My DD is a sophomore and working on narrowing down her interests. One that has consistently risen to the top is Architecture and Design. We would like to give her some exposure and are looking at Catholic’s pre-college Experiences in Architecture program. Does anyone have any experience with this program? At 2 weeks, it looks like it could be a good window into the field. Thanks!
I can’t speak specifically on Catholic University’s program but there are a healthy number of Universities that run similar programs. Some are residential, some are on-line (or commuter). S23 took one during he summer of '22 to solidify his thinking of Architecture as a career and it helped.
Architecture is a program that depending on BA-Arch or Bachelor of Architecture the student gets immersed into the coursework from the very first semester and transferring out of the program if they don’t like it can lead to the student needing to be at the school more than the 4 or 5 years. So it is really money well spent to do a pre-college program to help give insight!
I would ask them if the course qualifies for college credit. IMO it doesn’t make a lot of sense at this point in their educational journey to pay substantial $ for something that won’t qualify for credit transfer into a college.
Not sure how much you might have already researched…
https://www.naab.org/accreditation/accredited-programs
If your DD would intend to become a licensed architect (there are definitely different career paths in Arch but this is the one most commonly discussed), there are a couple of different educational paths.
Bachelor of Architecture - 5 year program
Masters of Architecture - 1.5-3 year program after 4 years undergraduate BA/BS
A Bachelor of Arts in Architecture does not lead to the ability to be licensed but can be a great springboard into a Masters program. Most will also state that a BA-Arch is more of a traditional undergraduate experience where as the 5 year BoA program is fairly intense.
If you look at some of the schools on that NAAB website you’ll find many of them run pre-college summer programs.
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Did your son’s summer course easily get college credit? From the little I’ve investigated of these, it seems colleges can be pretty picky about what summer architecture coursework they will accept as credit (so if your son’s did, I’d be interested to know where he did his summer program). (I assume this would be of interest to OP so hopefully not off-topic)
He did his at Syracuse. It listed specifically on the information and registration site that it’s “3 credits”. Yes, it did transfer over to his selected school and it covered one of his Architecture electives.
If the intent is to use whatever course you end up with for application for credit, make sure you save a copy of the Syllabus. They will want that to compare the curriculum to their program.
I would agree with that observation. Anything beyond some sort of “intro to” course I wouldn’t have expected them to waive much of anything. They’re certainly not going to waive any of the studio time! I do think that both schools being well known B.Arch programs helped.
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My D, now an MARCH and three years working in the field, did the 4-week summer residential HS program at CalPoly and it was invaluable. Architecture is a rigorous program at any school and this gave her a great intro to studio, the kinds of work that goes into arch and arch programs, gave her good insights into what to look for in the college programs she was looking at (as they can be quite varied), etc. It was a bit pricey (and the credits DID NOT transfer to her chosen school and would not have transferred even to CalPoly which was one of her choices) but it was well worth it. We told her that even if she came out hating architecture, it would save us thousands in college tuition if she spent a year or so down the arch tract only to transfer out. Many of the studio classes etc are not that transferable to other majors.
All that said, she LOVED the program, loved the field, loved her college program as rigorous as it was, and is thriving in the field as a professional. She also realized that arch people are her kind of people - creative, deep thinkers that are interested in math, science and art. I highly encourage some exploration in these programs if you can swing them as it is such a unique field.
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