Hey, I have been considering applying to this university to add more options to my universities list, but I wasn’t sure if it would be recommended to do a BA in Architecture… how would you rate it based on tuition, academics and the community in the university? Are there any pages I can look upon ratings?
@JamesWiz, Undergraduate BA/BS/BED degrees are not rated by Design Intelligence. The university overall is listed at #110 in National Universities by USNWR, but that rating can be misleading as often individual departments punch above their weight. I don’t have any insider info on USF, but looking at their website, especially scrolling through the faculty bios, I would think that you’d get a good foundation there.
The pros from studying architecture at USF would be 1) several faculty members have degrees from prestigious architecture programs (e.g., Berkeley, Cornell, Yale), according to their website, their alums appear to have been admitted to good MArch programs and employed by good firms (you might want more thorough and updated info here), 3) the combined focus on community design adds dimension to the program and 4) The Bay Area is a great place to study architecture. Architecture programs that are located in appealing urban areas attract qualified professional as visiting professors and studio critics.
To me the major negative is that USF doesn’t have a school of architecture itself, so you’d miss out on the synergy with the professional program.
The kind of question you could ask (directly to the department) would be: How many students graduate with this degree every year? How many go on to get the MArch? To which MArch programs were graduates admitted in recent years?
Thank you very much @momrath! Very useful and helpful info, I will ask them the questions you gave me and will look into the faculty bios on their webpage