Mine doesn't and hopefully never will. That sounds horrible.

I am a second year student at Wentworth in Boston. If we were ranked, there is no way the studios would have the same vibe and people would not interact as much as they do now. No one wants to be told that there are 31 people who are "better" then them. If I was ranked 25th and a person ranked 11th was sitting next to me having trouble with an idea, I’m not going to lie, I would just let them struggle, and I do consider myself a very nice and considerate person. It is hard enough to do consistently good work anyways, never mind with something like that in place. This major is subjective enough, a ranking system would be sooooooooooo counterproductive…so booooooo that idea….

hmmm... reminds me of the Salon.

If I were you I would leave that school ASAP.

totally disagree upon ranking ...

anyone who's been to arch school know fully well that rankings dont mean nothing .. except the guy at the bottom will be demotivated.

in undergrad, year one the profs (who were all bauhaus-ians; at the university of manitoba) made a point of putting our grades up in studio.

They thought it was important, but i never understood it. who cares? do your best; do well or don't, it isn't that important. i was always in the middle in undergrad and at the top in grad school (by then profs no longer posted rank), and while i was glad of the latter cuz of the scholarships and cetera i really couldn't have cared less. i worked hard because i wanted to.

trust me, no one in the real world is gonna ask you about your grades.

as for co-operation i did 3 or 4 projects with likeminded classmates all through grad school, usually for competitions in addition to school (about 1 a term), and our respective grades were never an issue. why would they be?

i wouldn't give it a second thought, which is to say i don't think the ranking/posting of students had any effect at all.

Ranking would suck. Grades are a only a small part of the picture. I know tons of people that were mediocre designers, but had great grades, and vice versa. Just a bad idea for architecture and it'll take the emphasis off of design and place it on gpa (so bs easy classes will be taken just to up your gpa .05).

Also, depending on the school, bs politics play a large part in the grades. UF had a fair grading system - politics were just internal. UCLA's grades were absurd at best - all big time politics. I am sure there are a million variables, but those are the extremes and the resulting grades show it.

well what really sucks is that they are gonna start havin a ranking system on archinect. so, everybody better just straighten up...

yale doesnt' have grades, and I think its for the best, it does create some additional problems though

wow kai, sounds interesting. its just pass fail? how does that work when you apply for scholarships and cetera?

my school now doesn't give grades either (as far as i can tell) and many of the students just do whatever turns their fancy independent of classes and curriculum (schools are not accredited here so it don't matter for the licence, which pretty much anyone is allowed to take ). I quite like it that way.

but do grades really stress yall out?

and why would they prevent you from taking risks? the top grades always went to the most offbeat (and thorough) projects in my school. no risky-takey no grades will you makey, type thing.

trace, just out of curiosity, were your grades really big time politics? please tell more...

vado, what archinect ranking system? i think i missed something.

I recently graduated from ITT in Chicago, home of Mies and his disciples. I can hapily say that they do not rank students there, however I'm sure similar to all schools, there are students that are favored above others, and I suppose that is a ranking system in itself, so I must a follow up question.

Even if there is no formal student ranking, are the students not aware of who is doing the best by the amount of butt kisses they receive or the amount of scoldings?

I have a hunch that there would probably no difference, except for the students that only care about the grade.

In a school where politics are heavily involved (I'd guess they play a part in ITT), butt kissing and scolding is not reliable. I know at UCLA professors would favor students simply because they did what cooresponded with what the professors were interested in. Sometimes they were the better designers, sometimes not.

Imho, it sucked. This all had to do with Mayne's, Lynn's, Lavin's, etc., etc., personal agendas, not with who the better designers were. I honestly don't know if it would be better without grades - maybe. I know Mayne gave up on grades a long time ago and just gives everyone an 'A' (for the most part). I guess that makes sense at a grad level. For undergrad it wouldn't be helpful.

