congrats to everyone on their acceptances!...
i've decided on Parsons. I'm going to send the deposit out today. I was rejected from Pratt ;( anyone else decide on Parsons?

Question out of curioustiy...

did anyone else whom was accepted to Yale receive a scholarship offer? I've received two packages in the mail from Yale, and both simply refer to 'another package' that will be arriving with scholarship information. Wtf? Does Yale extend scholarship directly like every other school?

woohoo..yale rejection. GSD, you're last up

smoke porterhouse: are you leaning in any particular direction at this point? i'm hoping to travel out to ny and check out the program more in depth. not accumulating much more debt sounds pretty nice. definitely interested.

norita: congratulations on making a decision! very exciting! can i ask what helped you to decide on Parsons? from what i've read and heard, i think it sounds like such a great program. but so far, it doesn't appear that any scholarship/grant money has come my way. they also might not accept my transfer credits ... in which case, it's not a option.

Ok so I wasn't completely delusional in my applications...

Penn - rejected 3/19 mail
Yale - rejected 3/22 mail

BUT:
RISD - Waitlisted 3/22 mail (please have room!)

so maybe if my boss had kept the deal we made when I got hired and not ridden my ass like some kind of dimented robber-barron wanna-be parasite I could have put together a decent application and gotten in to some schools... I guess that's what I get for being honest.

GSD - no word, but I can't imagine i got in (no call) but possibly waitlist?
MIT - no word, ditto. Plus I accidentilly submitted a rough draft essay
( = not smart enough for mit!)
Berkeley - no word.

One of my letters was from a prof. who was on the admissions board for Berkeley back in the day, another was from a current professor at Lehigh & Princeton, the other from a lecturer at Harvard and the fourth from the Exec. Director of the largest chapter of the AIA. Sucks letting those ppl down, a lot.

hmm.. how was your portfolio conormac? i'm a fan of your words and a little baffled by your unacceptances...

ohmygosh:

i'm currently leaning CCNY but i will have to make at least another visit before i come to a decision. i did my undergrad at michigan and i'm not sure i want to return to ann arbor from the big city.

DJ Tanner, funny you should ask... I just posted it to flickr. I had it on mediafire but it took about 10 minutes to download and that's just silly.

I think the problem was that if you just flip through it looks like a travel brochure, pretty but kind of 2D. I also do a lot of creative stuff that I didn't have time to fit in the portfolio, and I had a lot of spelling mistakes, etc... who knows. I'm glad for another year of saving up, traveling, etc.

Where do you think you'll go??

i think the pictures are beautiful and the portfolio itself is put together nicely, but perhaps some hand sketches and more personal creative work could spice it up. it also seems a bit short?

i'm not sure where i'll end up--was leaning toward gsd. call me crazy, but going to berkeley and the bay area had always been my dream. i feel like i'd be a great fit there, but i also want to go where i will be challenged the most.

yeah I hit my free-upload limit, so there are some pages missing...



I've only heard super awesome things about San Fran. It seems almost like its a bunch of the happiest bostonians + awesome weather - the chip on the shoulder...

That being said there is no where on this continent, in my opinion, quite like Harvard Square.

If you come here I can clue you into the best stuff fast, more than enough to keep you busy for a 3.5-year stint ;)

Berkeley is an amazing place. I grew up in Oakland just south of the Berkeley border, so I always went to the campus to hang out. Its a really great environment, and the people are very friendly (except for the hippies and stoners begging for money out on telegraph avenue. You want to avoid them).

smoke porterhouse: i would suspect that if you ultimately want to work in new york, ccny might be the better choice*. the connections you make at that school will be invaluable and having new york as your playground would fun! do you know if they are having an open house? i'm excited to check it out.

*i am biased -- native new yorker here who has never been to michigan ...
and who also lives in san francisco! bay area all the way! c'monnnn BERKELEY!

wittyusername -- was scholarship info from CCA included in your acceptance package? i suppose i need to call them and find out, 'cause maybe they uh, forgot to include those details for some reason.

i think the only thing i can't stand about boston is the fact that they're overly-obsessed with their sports teams. we celebrated here in nyc when the giants won, but we've since moved on to the next thing.

ohmygosh, CCA listed the scholarship info in the acceptance letter, so you might want to give them a call to figure that info out. Good luck!

