i was accepted in 2006 to cranbrook both for the m.a. in arch and mfa in industrial design....

i contacted them a few days back to see if i'm still accepted considering i'm 3 years late.... we'll see......i might have to re-submit and all that jazz...grrr

b

Wow this place seems so dead...what's going on with everyone?

I'm definitely feeling the crunch...
Finally heard from all my recommenders so I'm feeling mighty comfortable about that.

Got 2 Dec 15th deadlines, and going to send out finished portfolios for them this week.

Given that last year's thread was something like 80 pages by this point, maybe everyone is already in school. We are the stragglers. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go make myself a nuisance to my recommenders.

hah, I hope the pool of applicants is directly correlated to how empty this thread is, but somehow I doubt that.

anyway, yes, I am definitely freaking out by now. I still have a long way to go on my portfolio, and I have no idea what to write about that statement of purpose thingy...

My main problem is getting recs.

I had 3 professors - one of them is an alcoholic I don't want to call, another is a big government official who can't sign my rec for a month already and the last one is my employer but I don't wish him to know my plans. Shit.

I have 2 dec 15th app deadlines too...I'm just putting the finishing touches on my portfolio this week and will be printing it this weekend. Hopefully everything goes according to plan YIKES!

I've just wrapped up my portfolio and need to get my statement going this week. My only December deadline is MIT. Almost there!

lol btw when you're done with sending the apps in, post the ports!!!! I wanna see. :-D

All of my applications are due in january/february 2009 (thank god). I was wondering if anyone here could critique my current portfolio. Its not what will be submitted for the M.Arch applications, but it was created almost 2 years ago for job applications and I'm hoping will be a similar format to the grad school apps, so i am treating it as a draft for now.

You can find it @ link

Right now the changes I know that I will be making are removing most of the professional work at the end (non-design, cad work not relevant to a graduate program). A few more projects will be added, and maybe a couple more pages of the projects already there.

Any and all comments, concerns, suggestions to help strengthen the portfolio would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

puckman - the font justification makes it difficult to read, as does a small white font on big black background. Work is decent but glancing through I have trouble focusing. Think about whitespace and what you want someone who's flipping through for about a minute to pick up on. I think you're right to remove the prof. work. I'd probably also limit the photography.

And a question:

4 years ago I half-heartedly applied to grad school before deciding to go work for a while. I'm having trouble getting in touch with one of the people who wrote me a rec back then - seems to have retired or moved out of the country and doesn't check the email I have for him. At the time he gave me a copy of his rec letter, and it's also on file with the university's official rec letter service.

If I have the rec letter service send out copies, they won't include the school-specific questionnaire forms, and it might muck up any applications at schools that request that the letters be submitted online.

Hope for the best with the service or ask someone else?

december 15th. me too.
cal and ucla?

Any one print and bind their own portfolio? Trying to print my portfolio at this moment with my ink jet printer because i am not satisfy with the Lulu image quality. I also want to stitch it together the pages together. However, i am tired of the double-side matte paper i used to use for i don't like the thickness and the paper texture. Any suggestion of the double-side paper??

three deadlines in December, one in January.

I've got the dye ink sample pack from red river paper arriving tomorrow. Will print a bunch of test pages and pick the one I like best.

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/samples/photo.htm

Puckman,

The only advice I would give about your portfolio is the black and red borders. I believe they're competing with the images of your work. It would probably be better to use colors that are less bold since your work should be the primary focus. I agree with manamana. I think that if you can somehow utilize the whitespace/negative space to your advantage that it would help a lot. Also, maybe if you think about two pages as one composition, it would make it easier to digest the amount of images on each page. For example, if you look at each page, it seems that you're dividing it up into four quadrants. Maybe there should be some variation in the layout? The viewer is going to turn one page and view two pages (back of the page that was turned and the page he/she has turned to). I find that looking at two pages as one composition makes it more effective design-wise. Again, this is all just a preference on my own design aesthetics but you asked for comments.

Thanks for sharing!

Puckman,

Just wanted to add a few things to what musik and manamana said already.

1. I agree with the borders, they seem too bold. I'd say tone them down a bit and maybe make them different widths.

2. Image layout, for some reason I want to see altering sizes of images. The Stein/Miller House (page 2) for example. Iterating what has been said, it needs more white space. Same with the 2nd page of the Lawn bowling museum. The 1st page layout works nicely, maybe relate it more to this by adjusting location of images.

3. Process. I'm a fan of sketches and diagrams that can support your finished work, and show your thought process.

Keep up the good work!


My two Dec 15th deadlines are the GSD and GSAPP. Out of my schools I'm applying to, GSAPP is my top choice. Wish I had a little more time on it.

Thanks for the comments guys. Keep 'em coming!

Your comments have been what I am planning to make changes to, so i'm glad my head is moving in the right direction.

Best of luck on your apps everyone

manamana said:
"If I have the rec letter service send out copies, they won't include the school-specific questionnaire forms, and it might muck up any applications at schools that request that the letters be submitted online."

im in a similar situation. are the questionnaire forms required?

thanks

it depends on the school, some of the application forms that I have seen say that a letter may be submitted instead of the form some say it may be submitted in addition. In addition but not a substitute would be the come answer I think. the reason many places have these forms is because it makes it easy to evaluate all of the applicants references upon common though vague topics i.e. 1-5 type stuff.

I think the bigger problem would be that your letters would not be in a sealed envelope with the reefers signature across the back. This is required in almost all cases I have seen so far as a safe guard against people forging letters for themselves

Sorry I don’t think that helps much.

But sending anything is better then nothing, perhaps there is someone else you can tap. its getting close. Good luck.

