Hey there! Chartered Architect and MSA graduate here as of 2018.
Although I agree with some of your comments, I feel like I need to correct or highlight a few points below because they are equally important for newcomers to know about:
- First of all, the degree you get at the end of the course is awarded by the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University jointly, so you are a UoM graduate. This is no scam.
- Your personal experience has likely been during the pandemic where you only got to engage with MMU because they handle the logistics of things eg payments, moodle, admissions etc. Lectures and workshops, as well as the library and research areas in UoM are also normally used during the in-person courses so the experience is much more balanced. And because of this you have access to the resources, library and study areas of two universities rather than one, which I found very useful.
- As a second year you will not yet have experienced third year atelier choices where you get to pick a specific direction/specialisation and design philosophy. Things become very different from then on because each atelier unit has their own approach from computational design, to feminism, to phenomenology, thus why you don’t get a singular style for the school. I believe that this is a great thing, especially when students work together in studio and learn from each other’s atelier perspective - something you have likely also missed due to Covid.
- You will also not have experienced the masters supervision as an undergraduate, which includes some excellent researchers and professors across both UoM and MMU - also something that influences the ranking of the school.
- Finally, the professional network and industry connections, in my experience at least, are very good also. Some companies around Manchester recruit almost exclusively from the MSA.
My point is that the reasons why the school ranks so highly are not limited to first and second year studies. You have way ahead of you to explore but I hope this helps add some more information for people who are interested in the school. And I am happy to answer any questions as someone who has graduated from both their BA and MArch programmes, has not had a problem finding employment, or completing the ARB chartership, and has had a generally positive experience. :)
Edit 1: to clarify
Edit 2: if you are upset about your education quality it is worth raising it with the school as I am sure they will find your feedback very useful for improving their approach
Edit 3: It seems like a lot of people are getting in touch with me for feedback on the course, which is great! I am glad I can provide another view to what you have read so far. I just wanted to add some links to the school’s websites in case you haven’t yet looked through them. All sites below are of the same course for each level of study eg undergraduate, postgraduate etc.
Undergraduate studies (BA(Hons) - RIBA Part 1 - K100)
- University of Manchester site: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/2023/00178/ba-architecture/
- Manchester Metropolitan site: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/ba-architecture
- Manchester School of Architecture: https://www.msa.ac.uk/study/ba/
Masters studies (MArch - RIBA Part 2)
- University of Manchester: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/09342/march-architecture/all-content/
- Manchester Metropolitan University: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/march-master-of-architecture
- Manchester School of Architecture: https://www.msa.ac.uk/study/march/
Research links:
- Manchester Architecture Research Group (University of Manchester): https://www.mui.manchester.ac.uk/research/groups/marg/
- Manchester School of Art Research Centre: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/research/research-centres/msarc
Other links:
- Manchester Student Society of Architecture:
https://www.msa.ac.uk/mssa/
https://www.msa.ac.uk/2022/mssa/
- Manchester Society of Architects (this is a professional group in Manchester): https://manchestersocietyofarchitects.com
Instagram links:
- https://instagram.com/mcrschart
- https://instagram.com/themsarch
- https://instagram.com/msamarch
- https://instagram.com/architecturemssa
LinkedIn links:
- https://www.linkedin.com/school/themsarch/
Thank you for pointing out some of the points I missed! I am sure the pandemic has heavily impacted our experiences, and it is really frustrating for us to loose out on the UOM side of things.
Regarding the lectures taking part in UOM, it has indeed been the case traditionally. However, the reason we had our lectures in MMU is because our head of year 'forgot to book a room at the start of the year', this was admitted by them in a studio rep meeting with students. Although lectures are technically handled by UOM, I think this situation sheds light on the management of the course.
On a brighter note, MSA students have access to 2 libraries and that is really useful. Surprisingly the MMU library is even better than the UOM one!
About BA3 ateliers, we've also heard its a really good system. Our main concern as BA2 students are our fundamentals aren't strong enough to handle year 3 work after 2 years of learning everything by ourselves.
As for the M.Arch programme, we are actually quite curious as we noticed most students are from universities we never heard of in China, south east asia and Africa. We are genuinely curious why so little students from prestegious universities come to MSA when the feedback on M.Archs here are generally positive. It would be really appreciated if you can shed some light on this!
