Architecture Registration Exams Story: Alek Kirchmann

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:

Alek Kirchmann AIA, LEED BD+C

Alek is a licensed Architect in Pittsburgh, PA. He graduated in 2016 from Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture. He is a Project Architect at IKM Inc and has seven years of experience in hospital, outpatient clinics, and other healthcare sector projects, but most recently in the fast-changing world of office and workplace design.

The transition from architecture student to “real person” can be very jarring, even you were able to get some internship experience during summers. Along with the lifestyle change, there are lots of new pressures: including to get licensed. No matter where you work, being a licensed Architect (yes, with a capital A) increases your value to clients and society. There are many other paths available in the profession, many of which don’t involve being licensed, and all of which have real value as well. But if the decision to become licensed makes sense, then it’s important to not be intimidated by the process of taking exams.

July 20, 2017	In person	P&A	Pass
October 12, 2017	In person	PPD	Pass
December 14, 2017	In person	PDD	Pass
February 15, 2018	In person	PjM	Pass
May 17, 2018	In person	PcM	Pass
June 07, 2018	In person	C&E	Pass

I often get asked “why do I need to get licensed?” Why did you decide that you wanted to be a licensed Architect?

I believe that if Architects want to be treated like professionals, then we need to get professionally licensed.

Often people don’t know where to start, do you have any advice for those looking to start their exams, or how did you start?

Beginning the exam process can be stressful so start by playing to your strengths! I spent a lot of time getting a sense for the 6 tests and reading message boards to fill in the gaps of what to expect on each. Coming out of school, I had very little knowledge of contracts or firm management but had a very solid baseline for all things programming and documentation, so I began with P&A and worked through the “non-contract” trio of exams first. If you are lacking in professional experience somewhere (on-site construction administration is an easy example), you can use the time to get that exposure before jumping into an exam. Some schools have very good class coverage of construction contracts and management – in that case it makes sense to start there.

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

First off, it was NOT easy to do. There simply are not enough hours in the day to fit everything in even without studying. So, the fact of the matter is you accept that the process of taking exams is temporary, and you make sacrifices. I had to sacrifice social time, personal time, weekend time, even daily project work time – this is especially tricky but making it clear to your project teams of what hours you will and won’t work is a good thing to learn regardless. My advice is once you find a pattern that is working, don’t take big breaks between exams. The faster you get through them, the faster you get your life back.

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 Alek Kirchmann for sharing your story!

Edited by

Katelyn Rossier, AIA, LSSBB