<p>I'm from China, making my college list now. I know I want to major in architecture but nothing about the school choices. I really need advice on the scool choice. Thank you very much!</p>
<p>nihao laomei, while there are some undergrad architecture programs granting professional BArch degrees, usually in 5-years (top ones i can think of are cornell and rice, but there are more), most schools do not have professional undergrad degrees and offer the typical liberal arts BA with the possibility to major in architecture and/or something useful or related, like art history/math minor etc. the terminal degree in architecture in the US is the MArch, and these programs accept both BAs and BArchs, the latter getting credit for their more extensive professional experience. if you are interested in architecture in the US, i would suggest keeping your options open and applying to liberal arts schools. this will give you more flexibility in case you change your mind about architecture and won't hurt your prospects of becoming a successful architect, though if you don't plan to go to grad school right away it may make it more difficult to get an architecture job compared to a BArch graduate.</p>
<p>sorry when i said rice i meant ut austin, and to clarify another post by you: the di ranking ranks undergraduate programs and grad programs. the undergrad programs are only the schools that have professional BArch programs, which are in the minority, and do not include top schools that don't have BArch programs but may have architecture majors within the context of a liberal arts BA program. these same schools typically have professional graduate architecture schools that grant MArch degrees, and having a BA would not hurt your chances of getting into a graduate MArch degree, so again, keep an open mind. and by the way, don't trust rankings, from what i can see this di ranking left yale and princeton out of the graduate school top ten which is highly suspect.</p>
<p>Cornell is the best. Here I meet kids coming from all over the world to Cornell to study architecture for 5 years!</p>