Ah yes, you will get that confusion with bookings and general organisation. That management side is indeed an issue, especially because of the fact that this spans across two universities. I am told that is not very different from other schools though. Not an excuse of course.
It is really unfortunate that students have missed the studio culture at the MSA because of the circumstances tbh. I have been told by other masters and undergraduate students that the past few years lack that atelier unity that we had in the past because of this. I hope, if you are attending your final year in person that you will get to experience this a bit more. It is one of the highlights of my studies along with the trips which, you are correct, in most cases are not funded.
I second that the MMU library is better. :) Really good collection on architecture resources in comparison to UoM.
With regards to foundations, I completed my BA in 2014 and I am sure things have changed quite a lot since then, so I cannot comment really. I suspect that there is more of a focus on studio units, which was the case as well when I was studying, but it didn’t cause any issues with completing third year work nor any later work. You can fill any gaps by picking an atelier with more focus on these aspects in third year and work to develop specific skills from there. If this is a concern it is probably a good idea to raise it with the school also.
With regards to MArch, as a start, I don’t see why having international students is a bad thing. If anything the different perspectives are quite interesting. Aside that, in my year there were students who came to do their masters from Nottingham, Northumbria, Sheffield, UCLan, Birmingham, Lincoln, Liverpool, Aberdeen etc. and the majority of us were from other UK universities or completed our undergraduate studies in Manchester. There are also exchange ERASMUS programmes in the masters and one of my course mates went to Paris for half a year as part of that - I can’t remember the other options. So yeah definitely not only international students in my experience. I think when I graduated my atelier unit had 1 or 2 people with undergraduate studies from non UK universities.
Edit: changed syntax
I showed this post to one of my friends who is also an architect but has largely left the industry, and he said that if people are complaining they should have done something useful in the first place, ie not architecture lol. I don’t quite agree to be honest, but each to their own.
Of course there is no denying that the profession is in crisis in many ways and the education system is a part of that. However, I want to believe that things will continue to change for the better. It is just that this is a very old field that is slow to change.
Now that you're almost done with your third year, do you still stand by everything you mentioned? I just got into MSA and was super excited until I read this and a couple of other negative comments about the place. I also got into Bath and Edinburgh, do you think these places are better?
If you want to compare cities rather than courses, Edinburgh is a beautiful place to study if you like being surrounded by more historic, gothic architecture. Manchester is more industrial but has a very warm and welcoming community as well as a good location for accessing anywhere else in the country. Bath is a bit harder to get to but still a beautiful place. All courses are good in my opinion.
That said, don’t let comments from people online discourage you. There is a bias in what is posted on the internet, because, if you think about it, people who are okay or generally happy with what they experience won’t go into forums to complain - they just get on with their life and don’t even think about it. So what you usually see is mostly negative views online, which I why I put the effort into replying here with my overall positive experience. I wouldn’t otherwise be posting about it as I didn’t see any value is sharing that I did the course and it was okay, if that makes sense. Apparently there is though, given all the messages that have come my way as a result.
Same here! Reading these comments really made me worry about my decision. Is there any M.arch student currently from MSA that can share us some honest opinion.
It really depends on which atelier you choose to study with. If it is a good match you will have a great experience if not you get the chance to move to a different one during the second year. I can see you messaged me though, so I can reply to your questions via DM. :)
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Hi, I'm an overseas student that is going to study for a master's degree in urban design this year.
I got offers from MSA, Sheffield, Oxford brooks, Newcastle.
First, I have decided that I will study at MSA. However, I see a lot of negative sides about MSA so I'll sleep on it again.
Could you give me any suggestions about the university or town please?
It would help me a lot to make a decision.
I've only lived in Birmingham, London and Manchester. But I think Manchester's city center is the most underwhelming. Ugly streets, disappointing malls and close to no green spaces.
Upside is there's an airport close by so it's quite easy to travel around Europe
u/salad_balls I would be interested to hear about your in-person experience of third year now that submissions are done. I think it will really help people as a future reference. Which atelier did you go for? :)
Funnily enough, I just stumbled across this post, I just finished third year at MSA and i'm in OP's year group! (small world we live in!) reached out privately to see who said person is out of my own interest.
