After almost a year long application process of researching schools, creating my portfolio, studying for the GRE, writing essays, applying and waiting to hear from the Universities, it’s finally over. I’ve decided that I’m going to attend Virginia Tech in the Fall. In the end, out of the eleven schools I applied to, I was accepted into six, and denied from five. Ultimately, it came down to Virginia Tech and University of Virginia.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I could have chosen a worse time to apply to graduate school. The coronavirus pandemic had a profound effect on the higher educational landscape. It’s common during recessions and periods of economic uncertainty for universities to see a higher number of applications, which was my luck when applying to undergraduate school in 2009. The world was coming out of the Great Recession, and many state and public universities saw an exponential rise in applicants from previous years. Now, because of the Covid pandemic, each school had a record number of applicants and a record low admittance rate. Princeton, for example, admitted about three times less the applicants and I was not one of them.
Additionally, every school waived the GRE. This was unfortunate because it meant that more people could apply to schools they would not have applied to previously, and it decreased the amount of criteria schools had to “judge” an applicant. I don’t think standardized tests are an effective way of determining a person’s ability to succeed at a school, however at the moment, I also don’t think schools have successfully transitioned to using a more inclusive criterion. They haven’t had the time to develop a new format and instead, getting rid of the GRE was like chopping off one leg of a tripod. Of course, I’m only saying this because I spent months studying and did well enough that I my scores were above the “average” accepted for each of the schools I applied.
While my dream was to go to school on the west coast, particularly in California, it was not meant to be. I was denied from Berkeley and there was no chance I was going to USC, they gave a merit scholarship of $6,000 to help aid a tuition cost of $60,000 for the 2021 academic year. The Masters of Architecture program is a 3-year program, so the cost of attending USC would have been around $240,000. An absurd amount of money that I don’t have. I did get into a smaller school in the Los Angeles area called Woodbury, and the cost of tuition would have been around $22,000 a year. However, in terms of quality and what I was looking for in a school, it couldn’t compare to Virginia Tech or UVA. So, in the end, it came down to two wonderful schools in Virginia. UVA is ranked 11th and Virginia Tech is ranked 13th. Both have great programs, both coincidentally are in/around small towns (something I actually didn’t want, I really wanted to be in a city), both have landscape architecture programs, which is something I’m also considering or at least I would like to have that option available.
I was denied from UVA when I applied for undergrad, so getting in and going there would have been my redemption, while Virginia Tech was a school I almost didn’t apply to. I added it at the last minute after talking to my friend’s brother. UVA, like USC offered me $6,000 a year bringing their yearly tuition to around $25,000, while Virginia Tech offered me instate tuition and 50% off that, bringing yearly tuition to around $10,000, and a guaranteed 10-hour a week assistantship. If I didn’t get Virginia Tech’s offer, I would have gone to UVA, but the financial concerns of attending graduate school are an enormous concern. Going to Virginia Tech will give me the possibility of attending a fantastic school while providing me with the opportunity to avoid taking out loans, or at the very least a minimal amount, and that is something I could not pass up.