheets and transferred work hours into their approapriate categories. The timesheets in all the firms I worked in had spaces for writing what you'd been doing that day, so it was pretty easy to sort it all out, even many years after the fact. There was sometimes some apportioning of things that could potentially count as more than one type of experience - but otherwise it was pretty straightforward and if anyone had questioned it I had my old timesheets to back me up. I didn't actually use NCARB's 18-week workbooks. Those are optional and aren't seen by NCARB or the employers, so I didn't see the point. I just kept a running tally of units on a pad of graph paper as I went through the old timesheets, then filled the totals in on the forms.
Why would you employer challenge your report? I've known other people who thought that for one reason or another their employer would question their report or give them a bad evaluation on it. But it always turned out that the employer just signed it without comment.
I was addressed and wanted to respond I guess.
bloo- The employer took some convincing to agree to sign off retroactively. They want to see the workbooks. Whether or not they will look at them, I don't know. I offered to write little notes about what I was doing each week alongside the numbers because they were so hesitant, and they almost held me to that, but then decided it was OK not to. That would have taken much longer.
now it can die.
Strawbeary, your comment:
Its not like every joe-schmoe will be calling himself an architect, joe-schmoe won't have a degree.
made me think of this: A local home magazine here lists the credits at the end of every featured project and frequently the builder/designer is listed as the "architect". Often it reads like this:
Builder: Joe Blow Builders
Architect: Joe Blow; homeowner
Seems unlikely that every builder out there has an architecture degree (though I know a few of them do), and even more unlikely that every homeowner does!
I can't help it, it just pisses me off when I read things like that. It renders my 9 years of school and 6 years of internship and passing the exam and constant continuing education efforts as about as valuable as someone who can clip pictures they like out of design magazines. Grrr.
"they" above refers to one architect, not a slew of them. But I did pick the most agreeable, non-anal retentive architect to sign off on my IDP. One flat out told me I couldn't do it retroactively, one would have questioned me to no end (not to be facetious, just his nature. It takes 1.5 hours to say good-night to the guy.) Three others didn't know me as I rarely worked on their projects, one I just didn't get along with, and the last one was just not interested in IDP whatsoever.
live on thread.
Sorry, can it die now?
no
this has been a great thread ... so great, i downloaded a complete copy and sent it to ncarb ... thought they ought to know what on the minds of this crowd
yeah, they'll read it
Another thing 'against' the process is that, at least from my point of view, the most significant reason that architects are becoming obsolete is the lack of quality design. How can the AIA promote architecture when most of the design is crap?
Personally, I'd rather see a there be some kind of criteria for design. No suggestions what that would be, beyond the education.
Too many bad designs makes anyone that has some talent and worked their ass off in school look bad to the general public. It's all marginalized.
If there was more effort placed on good design, via sponsored competitions, etc. (that rarely require everyone to be licensed, if anyone) or other promotional incentives. Just ideas, but this is a real problem.
trace ... i too find the level of design in our society to be poor ... but, that's not really the point here, is it ?
a license is not about "design" per se -- design is fundamentally a subjective endeavor and can never be put to a test that more than two people could ever agree about ... the a.r.e. is fundamentally about life-safety issues and other professional competencies ... those technical aspects of professional knowledge and judgement that the public has a right to rely upon when they hire you ...
i for one would hate to practice in a profession where there's a "design police" ... i really don't mind being held to a high standard on life-safety and technical matters, because there's generally an objective basis for decisions in those areas ... to suggest that the state should regulate design at a higher level has the stink of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany about it ...
design is not about aesthetics per se. the architect's purpose is to design and construct spaces for human habitation which are of value to the user/client. professional license in hand, an architect will be able to legally guarantee his ability to meet these goals, whilst ensuring the health and safety of the general public who so inhabit the spaces he creates. thus, the purpose of the architect relative to the building trades is understood in its full necessity.
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