that's great! i applied there too...hmm...

i'm a track 1 student (have my bs in arch) - if that information helps out at all.

congrats laurilan....

Monday, ugh. On the brightside: this week I will probably get me rejection from uva, and from my research, this is the week people that ARENT me should be getting calls from mr. Allen... kidding with the pessimism, kinda.

Good luck asbuck! hang in there...

(I go my uh...farty email on this day last year from Princeton. )

oooh really? And with the added day in feb. we really should be seeing those soon. I cant remember ff33, did you apply there this year? Or were you not in the mood to pay $85 for a ejection?

asbuck,

I didn;t apply this year..I was enamoured with the school last year, but you know my GRE was low and my portfolio isn't really geared toward a pure Ivey like Princeton. I don;t think...
Princeton has good funding though..but they take like 15 i think..or so
The E-ject was was abummer...

<I just wish we could stream line this whole process...I mean , we can only apply once a year, we have to wait three month s to hear back, and we never really know why we get rejected.>

nc state email just came through. i'm in!

Clemson - Accepted (2/21)
Texas - Accepted (2/27)
UVa - Accepted (3/3)
UMich - Accepted (3/3)
WashU St. Louis - Accepted (3/5)
NC State - Accepted (3/10)
Columbia - ?
Cornell - ?
UPenn - ?
VTech - ?
UFlorida - ?

congrats smithwillb - are you considering going there at all?

asbuckeye - i'm sure you'll be hearing something good soon. i've got my fingers crossed for you.

congrats laurilan and smith! you guys are on a roll - way to start the week off right!

thanks....

Laurilan - i doubt i would go. but i needed it as an option for a few reasons.

right now, i'm all over UVa and maybe Umich

congrats Smith.

ff33, yeah the "ivy" thing ... I only applied to ivies and uva. its not that im superficial and think that you can only make it with an ivy degree. its just, i understand that the superficiality exists, and that getting a degree from one of those schools gives you pull. Also, I was lucky enough to have the financial thing taken care of as my grandfather was an educator, so his money only went to his grandchildren's education.... If im rejected from all of them this year, I will lower my expectations and apply next year to more "down to earth schools".

I woke up to an email from my top pick this morning. I've just been accepted to the Diploma program at The Bartlett UCL. Barring an acceptance and a bunch of cash from one of those American schools, I'm off to London next year.

congrats citrus!

heeeey, thats great news citrus... Im envious of you going off to europe

congrats citrus! if you do end up at barlett, you'll have to start an archinect school blog - they make some beautiful (crazy!) stuff there!

Hey congrats! I should've applied to the Bartlett and the AA. My only deterrant was that it would likely take me much longer than 3 years to get my diploma, coming from a non-degree arch background. How many years is the program you've been accepted to?

congrats citrus!

ks1000, also, you can only practice arch (officially) in the UK with those degrees. Not always a bad thing though

Hey thanks a bunch guys.

ks1000, yeah five years at least without an undergrad arch degree is a lot of school (not to mention ridiculously expensive). I applied to their Graduate Diploma program, it's two years long and afterwards I can apply for a one year M.Arch which is more or less just a thesis project.

asbuckeye, yeah no licensure possibilities is definitely a downside. I still need to do some thinking and decide whether it wouldn't just be better to sell my soul for three years to the scripted maya gods in exchange for the possibility of getting licensed here (or whether I want to live in the UK permanently).

I might stop checking this thread so neurotically now (seems unlikely though) but I’ve still got applications out to Columbia, SCI-Arc, MIT, and Penn so I’ll be sure to post any news I get back from them.

Good luck everyone on all of your applications!

I got another email from NCstate that included scholarship information...and they require you to submit notification of intent to enroll by March 21! that's crazy.

Yeah I dont get it at all. GA tech wanted me to tell them by March 24 if I was taking the scholarship or not! Im set to visit uva March 31 and there is no way I'll have an answer before then. What to do? Can you ask them for an extension?

I hope this is a big week for notifications...I'm ready for the wait to be OVER.

it just doesn't make any sense. why is the open house AFTER they require your decision? oh well.

It kinda sucks, but cant you just pay the deposit, hold a spot, and then decide after the "official" decision date?

oh wow - guess i'm not getting a scholarship. they want me to notify them by april 1st, which still seems pretty soon.

smithwillb - i'll take your scholarship if you don't want it :)

Im going to see if I can tell them 2 weeks later, and if they wont let me do that I guess i'll hold a spot.

You can decide on schools before all responses are in!

im having the whole school reputation vs. cost inner struggle. Is it better to pay more for a high reputation school (higher rankings or more prestigious, etc) or go to a school that doesn't have as good of a reputation (but still a good school) but graduate basically debt-free?


I might post this in a professional forum, but how important is school to a potential employer? Or is it just personal choice?

smithwillb - what are your thoughts on this subject?

helloarti,

The thing you should consider is the networking you get at big name schools. It is not a linear equation : spend money+ prestigous school does not = be successful.

More like you are buying into a field of friends and employers that may stay with you for a while. I agree that soem schools are very good but not as "famous", however if I were you I woudl go big. ...dont get sticker shock

Artichoke: that's tough. Most people say go to the best school. in fact, i just had this discussion the other day with a law school student who was having buyer’s remorse about attending a certain school over another. He regretted choosing his current school over a better one because of price/location, stating that he would rather have just gone to the better school.

