For the past five years Cal Poly has maintained a spot among the top three undergraduate architecture schools in the nation. This year, they did it again.
Design Intelligence (DI) ranked Cal Poly third in their most recent survey.
DI is an independent company “dedicated to the business success of organizations in architecture, engineering, construction and design,” according to their website. For the past 19 years, DI has conducted surveys across the industry of design to rank architecture schools within the United States.
This year, the survey collected more than 4,500 responses from industry professionals weighing in on what programs they admired the most, and indicating from which schools they hire the most students.
“Design Intelligence wants to offer perspectives from three key audiences: the professionals who hire architecture and design graduates; the deans, program chairs, and department heads who help form architecture and design education; and the students and recent graduates who have an up-close view of the architecture and design school experience,” DI Institutional Affiliate Liaison Lynn Barrett wrote in an email to Mustang News.
The purpose of the survey is to help bridge the gap between education and the working world.
Cal Poly uses it’s “learning by doing” motto as a key to success. According to the survey, the methodology is paying off.
“To me it makes sense. I have never been at another architecture school, but based on the way they teach us it makes sense. They don’t tell us exactly what to do, they make us discover it on our own and I feel like that’s the best way to teach someone,” architecture sophomore Niki Blinov said.
Cornell University and Rice University are the two institutions ranked higher than Cal Poly. Cal Poly is therefore ranked first nationally for the top undergraduate architecture program at a public school.
Cal Poly placed first in 7 of the 12 specialized categories determining the overall ranking.
In the future, Cal Poly will take the steps needed to raise its standing in all places necessary, according to architecture professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Mark Cabrinha.
“We continue to look at ways in which our curriculum can address the diverse needs of our communities, and see the best way to do this is through collaboration across the disciplines in the CAED. In this way, it may be that we can increase both our interdisciplinary and theory rankings, through our efforts in increasing issues of diversity and inclusion,” Cabrinha wrote in an email to Mustang News.