Hi,

If you want a true design oriented architecture school then I suggest you limit your search to art schools which offer degrees in architecture.

Doing this will limit your choices ,however. The reason why I’m suggesting this is because, during my time in a large public universities, I hung out with a friend who was going to an art school in Los Angeles. The students there were so much more interesting and eager to try new things and also open to new ideas. It felt so much better being around students that were studying other design subject, such as film making, graphic design, fashion design and furniture design. The list of subjects goes on and on!

Here’s a website that is linked to all the accredited architecture schools in the United States. Just do a select Bachelor or Master degree and the region of the US. Good luck

Holy crap I am not even sure where to start….

OK almost all east coast architecture schools are design oriented, as are most any architecture schools.

if you want a list of the best according to Design Itelligence:

Undergrad

1. Cornell

2. Syracuse

3. Carnegie Mellon

4. Virginia Tech

5. RISD

Grad

1. Harvard / cincinnati

2. University Virginia

3. Columbia

4. Syracuse

5. U Penn

The truth is rankings dont matter there are plenty of great schools that don t even show up on those rankings:

Yale

MIT

Princeton

Pratt

NYIT

etc……….

You want a school with strong general academics, strong English, and strong art. Surprisingly, there are a lot of those. Someone already mentioned Vassar, Skidmore, and Bard, and I second those nominations. I’ll also suggest you look at Smith College, Harvard, Brown (due to its relationship with the Rhode Island School of Design), Tufts (due to its relationship with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts), Syracuse, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. All have strong overall academics and really good art schools. But all are general universities, not “art schools”, so you get a good, rounded education while you study art and/or English. Someone else mentioned the New School/Parsons. You can look at that school, but the reputation of Parsons tends to be stronger than that of the New School outside of NYC. Someone else mentioned the University of Hartford. That school is fine, academically and artistically, but it’s not as strong as the others I’ve mentioned.

Wentworth in Boston is good architecture school. Not too hard to get into. my neighbor goes there and he loves it.