Wondering if any of you out there that are licensed took the pencil and paper exam given, what 2x per year?
The experience of taking the computer exam puts you in a room full of people testing for various things--lined up in carrels (sp?) with only the sound of keyboards and heavy sighs. What was it like to take the exam before? Did you know most of the people there? How many people took them with you? Was it wall to wall drafting boards and maylines? How long did it take? Did you commiserate with other test takers at the end of the day?
i took the exam in Phoenix....think it was at the Nights of Columbo Hall or American Legion Hall. All I recall is there was jack hammers blasting away in the background and the room was like 32 degrees. My thoughts were, I should sue the bastards. Actually I thought seriously about standing up and yelling we should sue the bastards....
hoping everyone would join my cause...but then fear set in and well set out the exam and passed it. I recall reaching deep into my self
and finding solice in the Architect Sullivan. Did a big ass circular window in a facade and made all the rest of the project meet code... I was one sly fox....dancing with the wolves.
when i took it, it was once a year. are exam was a whole week affair with first three days the regular multiple choice and last two days the graphic pencil drawn parts. the scenery was exactly like ol'fogey narrated.
i failed all 9 (yards). i re-took the tests 25 years later and passed all 9 + 1 (feet).
during the former, i saw several people left early, crying from frustration. in one lunch break i smoked a joint. i think it was the lunch break between the structural exams. during the pencil drawn building design, at one point all you heard was people poking their drawings w/ sharp pencils trying to make stucco texture which i hated to hear. yes, you had to design, and draw a mid size building w/ plans, sections and elevations in 10 hours i think. as a token, everybody made a note saying it was a gas fired forced air unit pointing to a dubious duct...(?)
i was more serious for the second time. hardest exam was the notorious oral exam of california, by far.
25 yrs. later? Gives me some hope.
Ahhh....the sweet sounds of the stipple. I had a crusty prof. once that had us render an elevation without any lines. Ink stipple on mylar. He was the best. Come to think of it, he looked a bit like Andy Rooney. I had that studio with a guy that took the California oral 3x.
Fungible? I had to look that one up Fogey. Sounds mushroomy.
no no no myriam they aren't a simple interview (used to be from what I hear). They recently changed the format AGAIN, and from what I gather now, the oral goes a lil something like this:
show up - get a full set (cd set) of dwgs - have 1/2 hr to review (as if it was your own project) and when you go into another room, you sit b4 3 peers and they will ask you anything under the sun about that project you just reviewed & then some!
Again, this is what I have head that the oral part is like as recently as last year!
wow old Fogey...I wish it was really just a matter of sitting down and having a chat with someone (regarding architecture that is) no matter what age you are. I know some very bright young designers (since we can call ourselves architects) who know quite alot...and have loads of experience.
....sigh.........
oh boy.....that reminds me I should get cracking on my lateral forces materials.
i took the CA bldg design (all-day) pportion when i was in vertical studio at sci-arc, during finals week. i know the only reason i passed was that i was so wired from school that it seemed like a nice break to spend a day downtown. After the exam my wife came and picked me up. She tried having a conversation with me, but I was too fried to even relay the experience to her.
I took the remaining portions about a year later - all downtown as well. they were held in the LA Mart, which is a fashion center of some sorts. The basement was our destination, and it felt like a very large and lonely space with a forest of concrete columns.
I remember the absolutely fascist grid of the table layout, it was beautiful. Close enough to others to get their sense of the exams via body language, etc., but not so close that it was distracting. Passed all the remaining tests over the next few days.
Took the oral exam about a year or so after that. Down at the embassy suites in irvine, right next to the taco bell world headquarters. i never felt good about the exam. irvine, cheap embassy suites and taco bell all give me the creeps, so i was not in a good mindset for the test. walking past people leaving the exam with ghastly depressed and shell-shocked facial expressions didn't help much either. Waiting in a crummy hotel suite and then being seated in front of some old timers who just grilled me - well there was no way i made it.
tried again 6 months later and sailed through.
i still remember their stock response whenever there was an element missing from one of my answers, "Is there anything else you'd like to add?" Sometimes I'd add something, but I'd just have to cringe when I couldn't think of anything and sheepishly respond "uhhhh.....no."
The "fascist table layout" remark reminded, me jeffe: I was in a summer design studio at University of Michigan one of the last years of the paper exam, which in Michigan was held at the other end of UMich's vast upstairs studio space. So we were down on one end doing our little studio thing but goooooood lord - you could feel the tension and frustration in the air from 100 feet away - those poor people taking the exam looked, indeed, ghastly depressed. It scared the hell out of me.
Glad I got to take the computer exam, even though I still refer to those who passed the paper exam as "much more of a man than me" (the fact that I'm a woman has nothing to do with that statement).
wow - i couldn't imagine taking the exam in a space shared by a running studio.
otoh, it'd be kinda fun to pretend to have a breakdown over the exam and freak out the students.
ca oral exam;
it ain't informal interview but if you can think that way and act like as if you are in one, with well remembered knowledge base, you are ahead of the game when it comes to cali oral exam. but that wishfull thinking and role playing can easily go away in the above described (by jeffe) embassy suites room with a tape recorder going and they ask you to name five things that aren't structural but need structural support and give three reasons for each one as to why in the spa plans you've had a 15 minutes opportunity to look before the exam (something like that). i guess the oral exam is the only part left in license exams with a human contact, hence 'oral exam', where all examinees swallow.
I sat for the exam after apprenticing into the profession. Granted I did go to school but grew distresses over the quality of education and what it was costing me. I always worked in an Architectural Firm when going to school, usually 30 hours a week. I had a very good boss who knew he could trust me to get projects done on time, even if I was working in the evenings, early mornings and weekends. I was usually able to make rent, buy gas, and pay car insurance and buy food, with enough to buy a six pack of beer once and a while. I always worked extra long weeks when ever we were on break from school inorder to come up with enough money to enroll for the next semester of school. Never had the opportunity to request classes early cause I just didn't have the money in the bank.
