HOW STRATEGIC SHOULD YOU BE ABOUT YOUR ARCHITECTURAL CAREER GOALS?

by ASR Staff

As you are accumulating your application materials for architecture school admissions, you are very likely to find yourself confused about how to describe your architectural career goals. Don’t worry, the architecture school admissions committees will not check with you later in life to make sure you have accomplished them, however they  do expect you to give this issue some intelligent thought. This is about your own future after all, as an architect, so it would definitely help you if you could articulate your goals, both short and long term ones.

This all sounds great, however it does bring up a different question: how honest and accurate should you be about your future career vision? Should your goals represent what you expect from your career, or should you just write what you believe the admissions people expect to hear from successful candidates?

From 2002 to 2019, Architecture School Review has worked with over 3000 architecture school candidates, helping them build their strategies and develop them into the foundation for their architecture school portfolios and applications. In all these years, we have asked the same question over and over again, and the answer has always been the same: We find that most of the time it is better if applicants tell the admissions committees what they REALLY want to do with their careers.

Architecture School Admissions committees are very good in understanding who is honest and who is insincere. Catering your career goals to what you THINK they expect to hear, would qualify as insincere in their minds. Most importantly though, how would you ever be able to build a case for yourself, and explain why these career goals are your goals when they are not really your goals? Especially when you get to have an interview, how will you justify whatever your wrote about in the first place?

The fact is that most programs have a reputation about their ‘preferences’, but it is also a fact that any architecture school in existence can be the launching stage for any career. Therefore, by being honest about your architectural career goals, not only you are more likely to go more in depth and come across as more intelligent and deep, but you are more also more likely to differentiate yourself from the crowd, which (as we have mentioned so many times) is a key to getting into the world’s top architecture schools.

If you have any questions about how to build your career goals, here at Architecture School Review, we offer a career strategy development report, which will allow you to see your career from a completely different point of view.