(In this case, ohmygosh is refering to the username, as opposed to being used as an exclamation. Its an easy mistake to make)

What's up dudes? Long time eavesdropper, first time poster. I've gotten into the GSAPP and Berkeley and am trying to decide which way to go. My undergraduate was a BS Arch from UVA.

I'm getting married this summer and my fiancee is praying we get a chance to spend at least a semester studying abroad. Does anyone know what opportunities there are at Columbia and/or Berkeley. I know some studios at columbia have 8 week trips to China and so forth, but are there any full semesters abroad available? How might this work for a married guy? I assume everyone is put in dorms or something?

Love to hear your thoughts...

Hello anybody...

Nothing here by the moment ... just visiting Mexico City.

quasimodo,
there's the "danish institute for study abroad" program at berkeley. you can do the summer, fall or spring semester programs. it's a combination of intense studio plus study tours around scandinavia and adjacent countries (ie: finland, sweden, russia, germany... and more) plus the program has other areas of study... here's there website:
http://www.dis.dk/Students/program.php
plus they love berkeley kids so they admit a lot of students from there. don't know what the deal is for grad students, but i went as an undergrad and had an awesome time.

ohmygosh:

Initially, my top two choices were Pratt and Parsons - Pratt more so than Parsons. Besides the fact that I was rejected from Pratt, haha, I really enjoyed the atmosphere when I attended parsons' open house. It seemed like it was a program that you weren't going to get thrown into with no direction and the chair spoke about how there was a lot of professor-student interaction and group exercises that focuses on students learning from each other- which I liked. Don't know much about the credit situation yet. I have to take a summer course at Parsons before I start in the fall and they mentioned something about taking physics and calc but i already took/taking those classes, haha. I have to give them a call. You should def take the trip down to visit. Are you going to their open house this saturday?

Side note - my other choice was savannah college of art and design, which i considered for a moment but then decided against going there because it would be a 4.2 yr program for me AND i realllly don't want to leave ny.

Hope that helped!

bluebear-

funny you should mention DIS. that's where i met my fiancee. Summer '04. Scandinavian Furniture Design program. Been there, done that.

Thanks. Anyone else have thoughts on quality of the two programs?

DAMN!
Just had a dream that I'd been accepted into Pratt.
Only to wake up and find out I'm still wait-listed :-/
Felt so real...

still waiting on GSD. i don't think any March I offers went out unless they were offering AP.

chopsky, that is REALLY funny. i had the same thing happen to me, two nights ago...i felt so pathetic waking up. haha. so i am not the only one gone totally desperate from being waitlisted and waiting...

hi ppl. I have been lurking around this thread for so long throughout the app. process. It's really nice to come out of the closet–my shrink thinks that I need to do some commiserating for my mental health these days.
Here's what have so far:

Rice-yes
UPenn-yes (but it's a financial suicide)
UCLA-yes
Princeton-waitlist
Yale-waitlist
GSD-? (trying not to be too hopeful...)
Columiba -? (same)
UCBerkeley - ?

I have a BFA and applied to first professional degree MArch.

So my question is...has anyone done much research on Rice? While I looked lot into the eastcoast schools, I really don't know much about Rice. I have been to the campus once when I was on a business trip a long time ago. I applied kind of last minute sorta because some friends told me to. So can you tell me your thoughts? Who are some notable profs? Is anyone going there in the fall?

Skycaptain - sorry to disappoint you but GSD acceptances without AP has gone out.

congrats boon on the acceptances. i don't think being on the waitlist is such a bad thing, especially at those schools. you can always say yes to a school you got accepted to then switch over later.

i thought about applying to rice. i decided not to because i couldn't imagine living in texas for three years. from what i hear, the talent level is pretty high and the teachers are great. they offer full scholarship or something close, right? on the other hand, somebody earlier mentioned how upenn does not get enough props on archinect. it's one of the finer school, imo. check out their work on this thread.