Anyhow I recall when I went to take the design portion of the exam, several of the people I had gone to school with were there also taking the exam. They had not seen me for some time and were curious as hell what I was doing there taking the exam. So I went into the apprenticing speach..... There was one person in particular I recall, the blonde babe, with the killer ass body who was always hitting on the professors. She showed up with this monster hollow core door with her mayline and had guys helping her carry it into the building. Another old classmate friend of mine sees her, and winks and says she will be out of here by 2:00 pm. Well she ended up in my site line...and 12:00 came and she was still there...I thought...maybe she will hang in there.....1:00 came and damn she was still there.....1:58 there is all this trashing of drawing paper, banging around and yup she is bailing.....That was when I realized I was really going to pass this exam.
tk, no that doesn't make people better architects, that just keeps more people getting registered due to loss of interest. as people get older they get involved in more things than a license and it gets harder and harder to concentrate or commit to study for the exams.
My husband is typically very supportive. However, with each FAIL I receive I think he goes into his protective mode and questions why I put myself through it all. I have a tendency to underestimate the exams, schedule one, skim through the material and hope it will be enough. I think I had hoped that the time, money, and energy---school=5 yrs, internship=5 yrs---all that leading up to the exams would have been enough to allow me to breeze through. Like snook, I put myself through school so financially it's a drag. My education wasn't much like my internship, my internship wasn't much like the ARE, and the ARE doesn't focus on anything that we really focused on in school. But anyway, I think my family (unfortunately) can't relate to all that and some of them have just lost any hope of my becoming licensed while others are thinking I'm effing crazy to even still want to be a licensed architect.
I love hearing the tales of the pencil and paper exams though because although it might seem like the 9 computer tests may suck up more time (9 separate hurdles)it shows that there were still those fungible questions, and there were still people who took a long time to actually complete the whole thing. It's a frustrating process and has been since that fateful day of NCARB's creation.
So damm, more info than you probably needed but in a nutshell my husband follows my lead and gives me mainly computer support for those practice exams but doesn't sit up at night grilling me on fungibles. He's been real good at pointing out it's all about test taking (he actually had a class in school about test taking) and that was a perspective that I didn't have before. I did pretty good in school but the whole test taking on a computer is a new experience.
If I ever had any advice to give anyone wanting to be licensed it would be to not procrastinate and get it over with asap.
Well, after lurking on this site for over a year, I finally had to register and join the fray.
Yes, the old pen/paper exam...what a memory. I took the exam in a convention hall with 2,000 other candidates. 6' desks were lined up end-to-end and in rows that were at least a hundred feet long between aisles. The exam started at 8:00 AM and ended (unless you gave up earlier) at 8:00 PM. No official breaks and if you went to the bathroom a test proctor waited just outside (only one person allowed in the bathroom at any one time). You had to bring your own drafting table, supplies, lunch, drinks, whatever (I had the classic door with Mayline parallel bar). And, this all happened on the 4th day of 4 consecutive days of test-taking. The first 3 days were all of the multiple-choice exams, including the now defunct history exam (it was actually one of the more difficult exams).
The "program" was passed out (sealed) and at the signal you broke the seal and started reading about whatever it was you were expected to design. In those days (I'm really dating myself now), you had to place your building on a site and develop parking, service access, a little landscape and show contours to indicate the drainage. You also had to develop a 2 (or more) story building in plans, 2 contiguous elevations and a section. In addition, you were also required to develop a prescribed suite of offices within your plan(demonstrating that you could do a basic space plan), complete with water coolers, copiers, etc. (everything listed in the program had to be indicated on your drawing).
From 8:00 AM until around noon, nothing much happened. There was the occasional mutter and much crumpling and tearing of trace, but not much else. This was long before ipods and such, so there were no headphones or anything like that. At about noon, the fellow seated to my right all-of-a-sudden stood up and started tearing at his hair and saying "I can't do this...I can't do this." He got louder each time he said it. He then threw his tools in his box and packed up and walked out. That shook me for a few minutes (I wasn't feeling all-to-confident right about then, anyway). Somehow, I shook it off and kept going. As the day wore on, more people packed up and left. At one point around 4 or 5:00, it seemed like a stream of people were heading toward the exits. Basically, you knew that if you didn't have the design worked out by then and were well on your way in developing all the drawings, you were screwed.
I had been fortunate enough prior to the exam date to speak with an architect that had actually served as a grader of the design exam in the past. He told me the process. First, at the end of the exam, you had to staple your drawing sheets together in a specified order and then you taped the edge so that the drawings, in theory, could not be looked at until they were unsealed at the judging site. All of the exams from all over the country were shipped to regional grading sites. The exams were laid out flat on the floor of a large gymnasium or similar facility, in rows. The graders would walk in a group up and down each row. They would look only at your first drawing sheet (the site plan/first floor plan). As they walked down the row if they could easily "read" (meaing you had at least rendered your work clearly) your drawing from a standing position with the drawing flat on the floor, they left your drawing facing up and moved on. If they could not "read" your drawing as they walked by, they would reach down and turn over your drawing package so it faced down. At that point, you failed. Your other drawing sheets would not even be reviewed. If you were lucky enough to survive that first pass, then your entire package got a review that might last, at most, 15 minutes. The graders had templates so they could quickly lay them on the plans to see if room sizes were the correct programmed area (a small tolerance was allowed, but unlike in school, you couldn't get away with 1,000 square feet if the program called for 2,000). Each grader reviewed the package individually and recorded a grade. At the end, if there was a split decision on your submission, a "master grader" reviewed your exam and made the final pass/fail decision. Other things that the graders checked were: were all of the required spaces included, with the required adjancencies and of the required size; did the plans/sections indicate a structural system that worked for the spans, etc (the program always included at least one long-span space); did the plans/sections indicate a basic HVAC system (duct chases, horizontal duct runs, appropriate mechanical/electrical spaces, etc.); and were there any major, unfixable code violations for exiting and that type of thing. In other words, if your plan had a 50-foot deadend corridor, you failed without further review.