It's only Yale's graduate school of architecture that doesn't have grades. Yale undergrads have grades. The Yale M.Arch programs are all pass/fail. When scholarships and awards are assigned it's done by a committee of faculty and administration, so it's more based on collective opinion than on quantitative info.
With undergrad programs the reality is that pretty much every school has rankings - both departmental and school-wide. The registrar's office has to keept that info for purposes of reporting it to grad schools, internships, etc. that request it. The difference is more in how the schools - and specifically the departments - use and emphasize it. This can range from nobody knowing their ranks, to students being informed of their own ranks but not of other students' ranks, to grades and ranks being posted publicly.
I don't feel that knowing other students' rankings is very useful. One situation where it can help to know your own is if you rank highly in a department where the average GPA is pretty low (i.e. lack of "grade inflation") as in that situation it can help in applying to graduate schools and such to emphasize that rank.

hell yes ... how else would we know who is any good ?

actually, i think this is one of life's eternal dilemmas ... if you don't grade or rank, then it's really hard to motivate students (especially undergrads) to work hard and maintain a reasonable standard of quality ... on the other hand, an overemphasis on grades and grade averages tends to motivate the wrong behavior and can produce misleading results

in my grad school (another discipline) we had "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory" with "excellent" reserved for special circumstances. if you got more than one or two "unsats" you were not invited back the next year - so that kept everybody motivated. but, at this particular school, the student body was HIGHLY motivated (to say the least) so aside from avoiding the dreaded "unsat" it kinda didn't matter ... if you got an "excellent" you were very proud, but most everybody got "sats" in the vast majority of their classes.

not that the design intelligence rankings are of any real value but why doesn't anyone post the rankings for all to see instead of making everyone pay for there pdf or whatever. (I'm already in grad school and don't need to see, just thinking for the benifit of the group)

momentum: archinect has instituted a ranking system. your question about it has knocked you down below sporadic supernova. better put your game face on man. this aint no party this aint no disco this is archinect. freakin hardball man...hardball...

mr retro you're a very funny man

I should qualify that the ranks are for the undergrad program, and are not made public - ie your individual rank is emailed to you alone

Initially I thought that the rankings were harmless. That being said - it appears that most of you out there are strongly against the idea.

As for discouraging risk-taking - typically the highest marks are awarded to those who develop the most engaging project and bring it to a relatively high level of resolution. That being said, it is not uncommon for thoughtful and provocative projects with less resolution to be well rewarded.

I believe that competition versus co-operation depends on the individual student, and a rank will have little-to-no effect on their approach.

While being ranked lowly may be harmful to self-confidence, it may also give a wake-up to those who are just drifting through. And those who are succesful are able to garner some recognition. These rankings might also be valuable in applying to graduate programs.

I tend to think that it's enough to grade people. Taking these grades and applying them to rank is something that students could do on their own if they really wanted to. 99% of the time this isn't going to happen. I agree with the notion that this would cause more anxiety in a student body.....people get different things out of their education, and many times the strongest students academically are not necessarily the most creative or the ones who are best suited for professional work. At least that has been my experience.

So, booooo rankings.

farmer your ranking has gone up significantly...farm on

geee .. thanks vado ..
so going by archimatt's suggestion. could you email me my individual rank ? .. lol ..

architecture schools should wash their students, then they wouldnt be so rank.

ommy god, im sorry, the door schedule made me do it.

anyways, we allways had an uspoken agreement that you wouldnt even ask a studio mates percentage mark.

its all a bit pointless really. if you need a percentage to tell you which is a good project and which isnt, then your rank is probably the least of your concerns. creating competition is counter productive to the studio vibe.

the foilio submission structure i allready skewed in favour of individualism over co-operation anyway, in comparison to the design process in a practice (excluding solo practitioners).

p.s. architecture schools really should wash their students in folio week. nobody likes to sit next to someone who smells like off cabbage

vado,

thank you sir! may i have another?!

vado-
you realize, of course, that now that you've exposed archinect's user-ranking policy, this thread could very well be deleted.

Do those grades even matter? From my experience, I have realized that the correlation between grades and how good a student's design work is non-existant. It's all relative, so who is to say that grades even matter. I've known plenty of people who are straight B students in the design studio courses, and win awards and scholarships.