Conormac - I feel the same way you do about letting my recommenders down. Two of them were my professors and I did really well in both of their classes. I'm sure they'll be somewhat puzzled if I end up getting a bunch of rejections. Not sure if I should ask them to write letters next (if I apply again next year)?

Wittyusername - did you include any parts of that project on classifying and constructing polyhedra in your portfolio? Bet it would have been interesting, especially if you had some diagrams or sketches that you used to help visualize the problems you were working on. Thought about including some math projects/proofs in my work (especially ones that I had used sketches to help me visualize the problem), but I didn't. Would this have been a good idea...anybody?

cou2 - yeah, i did include a few pages and figures from that project in my portfolio. It worked out really well because everything I was doing was very visually- and spacially-oriented so it fit in perfectly with the other art-oriented stuff in the portfolio.

However, I would imagine that if you were to put in a particularly complex and/or interesting proof into your portfolio with a little bit of background and context, I cant imagine that it would detract from it. Especially with some sweet-looking sketches to accompany the problem.

@DJ Tanner: I was the one mentioning the UPenn thing.

I really like their work and I sure appreciate the fact that they actually send out this student work booklet along all other school stuff when you request info during application.

@boondocks:Rice seems very good too and I 've heard it's pretty selective, kinda it's a Texas version of Princeton (is that even possible?). I think Sanford Kwinter teaches there and they sure invite well known architects from all over the world. At some point (I think it was a couple of years ago) they had the PLOT guys (before they went their separate ways) teach a studio.

As for admissions concerning the several schools you listed I think you definitely shouldn't give up on GSD just yet. Berkeley either, they have just started sending theirs out. Now for GSAPP, not to ruin anybody's hopes and maybe I am totally wrong but since they are not mailing anything this year - just updating the online application status - I think it's safe to assume they are pretty much done with acceptances. Also heard from an insider it was a pretty selective year for them, which I find hard to believe because they said the same last year but then again all schools say that EVERY year, don't they?

If you don't get in though (and I hope you do if that's what you want) don't be sad. All the schools you were accepted are very, very good. I would go for Penn, which is pretty close to the Columbia thing plus I like Philly. I guess it has been a selective year for Penn also, a great number of rejections reported on thegradcafe.com Also, I think there was another person in here who mentioned that got in Yale but not Columbia, so I guess all those assumptions regarding school selectivity and acceptance rates are nothing to judge by.

Good luck to all of you still waiting! :)

chopsky: Last week I had a crazy vivid dream about getting into Columbia. It involved their website and everything. I woke up convinced it was a sign ... but my status still, to this day, remains unchanged ...


norita: I hope to attend the open house at Parsons on April 10. I'm really excited to visit NY and check out some schools! I sent an email to Parsons during the middle of last week but haven't heard back about my credit situation/advanced placement. I'm also nervous about the hefty price tag.


------------------

here's a question: how much will the cost of attendance factor into your decisions?

ohmygosh: They called me into a room where a bunch of staff were sitting at a desk. I literally got one of those American Idol style speeches where they make you think youre not getting in and then all of a sudden "but...WEVE DECIDED TO ADMIT YOU!". Damn it felt good.
And then I woke up and proceeded to jump through my bedroom window.

tanner/jojo: thanks for your thoughts–yeah, i really need to read up on RICE a bit more. for penn, because i've heard such positive things about them for awhile, i really wish i can go. but $ is a really big factor for me and i can't really afford to go. going to penn would mean getting myself 150k+ in debt. i can't even comprehend what that might mean for my lifestyle post-graduation.

ohmygosh: speaking of cost of education, i am still about 10k+ in debt from my undergrad education (BFA at a "namebrand" school). having those bills meant that i had to really adjust my life as an artist and keep a consistent day-job. having had that experience, being able to have a level of freedom after grad school to take on interesting work and not just slave away at corporate firms means a lot. as i am looking at my options i am trying to think about what my monthly payments will look like from getting into debt. trying to be as realistic as possible. but then on the other hand, i do think about the better opportunities that i might have if i go to a big name school that has a big price tag. will it be worth it? right now i am leaning towards nah.

so, I am just wondering, has anyone heard a definitive "NO" from Columbia yet? Ive heard a lot about acceptances, but havent heard anything in terms of rejections. I think its probably safe to say that if you havent heard anything back from them, then its probably a no, but theres always the slightest glimmer of hope as long as you havent heard anything at all yet, right? right?? maybe?