The test was only offered once per year, in June, on the same day over the entire country. You received your scores in October. If you failed any of the sections, the deadline for applying (and paying the fees) for the next exam date the following June, was in December. The pressure was really on, because you knew if you failed you had to wait another full year just to take the exam again. Your actual license would probably be delayed 18 months, or more.
So, the end of my day at the exam was pretty much as others have described. There really was not that much chatter among candidates because, believe me, I had never been that fried in my entire life. Try designing a building from scratch in 12 hours. It will drain you. All-nighters in school never destroyed me as much as this did. One fellow did stand up on his chair and invite all 2000 people to a kegger he was throwing that night, but I don't think he had too many takers. I went home and just collapsed on the bed. That's when my wife came in to the room and told me she wrecked my car that day while I was taking the exam. At that point, I didn't even care.
Wow, after reading those horror stories I feel pretty good about my next exam coming up this weekend. After that one just a couple to go. Sweet.
ARE 4.0 is misleading with the 7 parts. All portions are now incorporating vingnettes and more fill in the blank, which already has been started on the mech/elec systems test. They are trying to make the ARE harder...not easier.
The difficulty doesn't bother me. I'm hoping it'll be less time in contact with Prometric and potentially less time in finishing the tests. I'll probably try to keep the schedule of having a month between each one (which I think is reasonable?)
LE, great post. Takes me back. I had a friend who took the test 9 months pregnant. I think she went into labor the next day. It was only once a year, it didn't matter if you were sick, had a hatchet stuck in your head, whatever, you took it.
We took the test in the studio of a local architecture school. It was interesting. All of the people who had graduated in that school sat on one side of the room. The other side was the one where the sun came streaming in on a hot summer day from 2 pm on (no air conditioning!). Home town advantage!
I think the test was much harder then, but you did it. That once a year thing forced you to focus. Nearly everyone I went to school with was registered 5 years out.
Now I own a firm with a bunch of interns who study for one tiny part of the test for 3 months, then delay taking it for another month with excuse after excuse. Its too close to Christmas, I might get a cold, My son has soccer practice this month. Most of them take 8 years to get registered.
So I agree, just do it! Pretend you have a deadline, and if you miss it, you will NEVER be registered!!
One intersting thing, I see that older architects seem to be so much more linear in their thinking about a project- we can actually produce a building in 12 hours if we have to. Maybe it is just experience, but younger architects seem to be less able to move things forward rapidly- it is kind of a meandering experience.
landscape architects still are tested with paper and pencil twice a year, 5 hours each, two days in a row. passed section e - grading and stormwater management, but failed section c - site planning for some silly errors.
Yes Steven, I am an old coot. We had to walk uphill a mile with a mayline to take the test too!!
Seriously though, I do see a big difference in expectations of you youngins. We had a recent discussion about mentoring in our office. Perhaps it is because when I was young, you just went to school, did your chores, and played kickball in the dirt because Mom threw you out of the house so she could make dinner. So you had to figure out things on your own, entertain yourself...
Kids today seem to have everything planned and laid out for them. Soccer practice instead of needing to go round up some pals and play softball in the neighbors too small yard. Violin lessons instead of pounding away on the old piano in the basement and discovering a talent for music. Classes on proper etiquette instead of mom yelling at you to get your elbows off the table. College coaches for high school kids who write their inflated resumes for them, and sign them up for classes to raise their SAT scores 20 pionts instead of going to the state college cause it is all you can afford. Then they get out of college and are expecting to be "mentored" which to them means shown exactly what to do every step of the way.
So yes, I am old, but I do think you kids today have been a bit coddled. And in our firm, when we are rushing to get a project done, and it is 9:30 at night, it is the four oldest people in the office who are still here cranking it out.
I'm in agreement with you, archie (I'm old too - as is Steven by the way, thought not NEARLY as old as I), but whenever I read/think these kinds of thoughts, I wonder: What do the 70-year-olds say about us? What "failings" of my abilities did my older mentors ascribe to the "These kids today" phenomenon?
Hey Liberty Bell, what is old to you- like 30? 40? The average age on this site has got to be about 21. I am sure they think those of us over 50 are too old to know how to turn the computer on.
Funny thing, I am working for a bunch of really young "kids" (my clients!) right now. They come to meetings with their jeans hanging down their butts, and their underwear showing, "talk" to you while responding to email on their blackberry, and it is all I can do to restrain myself from yelling at them to sit up straight in their chair or they will ruin their posture!!
Its is hard to take the "Mom" out of you once it gets in.
the is a part of me that wishes I could take the old pencil and paper registration exam... I find going into an unfamiliar building with a group of strangers to crank out drawings for 12 hours very appealing
I'd be interested to know the demographics of archinectors. I'm 30, which I think is very young, but it's amazing the amount of experience I have over someone who is 23 and just out of their undergrad.
The computer based ARE does make it way too easy to procrastinate. Even when scheduling exams I often put off a test for 2-3 more weeks just to get that Saturday morning spot or schedule around an upcoming party/vacation/etc. Not that I pine for the old style, but if it were only offered on a quarterly basis I think people would get much more serious.
Then again, not all the blame should be on us lazy youngsters. NCARB processes IDP at a snails pace. To honestly get all your IDP hours it takes 3-5 years then add all the NCARB hassle at it becomes quite difficult for "most" people to get registered 5 years out of college. Maybe NCARB is staffed by kids with their jeans hanging down to their butts.
Just beware of making blanket statements about all young people in this profession. I'm often at work burning the midnight oil, or in at 6:30am, getting work done while some old coots work their 40 hours and go home...or to their holiday homes.
Well, aqua, that's why I raised the question about "these youngsters" 25 years ago. We ALL make blanket statements about all kinds of things, and I think to be fair we ALL need to acknowledge that this is a shared tendency and thus not very helpful, though interesting.
Yeah, it took me ten years to get registered, because the computer exam is so easy to procrastinate (and NCARB's IDP delays don't help). In my old firm, where about 6 of us were all taking it during the same long time period, and working fairly long hours too, we all joked that we were so busy BEING architects that we didn't have time to BECOME architects!
