How important are great math skills to an architect?
When I say I wasn’t strong in math, I mean that I sometimes earned Cs – between grades four and seven. In algebra, I got As and Bs, and I loved geometry. I also took trigonometry. My parents wanted me to skip algebra. But if you’re like me and just make stupid adding mistakes, so what? We have computers for that now. And once you’re working for a real company, you mostly rely on structural engineers unless you’re working on small residential projects. Q. How much emphasis do colleges place on math? The importance of taking the higher maths in high school should not be downplayed. Those classes will be required in order to be accepted into a college architectural program. It is just not absolutely necessary that you excel in math. If architecture is what you truly love, math should not hold you back. This may not be true everywhere, but at the University of Cincinnati the emphasis was more on “applied” math know-how as in, say, understanding how the forces work on building structures su
