I tried hard to get S26 to look harder at Pitt. They had so many paths and neat areas of focus, and it seemed like many students do internships. The city is bustling, and it’s in a great area with multiple colleges, arts, etc. Family members are graduates and huge supportors. At the end, for us though, Pitt has gotten quite popular in our area, with multiple applications from his school. Merit aid for S26 seems unlikely.
Pitt is not very popular at our school - 5-10 a year out of a senior class of around 300 (7 applied so far this year). Hard to tell if it’s a good or bad thing but the last few years there has only been one denial a year. However the small sample means it’s hard to really judge chances from Maia.
Has he shadowed a few architects to get a sense of the different career paths and settings? I think that will clarify a few things, no? I’ve got friends and acquaintances who are architects and their professional lives are really different. Designing residential new construction for a three person firm; working as a “subject matter expert” on sustainable materials and construction techniques for a hotel and retail developer; focusing on “in- fill” and historic preservation; and the one with the internationally known, huge “famous” firm who works on “master plans” for colleges, cities, airports, stadium construction, etc. Says he hasn’t been near residential design in over a decade (despite his college friends constantly bugging him to help them turn their garages into a small apartment for an aging parent).
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If you are doing school visits, you can try to pop in to the architecture studios and maybe even chat with some students. That may give you some idea of the studio culture and the environment. A school near a city or established town could make it easier to find internships (and permanent jobs down the road) since nearby firms/architects may be teaching as adjuncts and may be hiring from the school. Programs that have existed and have been accredited for a long-time should provide some reassurance of education quality and local connections.
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An architect we know specializes in buildings designed for animals - vet offices, shelters etc. Pretty niche? He sidetracked into residential for a while - the kind of homes that are featured in magazines and win prizes and make for a glossy book on his coffee table - but after a decade or so of that went back to what he considered his true calling.
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OMG, this is so fabulous.
I always recommend that kids interested in architecture spend some time WITH architects…. they always come away surprised that the field isn’t what they thought it was!
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I understand. Drexel is similar for our school. The small sample sizes make predictions difficult, and who knows what majors were accepted/rejected. That said, only one rejection is hopeful!!
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Thanks, this is so helpful. Yes, we are doing as many visits and open houses as possible to try to get a good sense of the culture at different schools, and we spend a fair amount of time in the buildings, looking at the projects, and talking to people when possible.
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He is trying to find any opportunity to shadow but not had much luck, and I know one architect who lives across the country, so not much help here. He does have a teacher who has an architecture background and provides him with supplemental projects, materials, and discussion about the field. He’ll get on that again once all the essays are written!! 
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We had an architect acquaintance who specialized in hospitals, coroner buildings and such—they had to pay special attention to airflow. Sounded interesting.
My daughter is a structural engineer (Illinois Institute of Technology). She works on existing buildings (condition assessments, repair design, historic preservation, building envelope stuff) and she works with a lot of architects also employed by her firm doing this work.
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You can go beyond this. When we were visiting colleges, there is almost always a contact name/email listed on the schools Architecture website. Reach out to that and they were ALL happy to set up specific tours and time to discuss their program. We visited Virginia Tech on a Saturday and they set up time for a 5th and 3rd year student to meet us in the studio space and walk us around. If the schools are not local or easy to visit, I’m betting someone would be happy to have a 30 minute zoom call with you.
As a parent it was important to me that he end up at a school that SHOULD he decide Arch wasn’t going to be his career path that the school had a variety of other potential programs that would be relatively easy to transition into.
I wasn’t too focused on making sure he goes to school in a geographic area that he expects to put down roots. Many of the larger Arch firms have a national presence. I would say it’s a good question for the school you’re looking at though “what firms do your graduates typically land with?”
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Their Barch Co-Op program is also different from their other coops…its basically work all day in coop and then do classes at night. Its weird and turned my daughter off from their program. I saw your other inquiry about Kent State…it is a solid 4 year less expensive program. It is ranked, just not a Barch so would need to go on to a March somewhere. Their facility is also beautiful and sounds like a it would be a likely admit. My daughter applied there as a safety and they did give her money and honors college reducing price even further. She applied and was admitted to a lot of the programs you listed. She also only wanted Barch. She ended up at Syracuse University. They gave her 1/2 tuition and honors college and they have strong abroad program. It is also a very tight knit and supportive program amongst both the students and the Arch faculty. If you apply there they are huge on demonstrated interest fyi
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