The average age of archinectors may be 21 if we look at everyone who ever registers or asks a question here. But it seems that the average age of regular posters is probably 8-10 years older. (I'm 41).
aquapura: I agree completely that NCARB's pace in reviewing IDP records makes it very difficult to start testing within the 3 or 4 year time frame that was more typical 20 years ago. NCARB has stated that the current average time between graduation and license is 7.5 years, and that the current average time to take and pass all divisions of the exam from start to finish is 28 months. I do think those averages are skewed by those few people who take decades to complete the process, and that the medians are probably much lower - but with every step of the paperwork and application process taking NCARB 4 months it isn't easy to do quickly these days. I took the computerized ARE over the course of 6 months, but the various NCARB and state wait times took longer than the test.
I thought about checking out the NCARB Registration, but having
apprenticed into the profession and having owned my own firm for
eleven years, I figured I could retire before I would be NCARB Certified. A friend of mine did it a few years ago, even with a degree
and having owned a firm for decades, it seemed to move at a snails pace. I remember him chuckling that they wanted letters of recommendations from people he had worked for and he said you
know their all dead. This effort was made because a client of his
was pulling up his manufacturing camp and moving to the New South.
Turned out he ended up working with a local Architect on the project
because NCARB just took to damn long to process his paper work although it did finally happen.
hmmmm. does the delay caused by IDP make for better architects? or if you compared folks a the same time post-graduation, we have similar levels of skills today v. yesterday?
I'm certainly frustrate with the slow pace of IDP.
snook: yeah, the process you're talking about - the "Broadly Experienced Architect" type of certification for people who don't hold a professional degree - is EXTREMELY slow, even by NCARB standards. I mean, I think it's ridiculous that every step of the usual IDP/ARE process takes NCARB 2 to 4 months, and that the application process for normal NCARB certification (not the BEA version) takes 6 to 8 months after licensing. But the BEA process is something else entirely - it typically takes 1 to 3 years of paperwork and interviews!, costs thousands, and even then it's not really equivalent to "regular" certification and not accepted for reciprocity in 7 or 8 states.
barry: my guess is that the slow pace today is probably a hindrance to the average intern's progress. In the old days a person with 4 or 5 years of experience would usually be licensed already, or at least have attempted it by taking the exam at least once. So firms expected a person with that level of experience to have the skills and competence of an architect. These days the expectations of firms seem lower. They seem to assume that a person with 4 or 5 years' experience is usually still an intern, with an intern-level skill-set and knowledge base...
I wonder too, if the expense translates...then vs. now? Study materials seem to be a big chunk of the testing expense, not to mention the time involved, ncarb and testing fees. Maybe it was the same difference back then, and the ALS stuff seemed just as spendy....I get mad when I price some of that stuff.
The cost to take the test - and the fees for IDP processing, the state license application fee, the annual dues to the state, and the annual dues to NCARB - are all more expensive. All of the NCARB fees tend to rise every 2 to 3 years.
As for study materials: people testing these days may have the advantage on that front. In the old days there was no areforum, ebay, or amazon on which to re-sell the study guides. The guides are expensive, but they're very easy to sell for nearly their original cost.
And you're right to be mad at the cost of the ALS/Kaplan stuff: those guides are 95% the same material that was in them 15 years ago. They just stick a new cover on it every year and raise the price.
This is just my guess, because I certainly have not done any kind of research, but I imagine the financial pain caused by the various fees, study guides, etc., translate fairly well from one era to another. I went through this process a loooooong time ago, but I clearly recall now the strain of doing so. Remember that wages/salaries were also far less in the past. Even then, trying to study and take the exam while working for a very low amount of pay (sometimes I wonder how I survived those days) was tough.
The ALS materials were about all that we had back then for study guides and I would have been lost without them. However, there was no way I could afford the whole set on my own. I teamed up with a couple of friends and each of us bought part of the series...and then we shared.
The only insight I can offer...and this is just my opinion...is that the cost of not buckling down and getting through the process is ultimately going to be higher than the cost of just getting it done.
i was very lucky when i got license. this was in ancient time so most wont remember the old format -- you could take section straight out of school and wait for 3 years exper to take the design / site design.
i walked out of a structures final at school into the licensure exam ! what luck - eh?
i was able to sit the design part 2 year full time as i had worked in offices all through school -- and working at skids - guess what i was doing - yes - office blocks and the design exam that year .....12 hours office block design!
now i thought i blew it - i drew the building too tall [aligning it with something next door] but realized it last minute and put all these dimensional notes and drew the line of the building next door taller --
every thing done in 1 shot!
at the exam just behind me to my left was jane graham [bruce grahams wife] and on my right was brigitta peterhans a wonderful woman -- there were best friends and chatted the whole exam -- [even though they had been at skids some 15 years each - they failed!]
"talk" to you while responding to email on their blackberry,
Funny, archie, this is exactly what all the old CEOs and real estate developers that come to my meetings do. None of the young kids do it--they are the ones looking the sharpest and the most eager at the meetings.
I cannot, absolutely cannot abide blackberry emailing during my meetings. Too bad you can't say anything to the client...
Yeah, I have some older clients who do it too. Really, since I work for them, I guess it is their right to blackberry away. It would be rude if they were paying me and I was not focusing on their work, but I guess they can not focus on things if they want. As long as they are paing me hourly!!
The old CEO's pants do cover their butts, thank god. OF course in some cases the belly over the belt and the smiley face of the shirt buttons stretching is enough to make you crazy.
Pencil and Paper Registration Exam?
Wondering if any of you out there that are licensed took the pencil and paper exam given, what 2x per year?
The experience of taking the computer exam puts you in a room full of people testing for various things--lined up in carrels (sp?) with only the sound of keyboards and heavy sighs. What was it like to take the exam before? Did you know most of the people there? How many people took them with you? Was it wall to wall drafting boards and maylines? How long did it take? Did you commiserate with other test takers at the end of the day?