Actually what i would recommend you do is call each school and ask them for advice. If you make the adviser aware of the issue I'm sure they can either give good advice or help make an exception for you.

thanks sir

Here is my final list:

Pratt
UMich
UMinn
UWM
WashU
Miami (OH)

I hope to have my portfolio complete enough to post it and get some feedback from you all this weekend. Statement of intent is in process and my 3 recommenders are confirmed and have the resources they need from me.

Anyone else in a weird state where they can't decide if they are on the right track or running out of time? Possibly both? 5 weeks to go until the bulk of my deadlines but it doesn't feel like enough time.

Good luck to all!

writing the statement of intent makes me feel like I am in 4th grade again.

why i'm cool + why you're cool = how we can be cool together.

Can someone give me some advice on how to post a portfolio so I can share it with people? I have it in PDF but need to attach it to a link for sharing. Thanks

I'm so not cool with masturbation like that. Maybe that's why I hate personal statements.

Talk about stroking!

LCPask,

upload it on mediafire and then copy and paste the link on your next post.

www.mediafire.com

You can upload without creating an account.

Well, Berkeley away. Now to do it three more times by the 15th. Now to figure out how to get my portfolio down to 12 pages.

Isn't the Berkley portfolio submitted electronically after the 16th?

manamana,

thanks, the link for the paper selection is very helpful.

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/samples/photo.htm

Berkeley portfolio can be submitted online up until Dec. 21 according to the website.

Ugh, it drives me crazy that Berkeley requires 12 pages. What does that mean? Double-sided? 12 spreads? 12 single sheets?

I know. arg!

are the 12 sheets going to be printed out? (set printable resolution, finite amount of information)

or are they just for the computer? (zooming capability therefore higher resolution, potentially more information)

Did those of you who applied/are applying to Berkeley write to entirely separate and distinct essays for the history statement and statement of purpose? I find that my two essays are really one longer essay...basically my past how that informs my goals for the future. I really hope they read them together.

time is ticking...write write write...

yeah my berkeley essays are entirely separate.

Is anyone else considering not sticking to the 500 word "approximate" limit Columbia wants for their statement? I don't want to rewrite mine to be shorter...

Do you think that more people are applying this year because of the economic crisis? My friend and I were discussing this the other night.

We didn't come to a strong opinion either way. Sure, the economy is in the shitter but I've heard a few people say that they were hesitant about applying because they knew they wouldn't be able to borrow money from banks (debatable). In my city's job environment, it seems that most layoffs happened in October/November. I couldn't imagine a Plan B that involves scrapping together my portfolio, recs, essays in such a short time. It's definitely possible but it seems that most people who were planning on applying to graduate school probably have known since summer or so and are pretty well-prepared time wise.

On the other hand, our crippling economy has been a slow progression so maybe people saw it coming months ago and prepared early to get out of the professional world and head back to academia.

What do you think?

Kyle,

I think my GSAPP statement is way over. About 1600 words. Hopefully it won't matter. 500 words is like two sentences.

Is everyone applying to MIT or GSD sending in their portfolios by the Dec. 15th deadline, or waiting until the portfolio deadlines? Just curious. I would love two extra weeks to refine some things.

take out every other sentence....... then after that... every other sentence...then you should be good

Does anyone know of any magic topics to include in the statement of intent? What do the schools want to hear?

even further- is anyone willing to share theirs?

I kept my GSAPP statement to a little over 500 words, so it still fits on one page. I plan on keeping it short for the other apps that may require up to 2 pages. I think I got across what I needed in that amount. Short and to the point.

Is the GSAPP portfolio due on the 15th along with the application? Or do they Give some lag time? I couldn't find this detail on the site...

I called GSAPP and they said it needs to be POSTMARKED by Dec. 15. If I were you, I wouldn't take any chances.

In the mail by Monday. Gottcha, thanks.

i agree w/kyleseyz...
for cal, my autobio & letter of intent are completely separate.

as for the page limit - i'm assuming it means 12 faces, but have no idea whether they'll be printed, presented as 2-pg spreads, or....
anybody!?!?

oh, and ... F these early deadlines.

when i applied to cal last year, and i sent them a portfolio that consisted of 12 sheets of paper (24 sides) and they seemed ok with that. i think they just put the page limit on there because they got too many 75-pagers one year and couldn't take it anymore.

OK, I just called Berkeley...

The portfolio is just going to be viewed on the computer, no printing out.
Also, each of the 12 pages can represent a spread, so essentially you could send in 24 pages on 12 spreads.

YAY!!

Oh, and my bio and statement are completely different too.

thanks so much for calling! archinect rules!
I think that clears things up a bit.

but I'm still confused about how everyone's bio can be so different than their statement...I mean, you are who you are and you've had the experiences to shape your interests, and your interests are what you are going to focus on at Berkeley or wherever else, right?

I'm just wondering, I'm sorry if it seems like I am belaboring this point but I just don't get how the two are so disconnected for most people.

(I guess I'm also wondering if I'm missing some big idea here)

I agree there's definitely overlap between the two. my bio is more practical, who I am, what I've done, a little like a resume, but without the lists and more explanation. while my personal statement is more about my future interests and what I want out of grad school and why I'm interested in architecture.

"You are a planeswalker with an arsenal of sorcery at your command. You have laid eyes upon the Blind Eternities. In the vast Multiverse, only you and your kind know of the countless worlds beyond your own. Your gift drives you to seek out Magical knowledge, to test your limits, to forge your destiny."

magic statements

you're clever, toasteroven.

There is really not enough commiserating going on with a week until Dec 15...

Also, THANK YOU landshark for the information about the Berkeley portfolio.

Good luck with the final preparations everyone!

Submitted the GSD Application. Does anyone know how to check the progress of your application (GRE received, etc.)? Also, does that online transcript submittal actually legit? I thought about sending a hard copy just in case.