Columbia M.Arch · Seventeen years of one-on-one work.
Architecture and Design Admissions
Applying to architecture and design programs works differently. On top of grades, testing, and essays, most programs want a portfolio, and the portfolio is usually where the decision gets made.
Most admissions advisors can't evaluate design work. Most portfolio instructors haven't spent much time thinking about how an admissions committee reads an application. I've done both for years.
I have a Master of Architecture from Columbia GSAPP, and I worked in architecture and exhibition design at Thinc Design in New York. I've worked with students applying to undergraduate architecture and design programs, and with B.Arch and M.Arch applicants, on concepts, projects, drawings, models, sequencing, and presentation, while running the rest of the application at the same time.
How it works
Design-track students follow the same arc as my other students, with portfolio work built into it. The difference is timing. Portfolios take much longer to build than essays do, so the work starts earlier and everything else gets planned around it.
For students applying to undergraduate programs, this is part of the full admissions engagement. One advisor, one plan, one timeline.
Who this is for
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High school students applying to undergraduate architecture, design, or art programs
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Students building a portfolio from scratch, or shaping work they already have into one
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B.Arch and M.Arch applicants
One Student's Path
A junior applying to architecture programs — portfolio, testing, and applications on one timeline.
The student came to me at the start of junior year for help with the portfolio. That's the usual way design-track families find me, since the portfolio is the part nobody around them knows how to help with. But a portfolio sits inside an application, on a deadline, next to testing, so the work quickly became all of it, run as one plan.
Portfolios take longer than essays. Projects have to be thought through, made, remade, photographed, and sequenced, which is months of work rather than weeks. So portfolio development ran through junior year while SAT prep ran alongside it, with the two scheduled around each other on purpose. Testing was pushed toward completion before application season, and the portfolio was paced so it never needed a scramble at the end.
In the late spring of junior year the work widened into the full application. School list, strategy, essays, all while the portfolio kept developing. By the fall the portfolio, the essays, and the list were versions of the same argument. The same interests showed up in the work, in the writing, and in where the student applied.
Most design-track families end up assembling a committee. An admissions consultant who can't read a drawing, a portfolio teacher who doesn't follow the Common App, a test tutor on a separate calendar. Here one person ran the sequence, so nothing competed for the same hours and nothing fell between roles.
The student was admitted to architecture programs the family was genuinely happy with, with a portfolio that represented real work and an application season that stayed on schedule.
"I had an absolutely fantastic experience working with Mike on the M. Arch application process. Mike guided me, a non-architecture background student with no idea how and where to begin, through every aspect the process, from choosing schools to planning and refining a portfolio to writing application essays.
Mike is extremely professional, smart, creative, and kind, with unfailing enthusiasm and attention to detail, even on tight deadlines. After our work together, I was accepted to seven out of the nine M.Arch programs to which I applied, including to my top choice.
I highly recommend working with Mike to anyone feeling daunted by the M. Arch application process (especially with no architecture background) or simply looking to grow as a writer, thinker, and designer. - EL
"Mike has been helping me with my applications for masters in architecture and I feel so lucky to have found him.
Mike is very knowledgable about all aspects of architecture including the general application process, portfolio development, layouts, creating concepts, and model making. He has helped me strategize and been so patient and encouraging during this stressful process.
Mike is one of the kindest people I've ever met and is always positive and encouraging. I could not recommend him more! I would go as far as to say he has changed my relationship with architecture -- most people I've met in the architecture academia are difficult and a bit patronizing, Mike, however, is open-minded, excited and extremely warm."
-Zoe
The portfolio is where these decisions get made, and it takes much longer to build than anything else in the application.
"After our work together, I was accepted to seven out of the nine M.Arch programs to which I applied, including to my top choice." --EL