Exhuberent, yet professional. Although, I feel I could have probably come off better.... they seemed to want a 'yes' or 'no' regarding the interview over the phone, and I was like, "hang on there, I can't just decide that in a minute".

I just got an acceptance email from wash univ in st louis. YAY. Still waiting to hear from sciarch, columbia, yale, ut-austin, uw-seattle. anyone heard from these schools yet?? very nervous.

nicey - I looked into Parsons a while back but never applied. The interdisciplinary opportunities and its location is what initially drew me to it but in the end I didn't like it as much as other programs and I just lost interest. Seems like they should be able to pull a decent amount of good faculty, being that they are in NYC. Not a bad city to be in for a few years.

I'm getting a feeling that Michigan will send out an e-mail...tomorrow?

Congratulations to everyone on the recent acceptances. Well except for WonderK, who dumped me after she got hers.

wgp3, thanks for words of encouragement. I hope you're right.

I just got to work...Monday morning...super cranky. Got a terrible stomach ache as I turned on my computer and checked archinect postings and my email.

I really need to hear back from schools NOW.

About Parsons, I have a friend in the M.Arch I program there and he is really enjoying the program. I think it is a very solid choice of schools Nicey. Also, Joanna Merwood is the director of the grad program and she is AWESOME. I took an intro to architectural theory course with her in undergrad and thought she was an excellent teacher. My friend at Parsons liked her a lot too.

Correction - Associate Chair, not Director.

Off to a crappy start this week... I hope I get some good news soon.

Me too, LIG. I'm tired of all these spreadsheets. I'm ready to start coloring and gluing and coming up with ideas for buildings that look really stupid.

I just came out of our weekly staff meeting where one of the partners and our marketing director -- two hyper-aggressive, pushy, type-A career women, neither of whom is capable of a single coherent, linear thought -- proceeded to suck the oxygen out of the room for an hour. Typical Monday morning.

Now I'm stuck doing BOMA floor area calculations for a 67,792 sf call center in a suburban office park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm sure grad school will bring its own unique blend of stress and frustrations, but at least I can look forward to three years of not having to do this shit.

Oh, how positively horrible. Aggressive, type-A career women.

*eye roll big time*

Just for the record (before a flame war erupts): I have no problem with career women, or with having female supervisors. But if you met these two in particular, you'd run screaming for the hills.

A couple of the men in leadership positions in this firm are just as bad, but they remained relatively quiet during the staff meeting. They generally use other venues to inflict their damage on employee morale.

<secretly plots ascent to owning design firm, fantasizes briefly about becoming aggressive, type-A career woman>

baboomba, if all my dreams come true, I will hire you as my personal assistant :oP

joanna merwood and doug gauthier were members of the jury at our final review. joanna is super nice and very constructive, doug was wild and HIGHLY provocative. both very intelligent and faculty members at at parsons, they are the ones who initially got me interested in the program. i also met linnea tillett, a lighting designer/prof at parsons. she was passionate, articulate, had a huge sense of social responsibility and her work was very creative. based on my interactions with faculty, i think the parsons program could be very interesting. they also have the scapes publication, which might give you insight into their philosophy and the direction of their cirriculum. ugh, if i don't get an acceptance from here i will be very very depressed.

Gin,

I know what you mean, people can just be freaks and it's annoying to work with them. Just pleeeaaasseee try to be more sensitive about using their gender to insult them!! It comes across as really sexist in a way you don't seem to have intended.

--Aggressive Career Woman
(Albeit one who can manage to put together a coherent thought, and who isn't quite sure what Type A personality means.)

My apologies for my poor choice of words.

If you've ever seen The Devil Wears Prada, our female partner is a dead ringer for the evil boss in that movie. She never fails to make a big show about how sucessful of a woman she is, but ironically, it's the other women in the office who she shits upon the most. We've lost some incredibly bright and talented people because of her games.

(Her husband, the other partner, is the leacherous aging baby boomer who spends most of his time walking around the office clicking his pen, and making passes at the younger blonde women in the firm. We've lost a number of people because of that, as well... The rumor mill has it that the only reason his wife was made a partner was because she demanded it after he had an affair with an intern some years ago.)

Yeah, we're one big happy family here...

For anyone who applied to RISD - I called today and admissions said they are most likely going to spending this week deciding. The earliest that we could hear anything back would be next week.

Actually, that's pretty normal. Super-successful women frequently hold women to a higher standard than men, seeing every screw-up as demeaning the whole gender.

Wow, sounds like a crazy work environment LIG. I totally agree with you about marketing people though. Marketing woman at my firm is like my least favorite person here. She flirts with the partners and doesn't even say hello to normal employees. Very Type A.

On the topic of "gender", I was thankful to see that Harvard and MIT both state in their non-disrimination policies that they do not discriminate on the basis of "gender identity". Whew!

Problem is, most of the "screw-ups" in this case originate with the partner herself, with the interns and admin staff thrown to the sharks to do damage control.

I could easily write a whole 20-page thread dealing with the issues in this firm, but nobody wants to hear about that... I'd rather obsess over grad school prospects. Once I move to [insert city name here: Ithaca, Cambridge, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia], this place will be the last thing on my mind.

ok, I'm just checking how this 'badge' thing from coroflot works. If it works like I think it does, this should link to my portfolio:

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hmmm, that would be a big 'no way!'. Let's try again...

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thhhhhpt. Ok, well for all you people who've been wondering, here's my portfolio on Coroflot. It's been updated with the pages from my grad school stuff.

There. That was better.

cp, froccli and 222 - thanks. all examples of why i wanted to hear people's thoughts... good luck!

boomba- they give you code for this cute icon that shows previews of your work, but I guess it doesn't work within forums, only within its own webspace.

