IDP is Done!

I completed my IDP! Maybe that doesn’t sound all the exciting to you, but trust me, it is! IDP – the Intern Development Program – is the second of three major steps I have to complete to become a registered architect.

They don’t make it a cake-walk for us architect wannabes to get there… first we have to get a professional degree from an accredited school (check - five years remember?), and there aren’t that many of those out there. For instance, Ball State and Notre Dame are the only two accredited architectural programs in the state of Indiana. Purdue has an architectural degree, but getting that won’t get you any closer to being a licensed architect.

Step two is to complete the Intern Development Program – which basically meant logging hours (5600 hours to be exact) in different required categories of experience for the past few years. And today I am DONE! Hooray! Step two complete!

Now for the hardest part… the Architectural Registration Exams (ARE), that’s nine super-fun exams. They’ll have to process my IDP paperwork and things first… and I think maybe I’ll study a bit, take a few months to have a baby, but the idea is that early next year I’ll start checking all those exams off as well.

More than you ever wanted to know about becoming a registered architect: http://www.ncarb.org/