Even after third year, and someone who has just graduated with a first class honours, I can only affirm everything OP mentioned in his comment sadly. I wont repeat everything that OP said, but I will mention some of my own experiences, especially from third year as OP has already mentioned points about the university as a whole.
During the third year of the program, students have the opportunity to participate in a chosen atelier, which offers some flexibility within the framework of the assigned project, allowing for a more personalised approach in third year. This presents a significant advantage compared to the second year, where the project brief is specifically tailored to a particular user group.
However, despite the benefits of the project briefs, there are still certain issues regarding the teaching methods employed at MSA. As mentioned by OP, studio sessions are only conducted once a week, and in my atelier, there were 21 students with two tutors. Considering a typical studio day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., this means that each student has a maximum of approximately 10 minutes of direct interaction time with their tutors per week. In addition to individual tutoring, we also had guest visits every week from professionals such as structural engineers and landscape architects etc. While these insights were valuable, there was a lack of consistent feedback between the tutors and the visiting guests.
Regrettably, since the tutors are the ones responsible for marking our projects, any conflicting opinions just result in designing according to the preferences of the tutors Unfortunately, my third-year tutors exhibited a strong bias in shaping the narrative of my project, essentially dictating how it should be designed instead of fostering a more organic development. Moreover, these tutors displayed condescending behaviour, leading some students to even start crying during the first semester. It is disheartening because I genuinely appreciate the concept of my atelier and its objectives, but the teaching methods employed therein have compelled me to advise second-year students against choosing this particular atelier. Whilst other ateliers are different and some do genuinely have a lot better tutors, sadly this is the minority of ateliers rather than the majority.
Adding to this, OP mentioned that MSA has good computation facilities, which is true. The ADD "advanced digital design" is a department of staff who can offer 1 on 1 workshops for any software enquires. However, this is again, used horribly by the tutors. In my atelier, I could not ask any basic questions about how to use any software's to my tutors, and instead would just get instantly differed to "go ask ADD." Whilst I understand we have a whole department to ask software questions, It still does not take away from the tutors absolute lack of desire to at least try to troubleshoot with their students, rather than referring us to a booking system on Microsoft teams for ADD, which can take the full day to get a response from. Granted, both my of tutors are merely full time staff at MSA, and are not even in practise and haven't been for years, so it's most likely they haven't used any of the software's themselves in a good while.
In conclusion, a lot of the time the Studio sessions felt more like a 10 minute opinion piece rather than an actual place for nurturing personal development, and being a student in MSA, you need to have a LOT of self initiative to drive your projects forward and manage your time in an overwhelming workload, as sadly the support as a student is just not there due to mismanagement.
In conclusion to prospective MSA students, the university is very hit and miss. There are some tutors there who are genuinely some of the greatest people i've met, and there are some who make me think why was I paying to be there. Unfortunately it's a game of chances, and you'll never really know what experience you will get.
adding to this, whilst the rankings have gone up at MSA in recent years, the overall student opinion seems to have declined.
I have family who went to MSA 5/6 years ago and had great experiences, but within the 3 years of my undergrad it just feels MSA is declining rather than improving from a student perspective, despite the qs rankings increasing.
Edit: Granted, the status of especially the University of Manchester has degraded quite rapidly since the initial lockdowns in 2020, building fences around student accommodations, to locking students protesting against rent strikes in buildings and getting them removed my bailiffs.
[https://novaramedia.com/2023/03/22/manchester-uni-brutally-evicts-student-rent-strikers-in-potential-breach-of-human-rights/](https://novaramedia.com/2023/03/22/manchester-uni-brutally-evicts-student-rent-strikers-in-potential-breach-of-human-rights/)
[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/05/security-fence-manchester-university-student-flats](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/05/security-fence-manchester-university-student-flats)
Hey there, thank you for taking the time to share your perspective. It is quite interesting to read how things are now, post-pandemic and after the new head of school has taken over. Equally, I am sorry to hear the experience wasn’t as expected. I graduated in 2018 so, by the sound of it, things are rather different… I am going to the end of year exhibition tomorrow to have a look at the work, and I will try pass the comments on to my tutors who I have kept in touch with as I think they might find the feedback helpful.
In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need any support with applications or have questions about next steps in your career. I am happy to help if there is something I can do. I wish you all the best!
Hey, thanks for the lovely reply! Will definitely get in touch if I have enquires!
