Massive student loans taken out for the purpose of getting an M.Arch are presently suffocating my life. If you do go this way, enjoy what you've got left of that 'financial independence'.

40k for one year?

Fuck that.

I always tell people that if they aren't independently wealthy, don't get into this much debt.  As you know entry level architects don't make shit.

Administrative assistants at marketing firms make more money than entry-level architects.

Submitted my FASA and received an EFC of 10490... this seems crazy high, especially because I'm financially independent and won't have a job after July.

It depends on if you're married or not.

But if you get accepted into any schools, you need to contact their FinAid offices and explain to them your impending unemployment so they can reevaluate your need calculation. If they accept your reasoning, you can expect that figure to drop.

However, they don't usually award anything other than PLUS loans for graduate school. And more than likely, a lower EFC will just mean you can get even more loans. LOL.

If you can hold off til next year, I'd highly recommend applying for the Ivies or any of the associated universities who have "need-blind admission."

Need-blind admission is a relatively new practice. But despite a university like Harvard with it's near $50,000 cost-of-attendance, the yearly cost for most non-rich students is $15,000 or less.

Do any of the schools you're applying to offer merit-based scholarships based on your current academic record? If not, you could also hold off accepting any loans for the '12-13 year, and hope that you get merit-based awards/TA-ships for the following two years.

A number of the schools I have applied to are ivy and do offer merit based scholarships. I have only heard back from one school, and they offered roughly half of that $40k. But even after that, the cost of the remaining tuition, books, materials, living expenses, etc would be very high. Just not sure if enough federal loans (given that my efc was so high) will be awarded.

Or you can just NOT go to an ivy league school if you can't afford it.  One thing is guaranteed and it's been stated over and over on archinect, the school you go to will never be a deciding factor in your career no matter what kind of architect you want to be.

Sounds like this is all in your head.

You will be in debt for a long time and it will suck because you won't get paid well.  You will then realize that you will need to pay a mortgage on top of your loans, get married, have kids, all that fun stuff.

Dude, you must drink a lot of coffee – That is a quite a volume!

Overall quality of graphic layouts is very high. Pages are visually exciting and dynamic yet there is an underlying discipline to the design which feels orderly and cohesive. Text is always legible. Pages describing a project hold together as a set, and it is generally easy to understand where one project (or section) ends and another begins. Pages makes good use of the two-page “issuu” interface, though I sometimes find this interface a little sluggish when I am trying to move rapidly between pages. (Browsing on the latest version of Firefox.)

There are layouts (notably the river projects) where I feel the lead lines (used to tie plan and sectional views) are a little heavy handed. These lines suggest non existent boundaries in the landscape and are thus somewhat distracting. Overall, though, the spatial and organizational aspects of projects are evocative and artfully presented yet decipherable in terms of real information.

Initially, the vari_VINYL landscape project made me feel confused and frustrated! Perhaps I am bound to inaccurate notions about the sustainability and healthfulness of a material commonly derived from petro-carbons, but without the presentation of contrary information, there remains a stigma that the proposal could be seen as attempting to “greenwash” (eg: utilization in illuminated channel components within the bio-swale / grey-water system. Certainly, flexibility and translucency are interesting attributes of  plastics and these are compellingly explored in the materials research and individual studies section.

The final proposal utilizes flexible translucence to suggestive effect, and I appreciate the transformative nature of the project as alluded to by the description of “light activated vinyl systems” which would vary the prominence of the boathouse on the landscape. The means to achieving this are not detailed, as the program - by its nature - seeks a delightful but decidedly theoretical fantasy. In the end, I came to view this as (perhaps) an artful commentary on the ultimate impact to the landscape of the use of the sponsor's product.

Time log 2010 and Pecos Preserve are interesting in that they are similarly accretive mesh extrusions in differing orientations. These are nicely presented, and show a textural richness that I enjoyed.

Soft diffuse project – Possibility to compress pages a bit and overlay title page text and the following two-page spread of the object, which is quite fascinating due to the ambiguity of scale and context. The image looks like it could have been created by an electron microscope focused upon the belly of an insect or the stalk of a plant.