Ha - I actually liked the boss in Devil Wears Prada. Or at least I preferred her to the employee, whom I thought was a whingeing, arrogant brat.

I also do not tend to get along with marketing people. I don't know, I've rarely worked with people like you are describing, and when i do it doesn't last long. I'm rather confrontational & tend to snap back when treated poorly, so maybe it just doesn't happen because people learn fast - don't do it! Maybe I am this Type A that everyone seems to hate.

Anyway, I don't see grad school as being an escape from all of this... those same personality types will be our classmates and professors... some we'll love, some will clash. Only we can look forward to paying for the experience rather than earning money. WHEEE!!!!

Rationalist,

Portfolio looks great. Very clean and concise. What program are you applying to? Are they MArch, post-professional, or non-architecture?

Ha ha, I love it when my "superiors" (a term I use loosely) say or do something stupid.....this happens on a near hourly basis, mind you.....I just laugh or smile, knowing I only have to put up with it for a few more months.

I really should get my IDP report updated soon so I can get that out of the way.

MFA in Graphic Design or Visual Communications Design, which seem to be the same thing (if anything, VCD is a bit more print-focused).

Unlike you guys who got to make books, I had to send CDs or slides. So that stuff was from the CD version, the slide version took away all the text and had it in a Slide Inventory list attached, as I didn't know whether they would project the slides or view through a lupe, so I didn't want to risk my text turning out to be 1pt high.

If you don't mind my asking, to which schools are you applying?

I know you've mentioned some of them before, but I've forgotten.

i've had female managers at almost all of my jobs. and perhaps it was just the finance and publishing industries, but they were all such biotches, ESPECIALLY to other, younger women. they were all well past their 40s, without kids or single. i wasn't sure if they were throwing themselves into their work becuase their personal life was a mess or if they had a vapid personal life becuase they were so obsessed with their careers. either way, it left them bitter toward the younger females in the office who seemed to have a handle on both, which is stupid becuase i think most women face a point in their lives where they are forced to choose between career and some other form of a personal life. i've seen some very successful women do it, but always at the expense of something (i guess it would be the same for men too). anyway...all i know is that i hate working for women becuase they're beechy, can't handle stress and are seemingly nice to only males in the office (so freaking territorial).

on a another note. i called parsons. they did not receive one of my recommendations or my gre scores. what the freak? and becuase my application was flagged as incomplete, it wasn't reviewed and will not be reviewed becuase they've already convened and made their decisions. i applied at the last minute and i couldn't get in touch with one of my recommenders in time so i called the graduate admissions office and they told me not to worry becuase recommendations were optional, which they confirmed fifty times when i asked them 'are you sure' in 50 different ways. apparently, the graduate admissions office has nothing to do with the arch department! second, my gre scores were clearly paid and sent on time per my credit card statement. i know it's my fault for not calling in and ensuring the completeness of my application, but i am still devastated.

or it could be their way of saying, 'eh it wasn't good enough for us to pine for the rest of your application'.

Maryland Institute College of Art
University of Washington
California College of the Arts
Pratt (the only MS of the bunch, puts it as a lower choice than it would be based on other factors)
Savannah College of Art and Design
Rochester Institute of Technology

I've only just recently solidified the order of preference. The top four are still so close that a substantial amount of money from any of them could cause them to jump to #1 pretty quick.

CCA or Pratt ;)

ok, that does it, I'm calling Pratt right now. Is the east coast 3 hours ahead of the west right now, or 4?

FROCCLI that sucks. What are your other schools?

Holy shit, FROCCLI, sorry to hear that... I could handle being rejected from a school because my application simply didn't make the cut, but it would really sting to be rejected because of somebody else's bureaucratic fuck-up.

I don't know much about art programs, but good luck. Do the schools you selected have strong art programs in general or are they specifically strong in the programs to which you applied?

jasoncross- have you looked at the program at MICA though? It's pretty new, but just looks outstanding. It's headed by Ellen Lupton (whom I love in a non-sexual, my-her-books-are-helpful sort of way), and the students actually publish as part of the curriculum. Last year they put together Design It Yourself.

I agree that CCA's pretty damn awesome, and we'll see about Pratt if they give me a reason to visit. The top four on my list are really not a '1, 2, 3, 4', but more of a '1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4'...

boomba- specifically strong in my chosen program. Well, many of them are also good at other arts, but I really looked for strong graphic design programs and curriculums that fit what I want to do, or are flexible enough that I can make them fit what I want to do (that's how RIT and SCAD jumped in there).

...at the risk of being obvious, arrogant jerks (male or female) aren't industry specific.

and unfortunately, school is no escape, since they'll still be right there waiting for us when we graduate.

damn, there's so much action on this thread, my last comment is so, like, 5 minutes ago!

O.k. Thanks for the info. Best of luck.

rationalist!!!!

Your project inspired me to create my own architecture fraternity shirt!!!!!!

By the way, WHERE ARE MY DECISIONS?!

Very true... School won't be an escape from jerkish personality types and petty politics, but at least it will be somewhat of an escape from the drudgery of plumbing fixture counts, systems furniture, and construction specifications.

FROCCLI, that SUCKS!!!

AAAAHHHH!!!

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

I know from personal experience that Parsons' administration is not well organized. I really think you should call them and raise hell especially about the GRE scores, which you can prove - it got me financial aid after they messed that up 2 years in a row, even after I was told "we can't do anything." The people there are pretty helpful and understanding, and I know they've made their decisions but maybe you could at least get waitlisted. Especially if Parsons was one of your top choice schools (if it isn't, maybe not worth such a hassle.)

...and spreadsheets and powerpoint...