<p>apr, my son recently completed his BA in art/art history at Williams. He is working for an architecture firm now with the intention of eventually getting an MArch. Like Soozie’s daughter, he decided early on to get a liberal arts education rather than going directly into a BArch program.</p>
<p>I think the first decision that your son needs to make is whether he’s going to take the BA/BS route or the BArch route. Both are good choices, but very different.</p>
<p>If he’s still undecided then he’ll need to make two completely separate lists. No matter what his qualifications – statistics, talent, etc – his lists should include less selective schools and especially ONE safety. </p>
<p>There are many good BArch programs, both at medium sized privates and at large publics. Along with CMU, Cornell and Miami, he might consider UMich, Syracuse, Cincinnati. Northeastern would be an excellent less selective.</p>
<p>For the BA route his choices are much, much wider and should not necessarily be restricted to schools that have architectural studies programs. MArch programs accept students from all sorts of disciplines. A major in studio art, art history or even something totally unrelated like biology or English, will still get you into a MArch program if you have the other prerequisites. </p>
<p>The beauty of a liberal arts education is the ability to experiment and sample a diverse palate of disciplines. In building his BA/BS list I would take an exactly opposite approach to how he views his BArch list. Don’t focus on the strength of the program. Instead focus on the ambience, environment and teaching style, in other words, the *personality *of the school.</p>
<p>There are just so many excellent liberal arts colleges in the Northeast! Let us know his “wish list”: size, urban/suburban/rural, sporty/nerdy and so forth and we’ll come up with more suggestions than you’ll know what to do with. :)</p>
<p>The principle partner of the firm my son works for has a BA from Yale, a law degree from Harvard and an MArch from MIT. So it’s not entirely unusual for architects to take a meandering route to their final destination.</p>