Boondocks... I'm in the same boat, and as much as I am stoked that I made the cut @ Rice, I'm afraid of that Houston humidity. I work with a fella that was MArch opt 2 class of 03 @ rice and cherishes every moment he was there. The Chris Height studio alone seems a great delve into digital skills and processes coupled with the rest of the schools seemingly thoughtful approach.

But thoughts of LA connections and LA itself make UCLA pretty tempting...

boondocks: thanks for your thoughts on tuition costs -- i feel similarly. adding more to my debt load right now would be very unfortunate ... i do plan on marrying rich, so there's always that! but seriously, i don't want to live the rest of my life in debt. no way. but having said that, i haven't visited any of the schools i've been accepted to ... you might hear me preaching a whole different story next week -- something like, "don't worry about money, you gotta follow your heart!"


as for the whole Columbia thing, i firmly believe that you don't know 'til you know. it would seem odd to send out ALL of the acceptances and then wait two weeks to reject everyone. my take is that they sent out a first wave (perhaps the majority) of acceptances and soon we will hear about the rest of the acceptances, waitlists, and rrrrejections. but what do i know?


texas is too hot. been there, done that.

u.mich - conditional admission(ibt 100)
cornell - accepted
uiuc - accepted
ucla - accepted
berkeley -accepted 2 year program
gsd -?
yale -? (maybe rejected)
columbia-? (maybe ibt100)
u.penn - still waiting (international post thing)
texas austin - ? (they've not received my toefl)

nia I took 80iBT and got in syracuse ... they had cutoff on 100iBT

is it safe to assume that i was discriminated based on my young age? i mean, i was almost positive i was getting into pratt. hahaha

sayyes - i've heard great things about the ucla study abroad program in barcelona, my former professor used to organize it and he's a pretty amazing guy...

what's ibt 100 and ibt 80?

ibt = internet-based TOEFL

kungapa...that's funny, because i haven't come across one person that got accepted into March I first year at GSD....all AP's and MLA's....kinda strange considering MarchI is the largest category of acceptance...but then again, what do i know.

Ah! so much stress...and being waitlisted at Yale doesn't help. I suppose you might be right Kungapa since the GSD open house is sooner than i expected..

there is no mail in canada on saturdays and i'm not sure with it being a holiday tmr. that there will be mail until tuesday...yale loves sending flashy things in the mail. hopefully i'll get the second package tmr. Did anyone get offers from MIT? I'm wondering if some people got offered more/less scholarship money...even with their generous offer, i'm still going to have to find some major loans.

haha. quiksilver. why MIT over Yale? Just curious. Cambridge beats New Haven any day. There is a chance we'll end up in the same program considering those are the only two schools i've heard from thus far.

i just realized i'm talking to myself on here.

skycaptain...i am m.arch1 and i have heard positively from gsd, but that isn't to say they are done or anything. i know someone in last year's class there who was admitted much later....like in april i think.

skycaptain, you aren't talking to yourself anymore. I have not heard anything from MIT and I am curious how/when they contacted you. Was it via post, e-mail, phone, other? I am starting to feel rejected :(. Sad day if I see a small envelope.

I got a small envelope from Penn today. It says I am put on their wait list. So a small envelope might not necessarily be a bad result (though its not better than an acceptance mail).

Keep the faith guys! We are on the same boat.

Ps. I am still waiting for the news from GSD too.

Has anyone recieved financial info from UCLA?

No financial info from UCLA yet out here. But its so cheap that its like a de-facto scholarship right off the bat.

at least for in state tuition