<p>... and are withing striking distance of Boston, over thirty architecture schools from across the country all in one place.</p>
<p>The 2008 BSA College and Career Fair in Architecture and Design will be held Saturday, October 25, 2008 at Wentworth Institute of Technology.</p>
<p>Link;
BSA</a> -- Education -- College and Career Fair</p>
<p>Has anyone been to this? Is it the architecture equivalent to a National Portfolio Day?</p>
<p>i went to this last year and it was a big help. I was able to talk with Syracuse, Cornell, MIT, and a number of other schools. While I did not attend a school that was present, I learned a lot about the application process and was able to have someone look at my portfolio and comment about it.</p>
<p>I will be taking my daughter to this years on Saturday. She’s only a junior but it will get the official college search off to a good start.</p>
<p>Just wanted to post an update for anyone interested in this event. It was very worthwhile and thanks to the BSA for sponsoring and to Wentworth for hosting. My daughter was able to speak to a number of schools including some that she wasn’t considering prior to the event but may now. We attended a seminar on how to pick an architecture program that frankly was not interesting or informative. The speaker had a PHD in Architecture so you would think that they could have used some creativeness in their powerpoint presentation but instead they relied on the most standard of all Microsoft templates - small thing but it said something about this individual.</p>
<p>My daughter was a bit shy initially about approaching the booths but I didn’t want to be the kind of mom that was doing all the talking. So we developed a stratgedy of speaking with one school that had no activity at the moment and it was also a school that my daughter wasn’t all that interested in so she didn’t feel that much pressure to make a good impression. The school’s rep was very nice and engaging and made her feel at ease. With that under her belt, she was able to feel more comfortable with approaching the schools she was more interested in. Sometimes I would participate and other times I wouldn’t. Once she got the hang of it she was pretty much operating on her own.</p>
<p>We were lucky to have met a graduate of my daughter’s high school who was representing one of the schools. This woman just finished a 4+2 program. My daughter had met her once before and so was able to really engage with her and get some valuable and more personal insights. Strangely we ran into her the next day at church too.</p>
<p>She learned the following things that will be valuable</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Start drawing - every day - doesn’t matter so much what you draw but you need to start getting comfortable with it.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t take CAD courses - of no interest to admissions directors or deans</p></li>
<li><p>Not too early to start visits Junior year.</p></li>
</ol>