Mum, I generally take great stock in your comments, but I hope to be able to prove you wrong on the newly licensed part... I worked for 4 years in a few different firms before getting my license, and I basically quit my job as soon as I got it (well, actually before I took the supplemental exam). Partly because I'm not cut out to work for other people (or at least I'd like to try on my own for a while and see how it compares), partly because we had been doing side jobs for a few years and got a lot of referrals and the workload became too great. We obviously lack experience in some areas and don't try to hide that from our clients, but we also have creativity, flexibility, passion and enthusiasm to offer in exchange for their being willing to "take a risk". We don't have children yet and are willing to work long hours and be more accomodating than we might otherwise be if we were older and had a more established office. I feel confident that we are able to deal with clients just as successfully as some of the more experienced architects I've worked with, more so in many cases. Part of the process is getting a thicker skin, but we learn so much more doing it ourselves and I don't feel we are shortchanging the clients. Since we do mostly design/build, it alleviates a lot of the issues that come with "change order" problems. Of course there are a whole new set of complications and stresses that arise when you're building as well (as well as change orders!), but we feel we're up to the challenge. I would have liked to have found a place to work where I felt I could stay longer and would learn, be respected and work on projects that were interesting to me, it just didn't seem like it was going to happen.
So though I agree that the licensing process does not prepare you to start your own office immediately (we don't even do IDP in CA so it was just the exams), I would hope you might be open minded and give us "kids" a chance...

Since you continued the discussion, and addressed me specifically, I suppose I should reply?

I do understand the difficulties in switching jobs. There are pros and cons to switching frequently as an intern - and it is easier to do so in some locales than others. I also agree that interns shouldn't have to work huge amounts of uncompensated overtime to get experience either.
But the combined requirement for the IDP categories that you said you skipped entirely (bidding/contracts and field observation) amounts to a grand total of 25 units. Over the course of 3+ years of internship this amounts to less than 15 minutes per business day. So it seems to me that even if you had to negotiate a deal with your employer that you'd get to ride along on a site visit occasionally in exchange for making up the time later that this could happen without sacrificing your family and life by working huge amounts of overtime. In the long run you'd have probably spent less time in making up some uncompensated "learning time" than reading all those ALS and Ballast books later!
Besides which, construction observation units may be earned in other settings - such as projects for Habitat for Humanity and other design-build projects. There are plenty of tasks in the bidding and contract realm that happen within the office.

Also: some of the things you mentioned as not being within the realm of an average newly-registered architect's experience are in fact specific "core competencies" in the IDP handbook, including coordinating utilities and dealing with clients, consultants, etc. Being registered IS supposed to indicate some basic level of competence with these issues and as an architect. (And yes, there are plenty of unregistered people who are competent as architects too - that's a separate issue.)

I still maintain that it is one thing to "creatively allocate" time into various relevant IDP categories - in fact NCARB states that this expected and recommended. For instance many construction document tasks also fulfill code analysis, coordination, engineering systems, etc, and many schematic and design development tasks also include some programming, site analysis, etc.
I'm not so tolerant of the idea of "stretching" experience to fill categories that aren't really full - but if it's a matter of one or two units then maybe...
It's another thing altogether to completely fabricate the sum total of one's experience in entire categories - which is what Mum is defending here.

It sounds like IDP has changed a little since I did it and incorporates things that it didn't before. It also sounds like they've added some opportunities that weren't there before - Habitat for Humanity. I didn't skip Bidding/Field Observation entirely. Maybe my comments were misleading.

I'm not defending fabricating IDP units at all. I'm not sure where that idea came from. I'm saying that NCARB does not provide very much flexibility for those who are not able to fulfill all the requirements to the letter. Interns should not feel like they have to take drastic measures in their employment to follow the guidelines to the letter. If an intern has the opportunity to be exposed to everything that is wonderful. Not everyone does.

I'm not specifically trying to wrap you up in this discussion, Ormolu. You and I, and I'll throw R. A. in here just for fun, got kind of caught up in the discussion together. Ironically, started by someone who's now banned. Not sure what that says. Anyway, I admire the fact that you were able to get through your exams without spending lots of money. I guess my employment didn't leave me as prepared as you were. You seem to have really embraced the spirit of IDP. And since I'm assuming you did it more recently than I did, you're probably more qualified to opine on it than I am.