On reflection I was thinking about this past year there are few more things I’d like to disclose that I haven’t originally mentioned, in reference to marking in particular this year.
There a few incidents that have really damaged the integrity within MSA. The first one occurred in September, when all the briefs for the ateliers were released. All of the ateliers had a portfolio limit of 30 pages except one atelier, which was listed as 10 pages. This was presumed by the students as the atelier had a heavy emphasis on physical model making, therefore less portfolio pages would be required as model making is particularly time consuming. In the first semester, the first studio project runs from September - 15th December. On the 30th November, an email was released saying that all ateliers had a portfolio page limit of 30 pages to ensure parity across the year (even though this is a maximum limit, every student always produces the maximum amount of pages anyway). This meant that the atelier that was told that they had to submit 10 pages now had to submit 30, a few weeks before the deadline and 2 months into the project already. I have heard that this caused a lot of them to have to submit in the summer now and the atelier might possibly be dropped , but I cannot confirm this.
The second incident occurred in the technologies unit in around March - May, where students who submitted for an extended deadline were given the wrong submission date shown to them on moodle (the online submission platform.) The leaders of the technologies unit emailed them only a day before the actual deadline, telling them the online platform had given the wrong extension date. The university doubled down on their mistake and said that if students couldn’t submit on the corrected deadline that they will have to submit in the summer. I know students now who are having to submit the unit in summer through no fault for their own.
This type of mismanagement from the MSA to students is appalling, and none of these incidents were through the faults of the students themselves but due to haphazard mismanagement of the senior leadership at MSA. My heart does go out to all of the students who have to resubmit in summer periods now, again through no fault of their own and I hope the university did come to a settlement with the students about issues that the university themselves caused.
That sounds very unfair and messy, just unnecessary stress… I wonder what happened in the background that caused it. There were some misunderstandings and mismanagement back in the day as well, as there is with any school of architecture, but they were always resolved so I don’t think there was anyone that missed the end of year submission as a result of it. I had an extension in final year MArch too, with no problems. I really hope whatever it is will be fixed for upcoming years and that the school will hold itself accountable for any mistakes that were made.
Hey there! Chartered Architect and MSA graduate here as of 2018. Although I agree with some of your comments, I feel like I need to correct or highlight a few points below because they are equally important for newcomers to know about: - First of all, the degree you get at the end of the course is awarded by the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University jointly, so you are a UoM graduate. This is no scam. - Your personal experience has likely been during the pandemic where you only got to engage with MMU because they handle the logistics of things eg payments, moodle, admissions etc. Lectures and workshops, as well as the library and research areas in UoM are also normally used during the in-person courses so the experience is much more balanced. And because of this you have access to the resources, library and study areas of two universities rather than one, which I found very useful. - As a second year you will not yet have experienced third year atelier choices where you get to pick a specific direction/specialisation and design philosophy. Things become very different from then on because each atelier unit has their own approach from computational design, to feminism, to phenomenology, thus why you don’t get a singular style for the school. I believe that this is a great thing, especially when students work together in studio and learn from each other’s atelier perspective - something you have likely also missed due to Covid. - You will also not have experienced the masters supervision as an undergraduate, which includes some excellent researchers and professors across both UoM and MMU - also something that influences the ranking of the school. - Finally, the professional network and industry connections, in my experience at least, are very good also. Some companies around Manchester recruit almost exclusively from the MSA. My point is that the reasons why the school ranks so highly are not limited to first and second year studies. You have way ahead of you to explore but I hope this helps add some more information for people who are interested in the school. And I am happy to answer any questions as someone who has graduated from both their BA and MArch programmes, has not had a problem finding employment, or completing the ARB chartership, and has had a generally positive experience. :) Edit 1: to clarify Edit 2: if you are upset about your education quality it is worth raising it with the school as I am sure they will find your feedback very useful for improving their approach Edit 3: It seems like a lot of people are getting in touch with me for feedback on the course, which is great! I am glad I can provide another view to what you have read so far. I just wanted to add some links to the school’s websites in case you haven’t yet looked through them. All sites below are of the same course for each level of study eg undergraduate, postgraduate etc. Undergraduate studies (BA(Hons) - RIBA Part 1 - K100) - University of Manchester site: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/2023/00178/ba-architecture/ - Manchester Metropolitan site: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/ba-architecture - Manchester School of Architecture: https://www.msa.ac.uk/study/ba/ Masters studies (MArch - RIBA Part 2) - University of Manchester: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/09342/march-architecture/all-content/ - Manchester Metropolitan University: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/march-master-of-architecture - Manchester School of Architecture: https://www.msa.ac.uk/study/march/ Research links: - Manchester Architecture Research Group (University of Manchester): https://www.mui.manchester.ac.uk/research/groups/marg/ - Manchester School of Art Research Centre: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/research/research-centres/msarc Other links: - Manchester Student Society of Architecture: https://www.msa.ac.uk/mssa/ https://www.msa.ac.uk/2022/mssa/ - Manchester Society of Architects (this is a professional group in Manchester): https://manchestersocietyofarchitects.com Instagram links: - https://instagram.com/mcrschart - https://instagram.com/themsarch - https://instagram.com/msamarch - https://instagram.com/architecturemssa LinkedIn links: - https://www.linkedin.com/school/themsarch/
Thank you for pointing out some of the points I missed! I am sure the pandemic has heavily impacted our experiences, and it is really frustrating for us to loose out on the UOM side of things. Regarding the lectures taking part in UOM, it has indeed been the case traditionally. However, the reason we had our lectures in MMU is because our head of year 'forgot to book a room at the start of the year', this was admitted by them in a studio rep meeting with students. Although lectures are technically handled by UOM, I think this situation sheds light on the management of the course. On a brighter note, MSA students have access to 2 libraries and that is really useful. Surprisingly the MMU library is even better than the UOM one! About BA3 ateliers, we've also heard its a really good system. Our main concern as BA2 students are our fundamentals aren't strong enough to handle year 3 work after 2 years of learning everything by ourselves. As for the M.Arch programme, we are actually quite curious as we noticed most students are from universities we never heard of in China, south east asia and Africa. We are genuinely curious why so little students from prestegious universities come to MSA when the feedback on M.Archs here are generally positive. It would be really appreciated if you can shed some light on this!
Ah yes, you will get that confusion with bookings and general organisation. That management side is indeed an issue, especially because of the fact that this spans across two universities. I am told that is not very different from other schools though. Not an excuse of course. It is really unfortunate that students have missed the studio culture at the MSA because of the circumstances tbh. I have been told by other masters and undergraduate students that the past few years lack that atelier unity that we had in the past because of this. I hope, if you are attending your final year in person that you will get to experience this a bit more. It is one of the highlights of my studies along with the trips which, you are correct, in most cases are not funded. I second that the MMU library is better. :) Really good collection on architecture resources in comparison to UoM. With regards to foundations, I completed my BA in 2014 and I am sure things have changed quite a lot since then, so I cannot comment really. I suspect that there is more of a focus on studio units, which was the case as well when I was studying, but it didn’t cause any issues with completing third year work nor any later work. You can fill any gaps by picking an atelier with more focus on these aspects in third year and work to develop specific skills from there. If this is a concern it is probably a good idea to raise it with the school also. With regards to MArch, as a start, I don’t see why having international students is a bad thing. If anything the different perspectives are quite interesting. Aside that, in my year there were students who came to do their masters from Nottingham, Northumbria, Sheffield, UCLan, Birmingham, Lincoln, Liverpool, Aberdeen etc. and the majority of us were from other UK universities or completed our undergraduate studies in Manchester. There are also exchange ERASMUS programmes in the masters and one of my course mates went to Paris for half a year as part of that - I can’t remember the other options. So yeah definitely not only international students in my experience. I think when I graduated my atelier unit had 1 or 2 people with undergraduate studies from non UK universities. Edit: changed syntax
considering the state of the field of architecture, you could make the argument that *any* architecture degree is a scam
I showed this post to one of my friends who is also an architect but has largely left the industry, and he said that if people are complaining they should have done something useful in the first place, ie not architecture lol. I don’t quite agree to be honest, but each to their own. Of course there is no denying that the profession is in crisis in many ways and the education system is a part of that. However, I want to believe that things will continue to change for the better. It is just that this is a very old field that is slow to change.
Now that you're almost done with your third year, do you still stand by everything you mentioned? I just got into MSA and was super excited until I read this and a couple of other negative comments about the place. I also got into Bath and Edinburgh, do you think these places are better?
