Application to the undergraduate Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Design program requires the following materials to be considered for entry into the program.
All applicants must also complete the five prerequisite courses by the end of spring quarter: ARCH 200, 201, 350, 351 and 352. These courses are typically taken in the sophomore year.
Application requirements:
- Department Application (found online here). Once you start your application, you will be able to save it and continue later as often as necessary.
- Transcripts of all college-level work. Unofficial transcripts are acceptable.
- DARS Report (Degree Audit Report for Architectural Design major)
- Personal Statement – Use your choice of either of the two questions below to help direct and compose a narrative that helps the committee understand your interest and motivation in applying to the Architectural Design major. Approximately 500 words (single spaced).
- Question #1 – “Describe a place you have visited, lived or worked in that has inspired your interest in architecture and explain why.”
- Question #2 – “Describe a place or building that you have read about or studied and explain how and why it inspired your interest in architecture.”
- Personal Resume – A typewritten summary of your education, employment history, recreational interests, hobbies, travel, and personal interests.
- Samples of creative work – Creative work submitted with your application is the best way for us to evaluate the likelihood of your success in our program. Yours will be one of many applications reviewed by the admissions committee, so the items that you include should be chosen with care. Your creative work samples should present 10–12 examples of your most recent work that demonstrate your thinking and making through a variety of media and approaches.
- OPTIONAL: Creative work “reflection” – you may choose to include a short paragraph (max. 250 words) covering:
- What you learned while creating the portfolio,
- Challenges you faced
- Why you chose the included work
- What your portfolio shows about you
Creative work samples may include:
- Architecture studio projects
- Drawings
- Paintings
- Sculptures
- Woodworking
- Set design
- Textile/apparel design
- Photography (no snapshots)
- Other 2D + 3D works
Once you begin uploading, SlideRoom will prompt you to input titles, dates, media, dimensions, and description of each work sample – please disclose clearly in the description whether the work is an assignment-based project, self-directed work, or work of a collaborative nature. SlideRoom accepts images up to 5MB per file and PDFs up to 10MB per file. Recommended file formats for SlideRoom are: jpeg, png, and gif. Use sharp, well-lit, well-composed, high resolution images.
Students are encouraged to include analytical diagrams and other process drawings that show the logic behind their design and to connect them to their design decisions. Drawings developed through layered iterations and drawings that combine analog and digital work are also encouraged to illustrate the use of drawing as a thinking tool .
Submissions should also include final drawings for any previous design work or standard architectural 2-D and 3-D of existing buildings and/or spaces. For design projects, reviewers will look for connections between the design response and preceding analysis or other process drawings.
Students currently taking ARCH 201 are advised to include individual analytical drawings, process development, and design proposals from the case study / design intervention project as well as the final axonometric (or equivalent), clearly showing the relationship between analysis and proposal.