Eco arboretum – Creation of forest voids and follies presents the interesting question of balance between the quantity of harvested lumber vs. the material required for the intervening buildings. This question is unanswered and the success of the project by its own rules would be undermined should there be required a net import of wood.  The idea of juxtaposing the new planting is wonderful, and I imagine the residual stumps of harvested trees would add dramatic impact to the cyclic narrative -- perhaps serving as temporary woodland furniture while slowly decaying back into the earth. Finally, I resolve the question of balance by imagining that larger follies might be constructed on an ongoing basis over time, as material from its own “patch” was harvested and replenished...

mobi-key: I was interested to learn about the Marine Stadium on Biscayne bay. The documentary “Then / Now” spread is really intriguing, as is the proposed intervention.

A big tip of the hat for the Playhouse Fun project – These kinds of cultural cross-polinizations are wonderful to see in a time when the arts are often under-supported in elementary education. These programs empower children to explore, interact and create by fostering the notion that they live in a world of possibilities. This is a small idea, but it makes a big difference in building a civil society.

Drawings and objects section : Your hand drawings (here and through-out) are quite rich in texture, contrast and emotion. I ponder curiously your process in making the interesting cube object out of discarded wrappers. The Tension project doesn't do much for me, and it seems in both information and composition to be much less substantial then the majority of your work. Were you to edit for length, this page might be a candidate for removal (or combination with another project.)

Thanks for an invitation to view the curation of a compelling body of work.
I think you can, at least, be relaxed about your portfolio while focusing on the other challenges of obtaining an advanced degree.

Other commentators question the value of the costs you are contemplating. I guess it really depends on what you see yourself doing after your M degree. If you want to teach, seems the advanced degree is necessary. If you want to work on projects that are budgeted, permitted, and built, then you must commit to an education of a different sort, the tuition for which is paid in reduced earnings, especially during early years of practice. The feasibility of bearing the burden of both is an unpleasant but useful consideration.

Good luck.

@Archrichard

Wow, thank you!

I appreciate your time and input, especially your thoughts on the Eco arboretum:

"...temporary woodland furniture while slowly decaying back into the earth" - fantastic

I'm archiving a copy of your text - thanks again!

I'd second the fact that discussing sustainability anywhere near vinyl is risky. Vinyl is pretty toxic and made from petrochemicals. That entire competition was really just an attempt for the Vinyl Institute to greenwash/try to boost their image. It's a great site, though, I'm sitting above it (I'm a UMN student) as we speak :)

I really like the portfolio overall. Nice, clean formatting and white space, good use of color, impressive diagrams. Renderings and model photoshopping could use a little work, and the cover needs a redo (as much as I like minimalism... just a name isn't quite enough IMO). 

Thank you for the input!

I agree with all the comments on issues of sustainability and materials. An ever-off-gassing material like vinyl would not be ideal; I can imagine the scent of a freshly hung shower curtain liner at every pass over the Washington Ave bridge. My only defense is, as royc identified, that Vinyl was the competition.

The project, like other assignments in that particular studio, did not seek completely worked out and detailed solutions, but rather included many rounds of conceptual proposals, and eventually the development of the strongest idea as the deadline approached. In some ways Vinyl became a mystery material that would support whatever crazy ideas we came up with, and the true physical properties were ignored.

In reality: Vinyl = toxic,

In that studio: Vinyl = magical, flexible material that can be illuminated and kinetically manipulated by weather, essentially Flubber, but oh yeah, these sponsors are giving us money if we win so let's call it Vinyl.

This, of course, could be seen as a negative approach, for it serves as an example of how easy it is to throw around the "green" jargon without actually doing the research to design a sustainable architecture. This, however, was not the goal of the project,  nor the studio. In brief, the studio was focused on the invention of program, programming the Object, and strategies for developing a compelling concept (cycle.symbiont (one week) was competition #2 of 3 from the same semester).

This was not the studio where I acquired a great set of sustainable strategies, but it did completely change, for the better, my approach to any problem that I am presented, architectural or otherwise.

brett, i'll be brief. phenomenal work. get rid of a lot of projects though. one house, one large scale project, the bike project, one volunteer project and one built project. over 100 pages is not only excessive, but the work is so polished, it's hard to comprehend how you'd could possibly exceed that level of work, and what would grad school have to offer you but more debt.

i've been told not only is less more, but less polish and more rough edges are necessary.