Accreditation

Prospective Students

NAAB-Accredited Programs

There are 175 NAAB-accredited programs and 8 candidate programs at 147 institutions from which to choose. NAAB accredits three professional degrees in architecture, each of which meets the education requirement for becoming a licensed architect:

Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.)

A five-year, professional undergraduate degree. This is different than a four-year pre-professional degree in architecture, such as a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. Some programs may modify the length of study to integrate a co-op (cooperative

Master of Architecture (M.Arch.)

The M.Arch. degree offers several paths to completion:

If you want to study, or already have, a four-year "pre-professional" degree in architecture (e.g., Bachelor of Science in Architecture), most M.Arch. programs will take two years to complete.
If you want to study, or already have, a degree in any subject outside of architecture, most M.Arch. programs will take three years to complete.
Certain programs offer a five-year, "single-institution" M.Arch. degree. These programs may or may not award a four-year undergraduate degree.

Doctor of Architecture (D.Arch.)

Currently the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa offers the only accredited D.Arch.

Licensure Requirements

Architects, like doctors and lawyers, must be licensed, or registered, to practice. Every U.S. jurisdiction (50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) requires licensure. And every jurisdiction has three core requirements:

Education—Earn an architecture degree from a NAAB-accredited program. A NAAB-accredited professional degree is accepted by all 55 jurisdictions and required by 38.
Experience. Licensure requires you to document real-world experience through the Architectural Experience Program® (AXP®).
Examination. Your knowledge and skills as a budding architect are assessed by the six-division Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®).

Resources for Prospective Students

Student Graduation

You want to be an architect. That's great!

Architects design the built environment and are responsible for the health, safety, and welfare of the public. But architects also make things, work to improve public health, prepare for natural disasters, and advocate for climate change.