Any opinions on the BAC?

soozievt
Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:15:59 +0000

So_ein…plenty of students attend BA programs like you do and go onto MArch programs. Since you ask how you could get more experience and also more things for a portfolio…I’ll give an example from my own college kid who is in a BA in Architectural Studies program that doesn’t have design studio courses within it. First there are studio art courses. She took the Intro one and also has taken an Independent Study in Drawing with a Studio Art professor (she also attended figure drawing classes on her own). She is taking Sculpture in the fall. In that same vein, you could take classes through the Museum School. I am an alum of Tufts and actually when I attended years ago, and was NOT an art student (I majored in Child Study), I took several Museum School art classes both on the Tufts campus and at the Museum School in Boston. So, you could get art classes that way. MArch programs like to see art work that is not all architectural work and so you could get some pieces in this regard through art classes, plus getting good at drawing will help you in this field. Any 3D work is good to do as well.

Then, in her case, she can take architecture courses at RISD and I realize that is not an option for you. She has been able to take architectural drawing and also digital representation at RISD in their arch program. But in YOUR case, you can do some of this in in the Architectural Engineering program at Tufts. We met with that professor who heads that up at Tufts and surely arch rendering type work goes on there.

Also, my daughter did Harvard Grad. School of Design’s Career Discovery, summer after freshman year, like you are doing. She did a lots of arch design work there in studiio that she is using for her graduate school admissions portfolio. In fact, recently, she was rebuilding a model while home briefly from two summers ago to make it better for her portfolio. So, I think you will accumulate arch design work by doing Career Discovery.

Then, in junior year, she did an arch program abroad. She chose Syracuse in Florence. She did a lot of arch work there and has work for a portfolio from that as well. You could look into that program, Columbia’s, or others. Columbia’s is a full year (half in Paris, half in NYC). She would not have missed a year of her school (she loves it too much and she is also on a varsity sport team) but the Columbia program sounds cool.

Also, for arch history courses, she has had options sometimes to do projects and she has done models and also computer renderings and so can use these for her portfolio. Perhaps in some of your arch classes, you can be given such an option?

Also, maybe one summer you can intern in an architectural firm. That is what she is doing this summer overseas. I don’t truly know if she will have portfolio samples from that, but that is not why she is doing the job. She is doing it for the experience itself.

So, you also could piece together such experiences, portfolio pieces, and course work. You are already doing Career Discovery. Look into programs abroad too. Can you do an Honors Thesis at Tufts? She has chosen to do one at Brown in architecture.

I think you will have enough experience and work to be primed to go to a MArch program out of Tufts. Talk to older students and professors there to see how others have pieced together their program at Tufts and how they have accumulated a portfolio for grad school and where some of them have gone onto. I know there are students from my D’s college who have successfully gone onto very good MArch programs and I believe you have that potential as well. Get advice too from those at Career Discovery about how to plan your next few years. My D talked to older students at her college in arch and from the get go had a plan of what experiences she might piece together as an undergrad in order to pursue a professional degree later on in architecture.

I hope these examples, plus the options I mentioned for you, can be explored because at this point, I think that is your best bet, rather than starting over in a BArch after two years of attending Tufts. You can become an architect by starting out at Tufts in either the BA in Arch Studies or the Engineering Degree in Arch Engineering (or major in one and minor in the other, which is an option there). As I said, my D strongly considered that path at Tufts but ultimately chose another college.