I know they can be really expensive and I don’t want to drain my parents’ wallets. I don’t want to get one if a bachelor’s is just as useful to firms.
As a high school student, no.
Take this one step at a time.
Decide on a college, get your Bachelor’s, decide whether you still love architecture once you really get a taste of it.
Then worry about your Master’s. Perhaps a future employer will pay for it. Perhaps, like so many of us, you’ll get your Master’s part time as you work. Wait and see what the job market is demanding 4 or 5 years from now.
But don’t sweat this one while you’re still in high school.
Just be aware that to be licensed in most states you need either a Bachelor of Arhitecture (a 5-year degree accredited by NAAB) or a BA or BS followed by a Masters of Arch that is accredited by NAAB. Just the BA or BS usually will not be sufficient to get your license. So actually this is a good question to ask. You should have an idea of which route you wish to follow if you intend to get your license.
Though I generally agree that high school students should concentrate on their undergraduate degree before worrying about graduate school, with architecture it’s a little different. Your first decision that you need to make now when you’re making the list of colleges that you want to apply to would be whether you want to go for the Bachelors of Architecture (BArch) or a BA or BS degree in architecture, with an MArch later.
You could conceivable pursue both at this point, then make your decision after you have your acceptances and financial aid packages.
With the BArch you would be able to begin the process of becoming a licensed architect. With the BA or BS you would most likely need to get a Masters, though some states allow you to become licensed with a BS.
You will be fully capable of working as an architect with a BArch. Some architects stop there and some decide to get an MArch later. Architecture is a big industry with a wide range of types of firms doing a wide range of types of building, so it’s hard to generalize, but my observation is that it’s common for partners at top firms to have MArchs.
The answer is a big “It depends”.
If you go the 4+2 route you are more flexible and can take classes at an easier pace, and also boost your GPA compared to a 5 and out. You can argue that 5 and out is ‘cheaper’ but if you graduate with a much lower GPA while saving a year of courses, it may or may not be worth it. In a 4+2 you could stay at the same school or you could go to a different school and have to deal with class equivalencies, different professor styles, etc etc etc.
5 and out saves a lot of sanity while applying to grad schools, costs for GRE and the like, and even portfolio printing, binding, and mailing costs to the few schools that still haven’t gotten the message and require printed portfolios for graduate school :).
To be frank, my daughter is doing the 4+2 approach (M.Arch in a different school) and things couldn’t be better or worse :). Better in the sense that you may focus on, say, nuts and bolts architecture versus conceptual stuff, and worse because you have to adjust quickly to a new town, a new school, new software, and so on.
Our daughter is looking into all of this as well. She’s doing an “explorers” post at some local arch firms; and we want her to talk to some of the architects about Masters vs accredited bachelors.
An architect friend who has is BA & MA from the same school mentioned he wishes in hindsight he had gone to two different schools so he could have had some completely different points of view from differing professors and cultures.
Our local flagship mentioned they like having students come in from other schools to their masters program; and often give those kids assistantships.
The BA and MA in separate schools is often the case in any major - if you’re in a competent undergrad program and are doing extremely well - compared to your peers - then going to a ‘better’ school will likely mean more time to get your MA but more opportunities. On the other hand I would love to see a case where a 4 year BA Arch manages to get a 2 year MArch in a different school (and better ranked :)) without extraordinary measures or killer course load.
Realistically speaking in grad school you’ll have a studio and 2 or 3 other classes. This is big because it’s likely the other two classes will be one history/theory/elective which is mostly reading and papers, and one ‘hard’ required elective like Environmental this or that or Structures this or that. But studio and 3 courses - the typical way to get out in 2 years - is not feasible for many mortals. So you decide for 3 years on 3 courses a semester, and that’s all she wrote.
These are things the average student does not generally think about when the admission letter is staring at them on the table… We had to deal with over a dozen such letters and just trying to figure out who accepts what for what and who requires what is not trivial. Some schools outright tell you “duh, Ms. Applicant, our MArch is 3.5 years whether you took studio with Zaha or not. Come here and enroll first then we’ll think advanced placement”.
Ironically, I don’ like quarters but in this case the quarter system may actually work better - 3 courses in a quarter vs 4 in a semester.