Discover everything you need to know about applying for our Architecture course
Writing your personal statement
Our top tips for writing your Architecture personal statement:
Explain why you want to be an architect
Tell us about an architect you admire and why you like their work
Detail any relevant work experience you might have had and what you enjoyed about it
Use simple and clear language
What happens next
Once we receive your application, we will email you to ask you to send us a digital portfolio. Our inspection of your work is a very important part of the selection process.
Once we receive your portfolio, it is forwarded to the selector for Architecture to review. If your portfolio is successful, an offer will be sent to UCAS which will also include appropriate Academic and English Language requirements. If your portfolio is unsatisfactory, an unsuccessful decision will be sent to UCAS.
If you have applied for entry to Stage 2 of the course, but your portfolio does not quite meet our requirements, an offer may be made for Stage 1 only. This will be made clear in the body of any offer sent to UCAS.
Portfolio
The portfolio should be personal, varied and interesting.
We are looking for work that demonstrates:
A range of media and styles
Architectural awareness; such as use of architectural imagery and an understanding of form
Your very best projects, which doesn’t rely too heavily on only school work
Sculpture of any other artefact that demonstrates creativity
Your portfolio should be sent as one single PDF file, containing no more than 6-8 pieces of artwork in total (usually 1 piece of artwork per page/slide) and of no greater size than 8mb.
Ideally each piece of artwork should be represented by one image. The exceptions to this are:
3d (sculpture/model) – up to 3 images on one slide can be used to show the work from different angles.
Showing development of a work from idea to finished piece – again, up to 3 images on one slide can be used to show the progress of the work.
Take care when you put together your portfolio, it is better to send us a smaller portfolio of your very best work
Do not forget the value of annotation/explanatory notes within your portfolio. There is a large difference between being presented with a series of images, and being presented with a well laid out presentation of images, with notes explaining why these particular images have been included.
In a sense, the overall design of your portfolio is as much a reflection of your artistic and design abilities as the actual artwork contained within the portfolio.
You may find that you have difficulty reducing the file size of your portfolio to 8mb.
If you re-size the photographs of your artwork before inserting them into your portfolio, this should help to reduce the overall file size. This can be done using most photo processing software by reducing the pixel size of the individual images.
Converting your portfolio to pdf once complete will also help to reduce overall file size.
It is important that you keep the overall file size lower than 8mb, or you will have problems emailing the portfolio to us (many email providers will not allow you to send large attachments) and portfolios with large file sizes cause issues in our systems.