Seems like it would be an experience to remember.
i took the exam in Phoenix....think it was at the Nights of Columbo Hall or American Legion Hall. All I recall is there was jack hammers blasting away in the background and the room was like 32 degrees. My thoughts were, I should sue the bastards. Actually I thought seriously about standing up and yelling we should sue the bastards....
hoping everyone would join my cause...but then fear set in and well set out the exam and passed it. I recall reaching deep into my self
and finding solice in the Architect Sullivan. Did a big ass circular window in a facade and made all the rest of the project meet code... I was one sly fox....dancing with the wolves.
"SUE THE BASTARDS!" That's funny.
Thanks snook.
when i took it, it was once a year. are exam was a whole week affair with first three days the regular multiple choice and last two days the graphic pencil drawn parts. the scenery was exactly like ol'fogey narrated.
i failed all 9 (yards). i re-took the tests 25 years later and passed all 9 + 1 (feet).
during the former, i saw several people left early, crying from frustration. in one lunch break i smoked a joint. i think it was the lunch break between the structural exams. during the pencil drawn building design, at one point all you heard was people poking their drawings w/ sharp pencils trying to make stucco texture which i hated to hear. yes, you had to design, and draw a mid size building w/ plans, sections and elevations in 10 hours i think. as a token, everybody made a note saying it was a gas fired forced air unit pointing to a dubious duct...(?)
i was more serious for the second time. hardest exam was the notorious oral exam of california, by far.
25 yrs. later? Gives me some hope.
Ahhh....the sweet sounds of the stipple. I had a crusty prof. once that had us render an elevation without any lines. Ink stipple on mylar. He was the best. Come to think of it, he looked a bit like Andy Rooney. I had that studio with a guy that took the California oral 3x.
Fungible? I had to look that one up Fogey. Sounds mushroomy.
Thanks for the stories you guys.
I didn't realize the CA orals were so hard. For some reason I thought they were just like an informal interview. Huh.
no no no myriam they aren't a simple interview (used to be from what I hear). They recently changed the format AGAIN, and from what I gather now, the oral goes a lil something like this:
show up - get a full set (cd set) of dwgs - have 1/2 hr to review (as if it was your own project) and when you go into another room, you sit b4 3 peers and they will ask you anything under the sun about that project you just reviewed & then some!
Again, this is what I have head that the oral part is like as recently as last year!
wow old Fogey...I wish it was really just a matter of sitting down and having a chat with someone (regarding architecture that is) no matter what age you are. I know some very bright young designers (since we can call ourselves architects) who know quite alot...and have loads of experience.
....sigh.........
oh boy.....that reminds me I should get cracking on my lateral forces materials.
My boss told me about his friend who's a firm principal and has failed site planning 6 times. And he started when the exam was still paper and pencil.
i took the CA bldg design (all-day) pportion when i was in vertical studio at sci-arc, during finals week. i know the only reason i passed was that i was so wired from school that it seemed like a nice break to spend a day downtown. After the exam my wife came and picked me up. She tried having a conversation with me, but I was too fried to even relay the experience to her.
I took the remaining portions about a year later - all downtown as well. they were held in the LA Mart, which is a fashion center of some sorts. The basement was our destination, and it felt like a very large and lonely space with a forest of concrete columns.
I remember the absolutely fascist grid of the table layout, it was beautiful. Close enough to others to get their sense of the exams via body language, etc., but not so close that it was distracting. Passed all the remaining tests over the next few days.
Took the oral exam about a year or so after that. Down at the embassy suites in irvine, right next to the taco bell world headquarters. i never felt good about the exam. irvine, cheap embassy suites and taco bell all give me the creeps, so i was not in a good mindset for the test. walking past people leaving the exam with ghastly depressed and shell-shocked facial expressions didn't help much either. Waiting in a crummy hotel suite and then being seated in front of some old timers who just grilled me - well there was no way i made it.
tried again 6 months later and sailed through.
i still remember their stock response whenever there was an element missing from one of my answers, "Is there anything else you'd like to add?" Sometimes I'd add something, but I'd just have to cringe when I couldn't think of anything and sheepishly respond "uhhhh.....no."
The "fascist table layout" remark reminded, me jeffe: I was in a summer design studio at University of Michigan one of the last years of the paper exam, which in Michigan was held at the other end of UMich's vast upstairs studio space. So we were down on one end doing our little studio thing but goooooood lord - you could feel the tension and frustration in the air from 100 feet away - those poor people taking the exam looked, indeed, ghastly depressed. It scared the hell out of me.
Glad I got to take the computer exam, even though I still refer to those who passed the paper exam as "much more of a man than me" (the fact that I'm a woman has nothing to do with that statement).
wow - i couldn't imagine taking the exam in a space shared by a running studio.
otoh, it'd be kinda fun to pretend to have a breakdown over the exam and freak out the students.
ca oral exam;
it ain't informal interview but if you can think that way and act like as if you are in one, with well remembered knowledge base, you are ahead of the game when it comes to cali oral exam. but that wishfull thinking and role playing can easily go away in the above described (by jeffe) embassy suites room with a tape recorder going and they ask you to name five things that aren't structural but need structural support and give three reasons for each one as to why in the spa plans you've had a 15 minutes opportunity to look before the exam (something like that). i guess the oral exam is the only part left in license exams with a human contact, hence 'oral exam', where all examinees swallow.
I sat for the exam after apprenticing into the profession. Granted I did go to school but grew distresses over the quality of education and what it was costing me. I always worked in an Architectural Firm when going to school, usually 30 hours a week. I had a very good boss who knew he could trust me to get projects done on time, even if I was working in the evenings, early mornings and weekends. I was usually able to make rent, buy gas, and pay car insurance and buy food, with enough to buy a six pack of beer once and a while. I always worked extra long weeks when ever we were on break from school inorder to come up with enough money to enroll for the next semester of school. Never had the opportunity to request classes early cause I just didn't have the money in the bank.
