What You’ll Gain
Firm Foundations is a year-long experience designed to help students make informed and confident decisions about the field of architecture, college, and their future career.
Career Clarity
Discover - early - whether architecture is right for you.
Students gather real indicators of fit for the field of architecture by engaging directly with the kinds of decisions, responsibilities, and challenges architects actually face. This dramatically reduces the risk of discovering - too late - that the path is not right.
A clear picture of the field of architecture.
Students gain a realistic understanding of how architecture unfolds from high school to college to professional practice, including timelines, expectations, opportunities, and tradeoffs.
Career choices based on first-hand experiences.
Rather than relying solely on university prestige, rankings, or marketing, students and parents are equipped to make thoughtful decisions about college and career direction based on their own independent evaluation.
Confidence in your direction - whether inside or outside architecture.
Even students who decide not to pursue architecture leave with clarity, self-knowledge, and transferable skills that benefit any future path.
Realistic, Hands-On Experience
Active engagement. Decisions that matter.
Students learn by doing, not watching. They solve open-ended problems modeled after real architectural situations rather than memorizing facts for tests.
Exposure to the full scope of architectural practice.
Students learn not only about design, but also teamwork, ethics, leadership, business realities, communication, money and professional judgment.
Emotional investment in the results.
Students often become deeply invested in the outcomes of our simulations. The stakes feel real, and students care. They discover, sometimes for the first time, something worth fighting for.
Professional systems and collaboration tools.
Students learn how architects actually work today, including digital collaboration platforms, information workflows, and professional communication norms.
Leadership development grounded in responsibility.
Students develop leadership skills that prepare them to move more quickly into meaningful roles in college studios, group projects, and eventually professional practice.
Leadership & Personal Growth
Character-building through calibrated challenges.
The program emphasizes growth through structured risk-taking, productive failure, reflection, and recovery. In this process, students build confidence and resilience gradually over time.
College Readiness
A meaningful, year-long extracurricular experience.
Firm Foundations offers a sustained focus on the field of architecture that provides more than an engaging activity outside the school day. It provides a forward-looking connection to a desired future, which can inspire students’ optimism.
Runs during the academic year. Not the summer.
Students can participate in Firm Foundations and attend architecture summer camps, or other enrichment opportunities, which mostly happen in the summer.
Preparation for the realities of architecture school.
Students learn how college architecture programs actually function: course sequences, studio culture, expectations, time demands, and opportunities—before they arrive on campus.
Advanced readiness for internships.
Students enter college with a professional maturity that allows them to pursue internships earlier and perform more effectively once hired.
Personalized Mentorship
Expert review of college application materials.
Students receive feedback on their application materials from a tenured professor of architecture with over 25 years of experience reviewing applications, serving on admissions committees, and chairing admissions committees.
Content for shaping a compelling application narrative.
Especially in the simulations, students gain meaningful experiences and insights that naturally strengthen personal statements and interviews. They gain architecture-related experiences to talk about.
A strong letter of recommendation.
Students who eagerly engage the coursework can earn a substantive letter of recommendation grounded in sustained observation of their thinking, leadership, and growth.
A respected program certificate.
Graduates earn a certificate from the Human-Centered Architecture Institute, signaling seriousness, preparation, and maturity to admissions committees.
Personalized Aptitude Assessment & Career Planning
A structured aptitude exploration process.
Students engage in assessments and reflective exercises designed to uncover natural strengths, inclinations, and compatible roles within architecture and adjacent fields.
A personalized view of possible futures.
Rather than prescribing a single “correct” path, the program helps students understand how they might shape a career that fits who they are
A sense of ownership over your future.
Students leave with a deeper understanding of their direction—and the confidence to advocate for it in the sometimes-impersonal world of higher education.
Community & Belonging
A national peer cohort.
Students meet and collaborate with other motivated students from across the country who share an interest in architecture.
A supportive, high-expectation learning environment.
The program balances encouragement with rigor, helping students stretch without fear of failure.
Belonging through shared seriousness.
Students discover they are not alone in wanting depth, meaning, and responsibility.
Transparency & Accessibility
Clear evidence of learning outcomes.
Students and parents receive structured, incremental feedback that demonstrates engagement, moments of struggle, and trends toward growth.
Aggregate benchmarking (privacy-protected).
Families can see how students are progressing relative to program standards and peer cohorts, without compromising individual privacy.
Up-front expectations for student conduct.
Students operate in a structured, safe online environment with teacher-enforced standards of conduct.
Financial risk reduction.
By testing architecture before college tuition begins, families reduce the risk of a costly late-stage change to a different field of study.
Online participation from anywhere in the country.
Geography is not a barrier.
A serious program designed to fit alongside school.
Firm Foundations is extracurricular—but purposeful, structured, and professionally run.