<p>Please help me decide which school to attend for Architecture! Please consider everything you can think of. I will be paying domestic fees for Canada, but Out of State for both California schools.</p>
<p>Lists of pros and cons will be great!</p>
<p>The most important factors are overall academic experience, architectural academic experience, student life (housing, dining, extracurriculars), job placement, and best value for tuition!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the help and info you can give!</p>
<p>USC.
- hella expensive.
+ good arch. programs
+ pretty well regarded.
+ has both b.arch AND b.s arch studies.
+ in nice area of LA.
+ has good student life from what i have heard.</p>
<p>UCB.
- not as expensive as usc. but still VERY pricy (for OOS).
+ near san francisco ;]
+ fairly good program for arch.
+ but overall academics are great! very great.
+ campus is gorgeous and very collegiate feeling!</p>
<p>i don't know anything about utoronto. ahaha</p>
<p>O Canadaaaaa!</p>
<p>UC Berkeley = Nice campus, some fantastic buildings, cool weather year round, never hot, never real cold, nice views. Full of CA kids that had top gpa's and scored high on SAT's.
Not a BArch program. Heavy on theory. Nice guy Frank runs the woodshop, said all the arch students screw themselves by procrastinating on projects requiring wood thinking they can access the woodshop at the last minute in the middle of the night like in studios, but he locks the door and goes home at 6pm.
A very good place to do grad school at.</p>
<p>USC = A pretty campus but very cramped, I mean the buildings are too close together. Met the Dean of Architecture who told me three things; lots of good schools out there that will give you a good education in architecture, he had 110,000 screaming alums on a football Saturday that would write him a check for anything he wanted, and he never felt comfortable lecturing from the podium that Frank L Wright used... He never even asked me if I was interested in applying to arch at USC. I think he felt he has enough applicants.</p>
<p>UToronto = at's in Canada, eh?
(sorry, I have no clue how to write a Canadian accent)</p>
<p>-sara</p>
<p>USC= job security. If a modernist education is what you want, go for it. USC is not my dish, I switched my major after spending 1 day in the 1st year studio. Kids are not as workaholic and competent as the ones at Cornell. The campus is always nice and clean, professors and classmates are very friendly and helpful people. The non-studio courses are not very strong, but arch. majors get 24/7 access to the studio. </p>
<p>Why don't you choose Cornell? It's closer to Canada and is rated No.1 in the U.S.</p>
<p>I like how she didn't even ask about Cornell and Cornell gets brought into the mix anyways. There are pleanty of reasons why people would not go to Cornell. Just because it is number one, which it isn't anymore, doesn't mean that everyone wants to go to it.</p>
<p>i'm far from a workaholic - i dont have that mentality to be number 1 all the time. in fact, i'm 27th in a class of 114. i only have a 1950 SAT. i got into those 3 schools because of extracurriculars and my essays.</p>
<p>plus, i got denied from cornell (which i was happy about, anyways haha - i HATE being in the middle of nowhere).</p>
<p>i'm a city and beach girl. toronto's far from the beach, but san fran (ucberkeley) and los angeles are pretty perfect for me. the one plus about toronto is that i'm a canadian citizen and i would be paying domestic fees (<5000 a year)</p>
<p>lucky! i am seriously considering mcgill in quebec. if i don't get into oregon. lol.</p>
<p>i just found out ucberkeley didn't even get all my scores. they saw my 1900, not even my 1950. wow. why did i get in!?</p>
<p>oh, and i never took my 2nd SAT II. did they admit me by mistake?</p>
<p>hahaha that's weird, because they are not big on admitting oos students!</p>
<p>every public school needs a balance between in-state (that's their mission) and out-of-state (pays more $$$, which helps them support the in-staters), and internationals are an especially attractive/glamorous form of out-of-stater.</p>
<p>Anyway, I could answer specific questions about SC, being an alum, but my main advice is actually to examine whether you want to work in the US or in Canada, and look at how the licensure requirements in whichever country is the answer jive with those schools. The big difference between USC and Berkeley is of course that USC is (primarily) a B.Arch program, and Berkeley is a pre-professional degree. I'm not sure where UToronto fits into that, but I suspect that when you figure out where you want to work and whether you want to go to grad school or not, you may have a lot easier choice to make.</p>
<p>larationalist -</p>
<p>i plan to basically work in the US - specifically CA or NY - either way or canada, i'm going to do grad school in the US. do you think USC prepares its students well enough to get jobs, and good ones, upon graduating with a b. arch? and how's the student life - housing, food, diversity (racial, sexual orientation, etc.)?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>A student who takes advantage of what's offered there will be very well prepared with a B.Arch from SC. Diversity is very high, but unfortunately there is a lot of segregation. This isn't enforced by anything, but many people tend to stick within their racial group. This makes sense to me when it comes to international students because of the language issue, but I can't figure it out for the rest. Diversity as far as sexual orientation is a non-issue, especially in architecture. People of all orientations do just fine. Housing was super cramped when I was there, but they did open up a couple of new residence halls since then, and now guarantee housing through at least your sophomore year (when I was there it was only guaranteed for freshmen). Food it fine, but any campus food gets old after you're there a while. There's a great cafe just a couple of buildings over from the architecture building. The architecture facilities recently received a big upgrade with the addition of a third floor onto Watt Hall as well.</p>
<p>thanks....this is still a hard, hard decision :[</p>
<p>i forgot to add...i'd be going to usc in the spring...would that be bad?</p>
<p>so, this is a bit different but still the basic idea. i need to decide between USC and Mcgill, and i am interested in communications but i am not in the communications school at USC, so i would probably end up doing the interdisciplinary program.</p>
<p>i love love LOVE montreal, and the independent aspect of McGill and i am really not into the frat/sorority blonde bimbo stereotype that ive heard so much about at USC. i also wanted to go somewhere slightly different than the US because i wanted a more international school.</p>
<p>however, ive heard the communications at USC is amazing, and obviously the weather down south beats montreal any day. im also more interested in working in the US than in canada, however i also do want to work internationally rather than just in the US.</p>
<p>ANY advice or opinion will be helpful!</p>
<p>for worldwide reputation in general.
1) Berkeley
2) McGill
3) USC</p>
<p>for the city.
1) McGill
2) Bekerley
3) USC</p>
<p>I don't really know which one is the best for your program (communcation)</p>
<p>USC's dean is a Chinese architect? Qingyun Ma?</p>