Anyhow I recall when I went to take the design portion of the exam, several of the people I had gone to school with were there also taking the exam. They had not seen me for some time and were curious as hell what I was doing there taking the exam. So I went into the apprenticing speach..... There was one person in particular I recall, the blonde babe, with the killer ass body who was always hitting on the professors. She showed up with this monster hollow core door with her mayline and had guys helping her carry it into the building. Another old classmate friend of mine sees her, and winks and says she will be out of here by 2:00 pm. Well she ended up in my site line...and 12:00 came and she was still there...I thought...maybe she will hang in there.....1:00 came and damn she was still there.....1:58 there is all this trashing of drawing paper, banging around and yup she is bailing.....That was when I realized I was really going to pass this exam.
And now with IDP, the average time before most 'interns' take the exam is pushing one decade... does that make us better architects?
tk, no that doesn't make people better architects, that just keeps more people getting registered due to loss of interest. as people get older they get involved in more things than a license and it gets harder and harder to concentrate or commit to study for the exams.
how are the husbands and wives dealing with all this?
My husband is typically very supportive. However, with each FAIL I receive I think he goes into his protective mode and questions why I put myself through it all. I have a tendency to underestimate the exams, schedule one, skim through the material and hope it will be enough. I think I had hoped that the time, money, and energy---school=5 yrs, internship=5 yrs---all that leading up to the exams would have been enough to allow me to breeze through. Like snook, I put myself through school so financially it's a drag. My education wasn't much like my internship, my internship wasn't much like the ARE, and the ARE doesn't focus on anything that we really focused on in school. But anyway, I think my family (unfortunately) can't relate to all that and some of them have just lost any hope of my becoming licensed while others are thinking I'm effing crazy to even still want to be a licensed architect.
I love hearing the tales of the pencil and paper exams though because although it might seem like the 9 computer tests may suck up more time (9 separate hurdles)it shows that there were still those fungible questions, and there were still people who took a long time to actually complete the whole thing. It's a frustrating process and has been since that fateful day of NCARB's creation.
So damm, more info than you probably needed but in a nutshell my husband follows my lead and gives me mainly computer support for those practice exams but doesn't sit up at night grilling me on fungibles. He's been real good at pointing out it's all about test taking (he actually had a class in school about test taking) and that was a perspective that I didn't have before. I did pretty good in school but the whole test taking on a computer is a new experience.
If I ever had any advice to give anyone wanting to be licensed it would be to not procrastinate and get it over with asap.
Well, after lurking on this site for over a year, I finally had to register and join the fray.
Yes, the old pen/paper exam...what a memory. I took the exam in a convention hall with 2,000 other candidates. 6' desks were lined up end-to-end and in rows that were at least a hundred feet long between aisles. The exam started at 8:00 AM and ended (unless you gave up earlier) at 8:00 PM. No official breaks and if you went to the bathroom a test proctor waited just outside (only one person allowed in the bathroom at any one time). You had to bring your own drafting table, supplies, lunch, drinks, whatever (I had the classic door with Mayline parallel bar). And, this all happened on the 4th day of 4 consecutive days of test-taking. The first 3 days were all of the multiple-choice exams, including the now defunct history exam (it was actually one of the more difficult exams).
The "program" was passed out (sealed) and at the signal you broke the seal and started reading about whatever it was you were expected to design. In those days (I'm really dating myself now), you had to place your building on a site and develop parking, service access, a little landscape and show contours to indicate the drainage. You also had to develop a 2 (or more) story building in plans, 2 contiguous elevations and a section. In addition, you were also required to develop a prescribed suite of offices within your plan(demonstrating that you could do a basic space plan), complete with water coolers, copiers, etc. (everything listed in the program had to be indicated on your drawing).
From 8:00 AM until around noon, nothing much happened. There was the occasional mutter and much crumpling and tearing of trace, but not much else. This was long before ipods and such, so there were no headphones or anything like that. At about noon, the fellow seated to my right all-of-a-sudden stood up and started tearing at his hair and saying "I can't do this...I can't do this." He got louder each time he said it. He then threw his tools in his box and packed up and walked out. That shook me for a few minutes (I wasn't feeling all-to-confident right about then, anyway). Somehow, I shook it off and kept going. As the day wore on, more people packed up and left. At one point around 4 or 5:00, it seemed like a stream of people were heading toward the exits. Basically, you knew that if you didn't have the design worked out by then and were well on your way in developing all the drawings, you were screwed.
I had been fortunate enough prior to the exam date to speak with an architect that had actually served as a grader of the design exam in the past. He told me the process. First, at the end of the exam, you had to staple your drawing sheets together in a specified order and then you taped the edge so that the drawings, in theory, could not be looked at until they were unsealed at the judging site. All of the exams from all over the country were shipped to regional grading sites. The exams were laid out flat on the floor of a large gymnasium or similar facility, in rows. The graders would walk in a group up and down each row. They would look only at your first drawing sheet (the site plan/first floor plan). As they walked down the row if they could easily "read" (meaing you had at least rendered your work clearly) your drawing from a standing position with the drawing flat on the floor, they left your drawing facing up and moved on. If they could not "read" your drawing as they walked by, they would reach down and turn over your drawing package so it faced down. At that point, you failed. Your other drawing sheets would not even be reviewed. If you were lucky enough to survive that first pass, then your entire package got a review that might last, at most, 15 minutes. The graders had templates so they could quickly lay them on the plans to see if room sizes were the correct programmed area (a small tolerance was allowed, but unlike in school, you couldn't get away with 1,000 square feet if the program called for 2,000). Each grader reviewed the package individually and recorded a grade. At the end, if there was a split decision on your submission, a "master grader" reviewed your exam and made the final pass/fail decision. Other things that the graders checked were: were all of the required spaces included, with the required adjancencies and of the required size; did the plans/sections indicate a structural system that worked for the spans, etc (the program always included at least one long-span space); did the plans/sections indicate a basic HVAC system (duct chases, horizontal duct runs, appropriate mechanical/electrical spaces, etc.); and were there any major, unfixable code violations for exiting and that type of thing. In other words, if your plan had a 50-foot deadend corridor, you failed without further review.
