I've it's actually a very good program.

- heard -

Michael Sorkin, who teaches in the Urban Design program, is awesome. Check out his book "Some Assembly Required."

Anymore input on this? I'm actually consiering attending the urban design program at CUNY.

it's accredited and a really good program headed by andrew zago.

yeah silverlake is right. I know a few grads and they have nothing but great things to say about the program.

i applied, got in , and visited this year. i'm not going, but it was a really hard decision to not go. the march program is only a few years old (2?). seems to have a strong faculty, the students i met were sharp, and their work was interesting. the studios were cramped, and there wasn't much of a shop to work with. i liked anderw zago, cool, smart guy, i'd definetly have liked to work with. the program is not actually accerdited yet, it's in process, it's a formality to say that it's not accredited yet, but still something to bear ni mind. remember also, that it's a really small program with about a dozen students per class.

it's also improtant to point out that there is a barch program at cuny, in the same building as the march, it seemed to me that the only things shared between programs were a wood shop and computer lab. teh barch program is much larger, and has been around for a while longer. i got the impression that the barch program is much more of a traditional technically-oriented program. when i visited, they had student work from the barch program on exhibit for it's re-accredidation. i was really impressed with what i saw, models and drawings much better than what i saw at most of the other schools i visited. i don't know how this reflects on the march program though.

feel free to email for more specifics

Wow... The M.Arch. program is only $3750 per semester for in-state residents. ($555 per credit for non-residents, which is still half the cost of Pratt or Parsons.) It would be worth living in NYC for a year before enrolling just to get the in-state tuition deal.

Is it true that there's a lot of overlap in the faculty between CCNY and Columbia? I understand that most of the NYC schools share a lot of faculty.

CCNY may be on my list of schools to apply to next year... I'll be watching this thread with interest.

Are we certain CCNY's M.Arch. program is accredited? I didn't see it listed on NAAB's website, even as a candidate school. CCNY's website doesn't mention accreditation one way or the other.

LIG, it's not accredited yet. it's in the process of being accredited, which takes a few years. still, i don't think this is much to worry about.

Their B.Arch has been accredited since the mid 1980s, but the M.Arch program is not currently accredited by NAAB.

Usually it takes 5 years for a school to gain NAAB accreditation, and once it gets this accreditation the previous two years' graduates degrees are considered to be accredited retroactively.
For this reason new M.Arch programs usually don't grant anyone advanced standing in their first-professional program for the first several years. This way the classes that started in the first and second year don't graduate until the program's third and fourth year, which gets them the retroactive accreditation.

Second-professional programs, for people who already have an accredited B.Arch, don't need to be accredited by NAAB, so it is less of an issue as to when those people graduated.

For a first-professional degree it CAN be something to worry about. If you choose to attend a school that is in the process of accreditation then you're taking a slight gamble, because if the school does not get its accreditation on time then you can theoretically end up with a degree that is not accredited.
An NAAB-accredited B.Arch or M.Arch is required in the majority of states for licensing as an architect. It's also required for NCARB certification, which is now required for reciprocal licensing in many states.

Most - if not all - M.Arch programs applying for initial accreditation do receive it on time. But what is a bit of a concern in this case is that NAAB's site doesn't show CCNY's M.Arch program as a current candidate for accreditation. So, if you're considering this program I'd recommend discussing the issue of its accreditation with the school administration, and find out what the expected timeline is.

Is the accreditation issue the same for the M.U.P. program?

Thanks for the info... Has CCNY even been granted candidacy status yet? Given that they're a large state university that already has a well-established B.Arch. program, I'd imagine that the accreditation of their M.Arch. program will be slightly more assured than some liberal arts college in Gravel Pit County, Nebraska starting an architecture program from scratch.

If I decided to go to CCNY, it's likely I wouldn't start there until fall 2008 anyway, in order to get the in-state tuition. Hopefully I'll have a better idea of what their accreditation status is by then.

Also -- and this is a more subjective issue -- when searching for jobs post-M.Arch., how good is CCNY's "street cred" compared to the other NYC architecture schools? Are they looked upon by NYC architects as more of a glorified community college, or would a CCNY diploma carry similar weight as a diploma from another local school, all things being equal? (This isn't a huge concern of mine, as I got interviews with plenty of NYC firms while having no diploma at all, but I'm still curious about networking potential, etc, at CCNY.)

I as well would like some viewpoint on this. Is CCNY not in the rankings???

I'm sure that the B.Arch program is included in various rankings.
With M.Arch programs it may not have made the lists yet, but M.Arch rankings are much less important in the first place. There are only a few of them (US News & World Report, another one that Design Intelligence compiles, that's about it) and they tend to publish only each year's top-ranked 15 or 20 schools anyway. They also usually result in wildly different lists from each other - because their methodologies for coming up with the rankings are very different. For example the DI list frequently comes up with U. of Cincinatti near the top of the list, while US News doesn't usually have that in its top 10 or 20.) There are about 100 accredited M.Arch programs in the US, so rankings are not really too useful once you get below the top-10 list anyway, and that tends to feature mostly the same players year-to-year.

As far as the school's reputation: the undergrad program has a decent reputation with employers. The grad program is pretty much an unknown. There are of course some NYC employers who search only for Ivy Leaguers, or only for people from the school where they went or teach at, or whatever. But in the general employment market it's about on par with NJIT or NYIT. Some employers prefer the more design-school type programs - like Parsons or Pratt. Some prefer the NJIT types. Some don't care. There are lots of jobs out there, with lots of employers, with lots of different preferences.

The bigger issue might be outside of NYC. There isn't likely to be as much name-recognition for this M.Arch as for older, more established programs. But I guess you could look at it like this: there are about 100 M.Arch programs graduating a total of about 2500 people each year. Of those grads only about 250 or so went to a top-10 program. 250 people can only take about 250 of the jobs out there, at most, right? So I just wouldn't worry about it too much.

The accreditation thing seems a lot more important to me. Without an NAAB professional degree your future would be very limited as you'd have to work in the ever-shrinking list of states with alternate routes to licensure.
I don't know what the accreditation status or plans for CCNY are. Hopefully someone can get a statement on that from the school's admin. If they are in fact currently pursuing NAAB accreditation then they'd almost certainly get it. But if they're not in that process then that's a big concern for anyone attending now or in the short-term future.

i don't remember specifics, but i'm really sure they were "in process" on accreditation. i don't remember exactly what he said, but zago made it clear to me that there was no need to worry about accreditation. if you're thinking of applying it might just be worth calling.

I called CCNY this morning and briefly spoke to an advisor in the architecture department. She said the accreditation period begins at the end of the Spring 2007 term, but she was unclear as to whether it was the candidacy period or full-blown NAAB accreditation. She suggested calling back at the beginning of the fall semester for more detailed information... Take that for what it's worth. :-/