What does it take to get your license as an architect?

This is a question that many of us, when we first enter school to become architects, really have little or no grasp of the true answer. For some of the people reading (assuming anyone is reading) what this entails may be painfully familiar. For the rest of the universe, I’ll lay out what exactly is involved to get your license as an architect.
1. A degree from an NAAB (National Architectural Accrediting Board) accredited school.
2. Completion of the IDP (Intern Development Program)
3. Passing grades on the 7 sections of the ARE (Architect Registration Exam)
There are some exceptions to these rules depending on the state you are getting your license in or when you first got your license, but those are the three basic criteria for a new architect in most states today. But what do they mean?

*Please note that this is my understanding of the rules as they currently exist. If you, dear reader, see something that might be off, please let me know, I would like my information to be as accurate as possible.

Getting an NAAB degree (http://www.naab.org/)
The NAAB certifies schools and programs as meeting certain standards for architectural education in order to grant what is considered a professional degree. While the NAAB grants accreditation to both undergraduate and graduate programs, there has been a shift putting preference on graduate degrees and the NAAB is no longer accepting undergraduate programs for consideration. A full list of schools accredited by the NAAB (140 total) can be found here (http://www.naab.org/schools/search.aspx?searchType=A).

If you don’t have a degree (B.Arch or M.Arch) from a NAAB professionally certified program, getting your license will be very, very difficult. In many places, it will be impossible.

My own education began at Massachusetts College of Art (www.massart.edu). After four years at MassArt I graduated with a BFA in Environmental Design with a concentration in Architectural Design. While this education gave me a very sound foundation in multiple facets of architectural design (design, structures, systems design, history, etc.) it was unaccredited by the NAAB. So while I could go and work for a firm, I could not get my license. With the NAAB’s move towards emphasizing graduate education, this was not something I saw as a problem or deterrent, I had always intended to get my Masters degree.
After MassArt, I attended the University of Cincinnati for three years and graduated with my M.Arch degree this past June.
One thing I should mention, as I was finishing up my undergraduate degree at MassArt, the department heads were beginning the long process of developing a curriculum for establishing an NAAB certified graduate program. They were approved for candidacy in January 2007 and will begin classes this September. I couldn’t be happier for the school and the fantastic staff who work there, they had a great program going when I was there and from what I’ve seen of the new program, it’s going to be really fantastic.

The Intern Development Program (IDP)
49 American jurisdictions currently require IDP participation for licensure. The only exceptions are Arizona, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Unless you live in one of those three jurisdictions, you will have to complete IDP in order to achieve initial licensure.
IDP is the program established by NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Confused by the acronyms yet?) for tracking professional development after school. Basically, you track your time spent working in 16 sub-disciplines within architectural practice and must meet particular minimums in each section.
Each hour of work is valued as 1/8th of a Unit with no section requiring any less than 10 units (80 hours) for registration.
Just doing the minimum for each section won’t get you through the program though. The sum of the 16 minimums is 350 units (2800 hours) but IDP requires 700 total units. Some of those additional units have to be earned within certain groups (i.e. group A requires 350 units on its own, but only dictates where 275 of them must come from, the rest can be anywhere in the 10 sections in the A group) while others can come from anywhere at all. Confused yet? I certainly was at first. This chart (http://www.ncarb.org/IDP/idptraining.html) does a good job of explaining how the hours have to be divided up. There is a lot of ‘free time’, 235 units worth, that can be earned anywhere from developing construction documents to volunteer hours.
In order to get those units though, you have to be working under a licensed architect in good standing, you must have completed your architectural education to a certain minimum level. From the IDP website:
three years in an NAAB- or CACB-accredited professional degree program.
the third year of a four-year pre-professional degree program in architecture accepted for direct entry to a two-year NAAB-accredited professional master's degree program;
one year in an NAAB- or CACB-accredited Master of Architecture degree program for interns with undergraduate degrees in another discipline;
96 semester credit hours as evaluated by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) in accordance with NCARB's Education Requirement, of which no more than 60 hours can be in the general education subject area.
Prior to meeting the above criteria, any work done in an architectural office will not count towards IDP.
Once you do meet the criteria though, you have to begin documenting your progress and believe me, it’s as much fun as it sounds like it is!
Due to the Cooperative Education component of my graduate program, I was able to graduate with approximately 210 training units completed. That’s 30% of my IDP units already completed or just under a year’s worth of work, leaving me with 490 units (~1.9 years) to complete. Most of my completed hours are in SD, DD and CD’s… not surprising for a young architect who is going to spend most of his time drafting.

Taking the ARE
The ARE was recently updated from version 3.1 to version 4.0. It used to be that ‘back in the day’ you went into a testing center for 3 straight days of testing, including a day long hand drafted design portion. The ARE exam has been described by some as more rigorous than the bar or medical licensure. Why? Well, three solid days of testing is a pretty good reason. Because if you screw up as an architect, then someone is going to end up seeking out a professional who has taken one of those other two exams. An architect’s first responsibility is to the health, safety and welfare of the people who use the spaces we design. It’s not to our client, not to our design aesthetic or some complex conceptual/mathematical exploration (Yes, I’m thinking of you Mister Eisenman)… health, safety and welfare of the users. This is what we are tested on, this is our first duty. If we fail in that, then we fail as architects.
The ARE today is a 7 part exam with each section able to be taken separately. It’s administered on a computer, including the design portion which is done on a custom CAD program. There are no points for style, aesthetics or conceptual innovation, which isn’t to say such things aren’t important, simply that they take a back seat to our first responsibilities as architects. New to ARE 4.0 are ‘design vignettes’ for each section of the exam, so that your design skills are tested within each portion of the exam.
Some of the sections of the ARE get into details that many architects will never use. Much of the structural information is far more detailed than any calculation that I will ever have to perform at the firm I currently work for, but that’s because we have engineers doing that work, along with other sub-consultants. The ARE tests to show that you would be prepared to work as a sole practitioner (i.e. a one-person office) with minimal support from sub-consultants.
Some jurisdictions now allow you to take portions of the ARE once you have accumulated enough hours in particular sections of IDP, but this is the exception rather than the rule. In most states you have to complete the entire IDP program before taking any portion of the ARE although it was recently decided to make this rule flexible, dependant on the decision of individual states, so we can expect more states to soon not require this.