Abstract:

Selecting future students is a process of utmost importance for every institution of higher education. Universities are looking for candidates with certain amount of knowledge, precise preoccupations or motivations or even specific abilities. In the field of architecture, which is considered a vocational profession, schools may search for students who can prove solid interest in the field accompanied by manual skills like drawing, sketching, or carving. Even if the admissions to the architecture study programs vary a lot depending on the school prestige, the tradition and local culture, the number of candidates or the national and local regulations, the purpose of the process is the same, to ensure that the future students have the potential motivation and abilities to successfully complete their education. Following a long tradition in the Romanian schools of architecture, the faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning in Cluj has until recently selected its students through a drawing test, meant to highlight the candidates` skills and interest in the subject. With the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the admission procedure had to change to meet the sanitary requirements. This led to numerous discussions on reshaping the process, to respond to the new social and educational realities. The article presents an analysis of the three types of admissions experienced in the last four years. The experiences of these years are still to be further processed, but the study of the different processes together with the analysis of the individual student results of the first year of studies can be a useful resource for developing an optimal admission strategy.

Keywords:

Architecture, studies, admission, drawing, test, portfolio, strategy, pandemic.