I've honestly never understood why schools instill competition in their students. I mean its SCHOOL, you are there to learn your bit and hopefully move on to a career that you are happy with, doing your own work. I guess I'm losing to the competition then.

i was the lowest ranked student at my school...and i'm still here.

Does this have something to do with moving to the Faculty of Engineering?

dont thank me spore supernova, i have nothing to do with the rankings. plus momentum wasnt ranked that high, so you goin past him dont mean that much...

ouch, but at the same time... HA!

We had ranking, generals wore bars on their shoulders, lieutenants and captains bars. It is essential in defining organizational hierarchy. However, in a school of architecture all the students would be ranked ‘private’ and assigned to digging trenches.

A former ‘Loo prof believed in ranking for professors – or student access to the professor evaluation forms completed each term. If you really want to stir the shit bring this up, it’s a sleeping giant that if you succeed in has implications of truly improving the school. You know there are profs that consistently get bad evaluations, if you’re getting ranked it’s only fair the profs get ranked too! …and besides, the can of worms is already open… and the evaluations would strip Don & Val of their stars.

[/img]http://www.sk8stuff.com/images/winners.jpg width=418[/img]

my ranking just went down...

If there was an actual ranking, could I still lie and say that I graduated top of my class?

Tyvek. . . unranked.

lol vado .... ok .. i'm working on it

keep up the momentum ... haha

Hello your majesty, I think I'm on to you.

G

related anecdote...

in my undergrad studios, we'd get our grades in a folded sheet of paper w/ comments on our desks. we never were too concerned with who got what. however, the class before us supposedly was super competitive and rushed to studio in the mornings to see what everyone else got on their projects.

vado, you can't fake a smile like that!

Hello,

Ranking is out of the question. It simply kills each of our individuality. I would love to discuss different styles and approaches to architecture. Email me at laura_3743@yahoo.ca so we can discuss our creations.

i don't mind ranking students at graduation. that they do this is already implied when students graduate with honors, distinction, summa cum laude, etc. even grades themselves are a form of rating system. i don't think students should be walking around with a big "#12" or "#1" on their tee-shirts though.

i definitely support an archinect ranking system.

I kind of rule according to the archinect ranking system. But on the other hand, in all that archinecting time I could be taking over the world...

since [url=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479817,00.html] Washington[url] State has said it's ok to have sex with your students so long as they are 18+ I think there will be a lot of "extra credit" happening out there to bump up that rank.

at my school, usually the top ranked students were the least talented. It was kind of a rule of thumb actually...

Crap...here you go.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479817,00.html

wohoo! i have the 45th most comments in archinect history!

Wrecking, I know what you mean. We didn't have ranking, but it's all about schmoozing. They got the recognition regardless of talent.

at georgia tech we didn't have rankings per se... but 2 out of the 4 studios that i had there (including the masters project/thesis studio) were competition studios, so there was a sort of inherent ranking built into that system...

the first competition studio was made up of 4 studio sections working on the same project brief under the supervision of 4 different professors... the final juries of each section selected 3-4 projects to move forward to the competition jury on the next day... then a jury of visitors selected the winner and runner ups after the competition presentations...

the masters project studio worked essentially the same way except that everyone was working on their individual thesis topics... we were still separated into 4 studio sections with 4 different professors... the studios were broken out along themes, so while everyone was working on their own project each studio group was somehow related according to the interests of the professors... however, at the end of the semester there was a bit of controversy about how projects would be selected for the competition jury because most of the more talented students were grouped into two of the four studio sections... there was talk about changing the way that projects were moved on to the competition jury... but in the end they stayed with the same process of 4 students from each section moving on to the next day...

it was an interesting process... although it was stressful to have to present all over again the day after the final jury...

I know a school (not mine) that gives grades based off a checklist. Like, if you delivered a site plan at 1:10, floor plans at 1/4", 2 elevations, 2 sections, a study model and 2 perspectives, you get an A! You get a B if you missed one criteria etc.

I MAY be exaggerating... but not really.