However, in your case - i know you received a generous scholarship from GA Tech - did it cover everything (tuition + living expenses)? if so, that would be hard to beat. GA Tech is a great school, and if it's free it's even better.

Yet there are some schools (for me, it's UVa) that really exemplify everything a school should be and therefore render any scholarship by a lesser school useless. But, if money is a huge issue (as it is with all of us, i assume) then that could possibly trump any difference. Now, I just contradicted myself. sorry! It's hard to pass up FREE!

coming from someone with a lot of debt, there is something to be said about being debt-free. especially if the economy continues to get worse. i can make my payments, but it limits my freedom - ties me to my job.

i have to say, from the 4 jobs i got in architecture, none of them were too concerned about where i got my degree from. then again, i was not appying to the most prestigious firms.

i think that the name is definitely more likely to get you a first look to some of the more famous/prestigious/starchitect firms. beyond your first job... not so sure what it means at that point.

on the otherhand, the connections you make in grad school could really help you out. i know several people who got jobs because of recommendations of professors. in fact, when i went to visit ncstate, one of the professors said they usually end up hiring students. so, if you like what some of the professors are doing outside of the university, you've got a good chance in being involved with something like that.

if you want to go into the academic field, it seems that alllll of my professors were all ivy league grads.

so, guess it all depends on what you want?

this is just all my .02

thanks for your imput! my head is spinning i wish we had all everything back plus financial info!!

I was talking with UCLA on Friday afternoon, because I was missing a transcript..It was a tease, because they said they needed it for a fellowship nomination...
does this mean i might have been accepted? or does it mean I was ONLY nominated as a stipulation for acceptance....hmmm? er perhaps they were just farting at me.

I was thinking of calling one of the large, corporate firms, I would to apply working for down the road and asking the HR if they have a preference of one school over the other. I believe that they will have their impressions of certain schools based on the resumes they get.

ff33-
i wouldnt get your hopes up, but it sounds like a good sign!

ditto - i can't imagine that they would go through the trouble of a fellowship nomination if they weren't admitting you!

well, it is has been the only news I have had , so admittedly I am grasping at straws....but they were adamant about getting my missing official transcript...

of course they also lost my portfolio one day too...

artichoke it's a tough question & i guess it depends on your goals... being a star of a good program can get you good connections etc, and be a good foundation for a comfortable career - but being tapped into a superdeluxe network of fast-paced minds is comfort enough in my mind...

right now I'm earning the same that I will when I graduate with a Masters degree at the age of 29, and that's gonna be tough to swallow. My friends will be financing their first homes & I'll need financing for a latte.

When I was at UNH it seemed like most of the math grad students were TA's. The masters students that I knew told me that they were given a monthly stipend of around $1400 on top of free tuition. All they had to do was to teach a couple of review sessions each week. I'm guessing the PhD students who were teaching their own classes were paid even more. This seems very common in most graduate math programs. Is there anything like this for M.Arch students? I haven't really heard much talk about this.

money seems to be harder to get for pre-professional schools (MArch, law, b-school, etc) but its seems like almost all PhD programs are financed by universities.

i m applying to some ivyes for M.Arch(I) to test my luck
- gsd, mit, colubmia, yale, upenn

Does anyone know if i'm by any chance accepted by one of these graduate schools ... how much earlier would I have to arrive at the university? Early August?

i think that's up to you, ottodesk - you could pretty much show up the day classes start if you wanted to. i'm hoping to take 3-4 weeks off between moving and starting school just to set up my new place and enjoy a little breather, but i don't think you'll be required to get there early for any reason. grad school sadly does not offer as many pre-registration cookouts and pizza parties as undergrad.....

That's what I was afraid of. Oh well, even if they did offer teacher assistant positions, they would understanbly pick people with design backgrounds. Do many people work at architecture firms (or other jobs) while going for their M.Arch? I know they do at schools like The BAC, but how about other schools? I'm just trying to figure out what I will do for money. Any thoughts - what are other people here planning on doing?

Some schools require you attend a semester or so before you are eligible for T.A. positions, etc.

So for me its loans, and more loans, and hopefully the school offers a scholarship or fellowship.

and working in the summer...

part time stripper!

I'm hoping that if I'm accepted to schools that don't provide direct money in the form of tuition scholarship and stipend, that I can still count on receiving financial help from submitting the FAFSA. I'm not sure if this would factor in as much for graduate school as it did for undergrad, but this could actually make it possible for me to attend an expensive university, especially if I qualified for a work-study arrangement. It appears after doing some reading that students who qualify for work study, at the GSD, for instance, can work at architecture firms and have money go directly to their tuition, or some arrangement similar to this.

cou2, i think futurist is right - most schools won't give TA positions to anyone in their first year, but everyone should be eligible after that. most m.arch programs will be way too intense to keep even a part-time job while you're in school, so the best you can hope for is to work over the summer and maybe winter break. the BAC is sort of a completely different animal, designed to allow students to work full-time will pursuing an m.arch, but the degree takes more than twice as long as a full time graduate program.

basically, we're all looking at a lot of loans.

Acceptances from UCLA and U.Wash came in the mail today! Finally an end to my agony...well, most of it...still a few more to go. Goodluck this week everyone!

Congratulations everyone! I can't wait to come home and check the mail now.

For anyone who got accepted to U.W. - did you get scholarship offers in the mail? My acceptance came unfortunately with no scholarship information attatched. : \

ooh, we're starting to hear from UCLA.

Minoho, Congrats...did you apply as MArch 1 or MArch II at UCLA?