The test was only offered once per year, in June, on the same day over the entire country. You received your scores in October. If you failed any of the sections, the deadline for applying (and paying the fees) for the next exam date the following June, was in December. The pressure was really on, because you knew if you failed you had to wait another full year just to take the exam again. Your actual license would probably be delayed 18 months, or more.
So, the end of my day at the exam was pretty much as others have described. There really was not that much chatter among candidates because, believe me, I had never been that fried in my entire life. Try designing a building from scratch in 12 hours. It will drain you. All-nighters in school never destroyed me as much as this did. One fellow did stand up on his chair and invite all 2000 people to a kegger he was throwing that night, but I don't think he had too many takers. I went home and just collapsed on the bed. That's when my wife came in to the room and told me she wrecked my car that day while I was taking the exam. At that point, I didn't even care.
That's interesting about the grading procedure. I've never heard anything about the task of grading all those tests....that's interesting.
"master grader", Ha!
le....so similar...thinking I might have been in the same room.
Anyone hear about ARE 4.0? 7 parts instead of 9!!!
Wow, after reading those horror stories I feel pretty good about my next exam coming up this weekend. After that one just a couple to go. Sweet.
ARE 4.0 is misleading with the 7 parts. All portions are now incorporating vingnettes and more fill in the blank, which already has been started on the mech/elec systems test. They are trying to make the ARE harder...not easier.
The difficulty doesn't bother me. I'm hoping it'll be less time in contact with Prometric and potentially less time in finishing the tests. I'll probably try to keep the schedule of having a month between each one (which I think is reasonable?)
LE, great post. Takes me back. I had a friend who took the test 9 months pregnant. I think she went into labor the next day. It was only once a year, it didn't matter if you were sick, had a hatchet stuck in your head, whatever, you took it.
We took the test in the studio of a local architecture school. It was interesting. All of the people who had graduated in that school sat on one side of the room. The other side was the one where the sun came streaming in on a hot summer day from 2 pm on (no air conditioning!). Home town advantage!
I think the test was much harder then, but you did it. That once a year thing forced you to focus. Nearly everyone I went to school with was registered 5 years out.
Now I own a firm with a bunch of interns who study for one tiny part of the test for 3 months, then delay taking it for another month with excuse after excuse. Its too close to Christmas, I might get a cold, My son has soccer practice this month. Most of them take 8 years to get registered.
So I agree, just do it! Pretend you have a deadline, and if you miss it, you will NEVER be registered!!
One intersting thing, I see that older architects seem to be so much more linear in their thinking about a project- we can actually produce a building in 12 hours if we have to. Maybe it is just experience, but younger architects seem to be less able to move things forward rapidly- it is kind of a meandering experience.
landscape architects still are tested with paper and pencil twice a year, 5 hours each, two days in a row. passed section e - grading and stormwater management, but failed section c - site planning for some silly errors.
for more see the are/lare thread.
archie's comments made me laugh. sounds like [shakes fist]:these kids today...
Yes Steven, I am an old coot. We had to walk uphill a mile with a mayline to take the test too!!
Seriously though, I do see a big difference in expectations of you youngins. We had a recent discussion about mentoring in our office. Perhaps it is because when I was young, you just went to school, did your chores, and played kickball in the dirt because Mom threw you out of the house so she could make dinner. So you had to figure out things on your own, entertain yourself...
Kids today seem to have everything planned and laid out for them. Soccer practice instead of needing to go round up some pals and play softball in the neighbors too small yard. Violin lessons instead of pounding away on the old piano in the basement and discovering a talent for music. Classes on proper etiquette instead of mom yelling at you to get your elbows off the table. College coaches for high school kids who write their inflated resumes for them, and sign them up for classes to raise their SAT scores 20 pionts instead of going to the state college cause it is all you can afford. Then they get out of college and are expecting to be "mentored" which to them means shown exactly what to do every step of the way.
So yes, I am old, but I do think you kids today have been a bit coddled. And in our firm, when we are rushing to get a project done, and it is 9:30 at night, it is the four oldest people in the office who are still here cranking it out.
I'm in agreement with you, archie (I'm old too - as is Steven by the way, thought not NEARLY as old as I), but whenever I read/think these kinds of thoughts, I wonder: What do the 70-year-olds say about us? What "failings" of my abilities did my older mentors ascribe to the "These kids today" phenomenon?
Hey Liberty Bell, what is old to you- like 30? 40? The average age on this site has got to be about 21. I am sure they think those of us over 50 are too old to know how to turn the computer on.
Funny thing, I am working for a bunch of really young "kids" (my clients!) right now. They come to meetings with their jeans hanging down their butts, and their underwear showing, "talk" to you while responding to email on their blackberry, and it is all I can do to restrain myself from yelling at them to sit up straight in their chair or they will ruin their posture!!
Its is hard to take the "Mom" out of you once it gets in.
the is a part of me that wishes I could take the old pencil and paper registration exam... I find going into an unfamiliar building with a group of strangers to crank out drawings for 12 hours very appealing
I'd be interested to know the demographics of archinectors. I'm 30, which I think is very young, but it's amazing the amount of experience I have over someone who is 23 and just out of their undergrad.
The computer based ARE does make it way too easy to procrastinate. Even when scheduling exams I often put off a test for 2-3 more weeks just to get that Saturday morning spot or schedule around an upcoming party/vacation/etc. Not that I pine for the old style, but if it were only offered on a quarterly basis I think people would get much more serious.
Then again, not all the blame should be on us lazy youngsters. NCARB processes IDP at a snails pace. To honestly get all your IDP hours it takes 3-5 years then add all the NCARB hassle at it becomes quite difficult for "most" people to get registered 5 years out of college. Maybe NCARB is staffed by kids with their jeans hanging down to their butts.
Just beware of making blanket statements about all young people in this profession. I'm often at work burning the midnight oil, or in at 6:30am, getting work done while some old coots work their 40 hours and go home...or to their holiday homes.
