| I've had a not-so-great experience in the Virginia Tech Architecture department. While I can't exactly talk about any other schools, I have been in the Architecture Department at VT for 4 years. Next year is my thesis year--and I am definitely ready to be done.
My problems, however, are not necessarily with the facade of the school; the accessibility of equipment is excellent (barring any that are continuously in bad condition--i.e. the plotters for printing), the facilities that we have are excellent (access to a library in-house, our own desk in the building(s) with space to work).
It is a problem with the system: How is grading performed? Regardless of whether the IDEA is to pull pressure off of the student to not worry about what grades they are getting, how is a student to know how they're doing in a particular studio class, other than to outright tell them verbally or by periodic grades (that they receive)? It isn't like in a graduate system where grades are more suggestion than actuality--a student in the undergrad section of VT Architecture gets a grade; they just might have no idea how it was configured at all.
I've gone through 4 years here and haven't had tremendous problems--I'll admit that the last 3 weeks of the school year are bad, not knowing how grading will be performed, let alone when you'll know how you've done (because notoriously, you are not told if you're necessarily doing not-well)--but it's still a problem with this school that I've personally noticed.
--and talking to administration does not fix this problem; it's completely up to the individual teacher as to whether they're caring enough to let you know/not into the philosophy of the current/past administration as to how grading is to be performed.
I feel like I haven't received much of an education at all--that I've had to teach myself what I do know and that any kind of real-world experience has been shunned by my teachers/the administration. I even received questions at a recent interview as to what kind of group projects I'd been involved in. WHAT group projects? That's against VT Architecture's unspoken policy of individualist work within studio classes/group-work for private projects of-your-own-accord.
Again, I can't speak for RISD, but I do feel like I got gypped out of the tremendous amount of money that it costs (this year, it'll be $4000/semester in-state!) and that I would've received a much better education (more focused on what a firm would hire me to do) at a technical school or at a community college and then transferring. |