Technical report assignment

Prospectus

We usually plan before we start doing things, but especially as students we always plan our year of graduation and the process that we will take until to graduate.  Since I am an Architecture student at PSU, it is hard to have a graduation plan because of the acceptance process of the architecture department.

 

There will not be any difference to start an Architecture major than any other major, but the main issue is getting to the professional track, which is starting from the third year.  To become a junior in the Architecture major, all the students must reapply and submit their portfolios and only 48 students will get accepted.  There will not be any difference if the student who applied is studying in PSU, a transfer student from another school, or an international student who came from overseas.  There are two dates to apply which are in spring and summer, so students can start their junior year in Fall, which if a student got rejected, the student has to wait until the next year without any other major classes to take.  Also, students get the acceptance reply 10 days before the Fall term starts, which does not give students much time to think about changing plans.  Students might be from another city or country, so changing plans in 10 days will not be easy.  Therefore, there are many ways to make this situation easier for students because it is not easy to change a whole year's plan.

 

Many things can be added to the program which gives the student more time to think about what he will do or will give him an early notice if he is getting into the professional track or not.  The first solution is to make the acceptance reply get to students at least a month before the Fall term which can be done by hiring more people to evaluate portfolios.  Another solution is to give priority to the students who are already studying in PSU who have met the required GPA for this major.  By doing that, PSU architecture students would know that if they didn’t get lower than the required GPA, their spot will be saved for them unless they did not register for next term, then other transfer students can fill the empty spots.

 

These solutions have a few costs that might affect the school.  The school must pay more for people who will be working for portfolios.  Another cost is that the number of transfer students who are getting to the professional track will decrease because their acceptance rate will be low.