R.A. - it's great that you're out on your own. I've met some other young architects who are so cocky about hanging their shingle but you sound like you have a much better head on your shoulders than a lot of others. Design build prepares you for the real world quickly.

I expect both of you to prove me wrong and to tell everyone about it!

Hi Mum: I don't know that I did IDP more recently than you - it's been a few years. I am up on the recent handbook because there are a couple of interns in our office in the thick of it now, but in most areas it is extremely similar to what I had as an intern (with some notable exceptions as to the amount of units you can get for a post-pro degree, and a few other more significant changes.)
I didn't mean that Habitat for Humanity was any sort of officially mentioned IDP option. But IDP allows pretty much any community/volunteer/etc activity to count so long as you can document it to the satisfaction of your current employer. (If you're not employed in an architecture firm at the time you take on this experience then the rules are stricter as to what counts, what the duration of the experience must be, who can be supervising you, etc.)
When I was doing IDP I got a few of the construction observation units by attending construction site visits that were organized by my city's "young architects" organization (I think this may be organized by the AIA.) Groups of interns would visit large projects under construction in the city, usually led by the architect on the project. These usually happened for 3 or 4 hours during a work day, so I'd then just make up the few hours I missed at work by working late for a few days.

As for starting out on your own immediately upon registration: preparedness certainly varies widely among those newly registered. But: most of the smaller firms I've worked in were started by one person striking out on their own fairly early on. This really can't be that unusual because more than a third of all US architecture firms are one-person operations and I can't believe that all of those are run by people with 20 years experience! Sure, there's a learning curve. But I don't necessarily think clients are getting a disservice by hiring someone newly registered. The client is usually looking for a bargain and the architect is usually looking for experience and work to fill a portfolio. It can work out very well so long as the architect is realistically portraying his abilities and experience.

You're right. I was making generalized comments. I'm sure there are a lot of newly licensed people who are perfectly competent. You hit on a good point about architects realistically acknowledging their abilities. It's not just architects either. I'm in the middle of a mess with a licensed contractor who's about to be terminated for lack of two brain cells to rub together. I'm not real sure why these people are still in business.

I finished IDP and started exams around '99. How about you?

2001 - but my IDP units spanned from 1995 to 1999 - so I'd imagine our IDP experiences overlapped.

It sounds like it. Did your computer also crash during Building Technology? :)

The people who are even older than me in my office will start talking about having to spend an entire week in another city, dragging their drafting equipment with them, not eating so they wouldn't have to go to the bathroom and sweating in a hot room with no air conditioning when they took their exams. There's a special satisfaction I get when I simply say "My computer crashed". That's when the foam squeezy balls usually start to fly.

Hmm... well my people here talk about packing picnic baskets of snacks to eat during the test, and about spilling food on their drawings.
No computer crashes here, but I've heard about a lot of them. Did you pass the one where the computer crashed? Most people who've told me about computer crashes got "fail" letters, even if the test center had documented the crash.

I didn't pass. It was Building Technology. My computer crashed after the break. When I got my fail letter, it said I failed the vignette that crashed and the one after. I called NCARB and was told that I would have to wait 6 weeks or something for them to retrieve the test and crash documentation. 3 weeks later I called NCARB again and was told I really had failed. Later that day someone from another department called me to say they were still working on it. I told them I had just gotten a call saying I had failed. They asked to call back and when they did said I'd really failed all by myself. I tried to argue the logic of their own responses with them but didn't get anywhere. So I retook it. It left me very bitter about NCARB and the whole process which explains many of my comments!

Yeah - that's about what I've heard. I've seen many, many people write about having computer problems and then receiving a "fail." Occasionally I've seen people post that they had computer problems and passed anyway, but I've never seen someone say they had computer problems, then failed, then appealed successfully. Half the time it seems that, even when the test-taker reports the computer problem immediately to the test center AND to NCARB that both later mysteriously have no record of the computer problem. It is a very bad thing that there is no entity overseeing NCARB. It also seems that there are an unreasonably large number of complaints about the testing centers (not just computer glitches but scheduling snafus, inconsistent enforcement of testing policies, inability to load the test software in the first place, noisy test centers, problems with refunds, etc. ad nauseum.) Some competition between more than one test company would probably be a helpful thing.

I wasn't sure any of this was still going on. It sounds like it hasn't gotten any better.