On the Path to Architect Licensure: The AREs

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What is an architect?

According to NCARB, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, it is “a person who designs buildings and prepares the drawings and instructions on how to build them.”

In practice, it’s a lot more complex than that consisting of plethora of nuances and intricacies that must be balanced in order for that to happen. To become an architect, you must get licensed. To do this, you must complete 3,740 documented experience hours across six practice areas; Practice Management, Project Management, Programming & Analysis, Project Planning & Design, Project Development & Documentation and Construction Evaluation, as well as pass the six Architecture Registration Exams (AREs) in the above-mentioned experience hours. The exams range from 3 to 4 hours long and the pass rate for all six on the first try is around 2%. Failing isn’t a flaw, but a feature of the exams.

Anyone who calls themselves an architect before becoming licensed isn’t an architect. That’s not just my gate keeping of the term architect, but what NCARB determines. Not everyone wants to get licensed and that’s okay. In becoming licensed, you have an increase in responsibility and if you’re the one stamping the drawings, an increase in liability. For me, becoming licensed after grad school was always my goal.

NCARB says the average amount of time to become an architect is 12.5 years. That’s based on the time that a student enrolls in a school. That means upon graduating, it takes around 7.5 years. According to the same data, the average age of a newly licensed architect is 32. I guess I’ll be bringing that average up.

The need to take the exams has been a constant presence, a weight hanging over me since graduation. Knowing that there’s this looming task ahead feels like carrying around a little backpack of anxiety. You try to ignore it, but it’s always there, lingering in the background.

Moving back home after grad school and starting a new job in Brooklyn, with a three-hour daily commute, made studying feel impossible. I wasn’t in the right place mentally to even consider it. Plus, grad school had just ended. I needed to take some time away from educating.

Instead of studying, I spent my time seeing family, catching up on my post-grad travel blog posts (I finished the last one just before Christmas), seeing friends; one had a wedding in October and going out on some dates. Part of me had imagined finding love in grad school, hoping that I’d meet my future wife, but that didn’t materialize. Being back in New York was my chance. In August, my little sister got engaged, starting the clock for me to get into a serious relationship so that I can bring a date to the wedding (I’m slightly joking). Who has time to study for the AREs when they’re trying to meet their future wife? I certainly didn’t.

With the new year came a shift in focus. A friend from grad school had already passed four of the six exams by December. While it made me anxious that I hadn’t even started studying, it also inspired and motivated me. Then, at the start of the year, my mom and grandma asked when I was going to start studying for them. My response was, “I can’t, I don’t have the time.”

It’s easy to put something off into the future because we imagine the future will be different than it is now, but life doesn’t slow down. If anything, it only gets more complex. Those nudges by my family members made me realize, “why not now?”. I just had to shift my mindset from “I don’t have time” to “I will find the time.” For too long, I had been making excuses why I couldn’t. I needed to switch to thinking that I could.

The next week, I started researching and planning what I needed to study, and how best to go about it. Using the Amber Book was going to be my main source, it is one of the most popular study guides and created by one of my former Virginia Tech professors (provides 2-months free for VT grads, otherwise it’s $430/month). The Amber Book offers an 8-week plan (21 hours/week needed), which I felt wasn’t enough time and a 16-week plan (12 hours/week needed), which I felt was too many months studying, so I made myself a 12-week study plan (16 hours/week), combing the two.

Starting on February 1st, my goal is to take all six exams at the beginning of May over a two-week period (as the Amber Book recommends). Any I fail, I’ll take two months later (you have to wait 60 days before a retake) and hopefully have them all passed by my birthday in September.

I guess we’ll see what happens.