Well, aqua, that's why I raised the question about "these youngsters" 25 years ago. We ALL make blanket statements about all kinds of things, and I think to be fair we ALL need to acknowledge that this is a shared tendency and thus not very helpful, though interesting.
Yeah, it took me ten years to get registered, because the computer exam is so easy to procrastinate (and NCARB's IDP delays don't help). In my old firm, where about 6 of us were all taking it during the same long time period, and working fairly long hours too, we all joked that we were so busy BEING architects that we didn't have time to BECOME architects!
The average age of archinectors may be 21 if we look at everyone who ever registers or asks a question here. But it seems that the average age of regular posters is probably 8-10 years older. (I'm 41).
aquapura: I agree completely that NCARB's pace in reviewing IDP records makes it very difficult to start testing within the 3 or 4 year time frame that was more typical 20 years ago. NCARB has stated that the current average time between graduation and license is 7.5 years, and that the current average time to take and pass all divisions of the exam from start to finish is 28 months. I do think those averages are skewed by those few people who take decades to complete the process, and that the medians are probably much lower - but with every step of the paperwork and application process taking NCARB 4 months it isn't easy to do quickly these days. I took the computerized ARE over the course of 6 months, but the various NCARB and state wait times took longer than the test.
I thought about checking out the NCARB Registration, but having
apprenticed into the profession and having owned my own firm for
eleven years, I figured I could retire before I would be NCARB Certified. A friend of mine did it a few years ago, even with a degree
and having owned a firm for decades, it seemed to move at a snails pace. I remember him chuckling that they wanted letters of recommendations from people he had worked for and he said you
know their all dead. This effort was made because a client of his
was pulling up his manufacturing camp and moving to the New South.
Turned out he ended up working with a local Architect on the project
because NCARB just took to damn long to process his paper work although it did finally happen.
hmmmm. does the delay caused by IDP make for better architects? or if you compared folks a the same time post-graduation, we have similar levels of skills today v. yesterday?
I'm certainly frustrate with the slow pace of IDP.
snook: yeah, the process you're talking about - the "Broadly Experienced Architect" type of certification for people who don't hold a professional degree - is EXTREMELY slow, even by NCARB standards. I mean, I think it's ridiculous that every step of the usual IDP/ARE process takes NCARB 2 to 4 months, and that the application process for normal NCARB certification (not the BEA version) takes 6 to 8 months after licensing. But the BEA process is something else entirely - it typically takes 1 to 3 years of paperwork and interviews!, costs thousands, and even then it's not really equivalent to "regular" certification and not accepted for reciprocity in 7 or 8 states.
barry: my guess is that the slow pace today is probably a hindrance to the average intern's progress. In the old days a person with 4 or 5 years of experience would usually be licensed already, or at least have attempted it by taking the exam at least once. So firms expected a person with that level of experience to have the skills and competence of an architect. These days the expectations of firms seem lower. They seem to assume that a person with 4 or 5 years' experience is usually still an intern, with an intern-level skill-set and knowledge base...
I wonder too, if the expense translates...then vs. now? Study materials seem to be a big chunk of the testing expense, not to mention the time involved, ncarb and testing fees. Maybe it was the same difference back then, and the ALS stuff seemed just as spendy....I get mad when I price some of that stuff.
The cost to take the test - and the fees for IDP processing, the state license application fee, the annual dues to the state, and the annual dues to NCARB - are all more expensive. All of the NCARB fees tend to rise every 2 to 3 years.
As for study materials: people testing these days may have the advantage on that front. In the old days there was no areforum, ebay, or amazon on which to re-sell the study guides. The guides are expensive, but they're very easy to sell for nearly their original cost.
And you're right to be mad at the cost of the ALS/Kaplan stuff: those guides are 95% the same material that was in them 15 years ago. They just stick a new cover on it every year and raise the price.
This is just my guess, because I certainly have not done any kind of research, but I imagine the financial pain caused by the various fees, study guides, etc., translate fairly well from one era to another. I went through this process a loooooong time ago, but I clearly recall now the strain of doing so. Remember that wages/salaries were also far less in the past. Even then, trying to study and take the exam while working for a very low amount of pay (sometimes I wonder how I survived those days) was tough.
The ALS materials were about all that we had back then for study guides and I would have been lost without them. However, there was no way I could afford the whole set on my own. I teamed up with a couple of friends and each of us bought part of the series...and then we shared.
The only insight I can offer...and this is just my opinion...is that the cost of not buckling down and getting through the process is ultimately going to be higher than the cost of just getting it done.
i was very lucky when i got license. this was in ancient time so most wont remember the old format -- you could take section straight out of school and wait for 3 years exper to take the design / site design.
i walked out of a structures final at school into the licensure exam ! what luck - eh?
i was able to sit the design part 2 year full time as i had worked in offices all through school -- and working at skids - guess what i was doing - yes - office blocks and the design exam that year .....12 hours office block design!
now i thought i blew it - i drew the building too tall [aligning it with something next door] but realized it last minute and put all these dimensional notes and drew the line of the building next door taller --
every thing done in 1 shot!
at the exam just behind me to my left was jane graham [bruce grahams wife] and on my right was brigitta peterhans a wonderful woman -- there were best friends and chatted the whole exam -- [even though they had been at skids some 15 years each - they failed!]
actually, most of you werent born when i got licensed!
Funny, archie, this is exactly what all the old CEOs and real estate developers that come to my meetings do. None of the young kids do it--they are the ones looking the sharpest and the most eager at the meetings.
I cannot, absolutely cannot abide blackberry emailing during my meetings. Too bad you can't say anything to the client...
Yeah, I have some older clients who do it too. Really, since I work for them, I guess it is their right to blackberry away. It would be rude if they were paying me and I was not focusing on their work, but I guess they can not focus on things if they want. As long as they are paing me hourly!!
The old CEO's pants do cover their butts, thank god. OF course in some cases the belly over the belt and the smiley face of the shirt buttons stretching is enough to make you crazy.
Or the "Santa-Fe style" braided leather belt makes you want to puke, either one.
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