Architecture Registration Exams Story: Emily Pierson-Brown

Welcome to the Architectural Registration Exam (ARE) experience stories series! This series is to share experiences, timelines and advice of professionals that have completed their AREs. We know it can be a daunting task to get started and overwhelming on the number of resources out there. We hope you find this information helpful in organizing how you proceed through your exams. Good Luck!

This is the experience, timeline, and advice from:

Emily Pierson-Brown, AIA, AICP

Emily is a Senior Associate and People Culture Manager at Perkins Eastman. She is on the board of AIA Pittsburgh, co-founder of the Women+ in Design Pittsburgh leadership group and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh Architectural Studies Program.

Emily also shared a story about the power of connections. It is an excellent piece showing that you never know where your career will take you, how different individuals can leave a strong impact on your life, and how relationships can lead to new connections. Check out her Connectivity Chart!

“You cannot know everything. You will never know everything.”

I took a fairly non-traditional path to where I am in my career now, including licensure. After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1998 with an undergraduate degree in Architectural Studies, I began work for an architecture firm in New Jersey near where I’d grown up. I had planned to go back to grad school after a year, I was accepted and ready to go. And then… I didn’t. I had to spend some time learning who I was and figuring out what I really wanted to do with my career before I made any major life decisions like investing years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars in grad school.

After ten years of working in bookstores and then returning to the design field as a project designer for several design/build firms in the Washington, DC area, I felt that I knew what the next steps in my career path would entail. I enrolled in a joint Master’s program at Catholic University and graduated three years later with a Master of Architecture and a Master of City and Regional Planning. The joint degree helped me find the balance of people and place I had always been looking for.

It was not until then, 20 years after I’d graduated from UVA, that I considered getting my architectural license. But once that was part of my next steps, I pursued it with strong commitment. Having the clarity and confidence that this was my chosen path and I knew what I wanted to do next was a critical part of the process.

September 11, 2018	In person	PcM	Pass
February 12, 2019	In person	PjM	Pass
March 11, 2019	In person	P&A	Pass
April 15, 2019	In Person	PPD	Fail
June 3, 2019	In Person	CE	Pass
October 14, 2019	In Person	PPD	Pass
December 3, 2019	In Person	PDD	Pass

Why did you decide that you wanted to be a licensed Architect?

For better or worse, our industry (and many professional fields) relies on the demonstration of expertise in order to project confidence and believability to our clients and colleagues.

From childhood I have wanted to be an “Architect,” but found myself in my early career working for companies that didn’t require me to have a license. However, after enough years of trying to prove myself because I tend not to look my age – casually dropping references to my multiple decades in the industry and the number of projects I’d worked on – I realized the credential matters to a lot of people. And it mattered to me. I wanted to visibly illustrate that I have expertise in this field that is backed up by education, years of experience, and a foundation of knowledge. I wanted to instill in myself the confidence that I know what I’m doing, and I know what I’m talking about.

How did you fit study time into your schedule? Was there anything in particular that worked well for you?

Like everything in life, taking on a new endeavor is going to require a compromise somewhere. I used to go to the gym at 6am fairly regularly. There are only so many hours in the day. Since I was used to getting up at 5am, for the year I was taking my exams, I got up early and studied from 5-7am before work. I knew that if I waited until the end of the day, I would be too braindead to focus and retain the information.

Do you have any other advice for someone studying for their exams?

So much of exam taking is the mental game. Don’t let them psych you out. The absolute worst thing that happens is you fail, and you have to retake the exam. It’s not a big deal. I failed PPD the first time around. It’s a monster! Even now, I can’t quite wrap my head around the sprawling breadth of information we as architects are required to know.

You cannot know everything. You will never know everything.

But jumping in and taking the exams will introduce you to what is on the exams in a very real way that will only help you improve your studies and your focus if you do have to retake them. Just dive in.

We hope that this information helps you through our ARE journey, setting goals, and giving you some insight on how to get started.

Thank you again to Emily Pierson-Brown for sharing your story!

Edited by

Katelyn Rossier, AIA, LSSBB