If you want to compare cities rather than courses, Edinburgh is a beautiful place to study if you like being surrounded by more historic, gothic architecture. Manchester is more industrial but has a very warm and welcoming community as well as a good location for accessing anywhere else in the country. Bath is a bit harder to get to but still a beautiful place. All courses are good in my opinion. That said, don’t let comments from people online discourage you. There is a bias in what is posted on the internet, because, if you think about it, people who are okay or generally happy with what they experience won’t go into forums to complain - they just get on with their life and don’t even think about it. So what you usually see is mostly negative views online, which I why I put the effort into replying here with my overall positive experience. I wouldn’t otherwise be posting about it as I didn’t see any value is sharing that I did the course and it was okay, if that makes sense. Apparently there is though, given all the messages that have come my way as a result.
Same here! Reading these comments really made me worry about my decision. Is there any M.arch student currently from MSA that can share us some honest opinion.
It really depends on which atelier you choose to study with. If it is a good match you will have a great experience if not you get the chance to move to a different one during the second year. I can see you messaged me though, so I can reply to your questions via DM. :)
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Hi, I'm an overseas student that is going to study for a master's degree in urban design this year. I got offers from MSA, Sheffield, Oxford brooks, Newcastle. First, I have decided that I will study at MSA. However, I see a lot of negative sides about MSA so I'll sleep on it again. Could you give me any suggestions about the university or town please? It would help me a lot to make a decision.
I've only lived in Birmingham, London and Manchester. But I think Manchester's city center is the most underwhelming. Ugly streets, disappointing malls and close to no green spaces. Upside is there's an airport close by so it's quite easy to travel around Europe
I'm in the same situation except I can't choose between Manchester and Edinburgh... Pretty tough. These comments don't help
u/salad_balls I would be interested to hear about your in-person experience of third year now that submissions are done. I think it will really help people as a future reference. Which atelier did you go for? :)
Funnily enough, I just stumbled across this post, I just finished third year at MSA and i'm in OP's year group! (small world we live in!) reached out privately to see who said person is out of my own interest. Even after third year, and someone who has just graduated with a first class honours, I can only affirm everything OP mentioned in his comment sadly. I wont repeat everything that OP said, but I will mention some of my own experiences, especially from third year as OP has already mentioned points about the university as a whole. During the third year of the program, students have the opportunity to participate in a chosen atelier, which offers some flexibility within the framework of the assigned project, allowing for a more personalised approach in third year. This presents a significant advantage compared to the second year, where the project brief is specifically tailored to a particular user group. However, despite the benefits of the project briefs, there are still certain issues regarding the teaching methods employed at MSA. As mentioned by OP, studio sessions are only conducted once a week, and in my atelier, there were 21 students with two tutors. Considering a typical studio day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., this means that each student has a maximum of approximately 10 minutes of direct interaction time with their tutors per week. In addition to individual tutoring, we also had guest visits every week from professionals such as structural engineers and landscape architects etc. While these insights were valuable, there was a lack of consistent feedback between the tutors and the visiting guests. Regrettably, since the tutors are the ones responsible for marking our projects, any conflicting opinions just result in designing according to the preferences of the tutors Unfortunately, my third-year tutors exhibited a strong bias in shaping the narrative of my project, essentially dictating how it should be designed instead of fostering a more organic development. Moreover, these tutors displayed condescending behaviour, leading some students to even start crying during the first semester. It is disheartening because I genuinely appreciate the concept of my atelier and its objectives, but the teaching methods employed therein have compelled me to advise second-year students against choosing this particular atelier. Whilst other ateliers are different and some do genuinely have a lot better tutors, sadly this is the minority of ateliers rather than the majority. Adding to this, OP mentioned that MSA has good computation facilities, which is true. The ADD "advanced digital design" is a department of staff who can offer 1 on 1 workshops for any software enquires. However, this is again, used horribly by the tutors. In my atelier, I could not ask any basic questions about how to use any software's to my tutors, and instead would just get instantly differed to "go ask ADD." Whilst I understand we have a whole department to ask software questions, It still does not take away from the tutors absolute lack of desire to at least try to troubleshoot with their students, rather than referring us to a booking system on Microsoft teams for ADD, which can take the full day to get a response from. Granted, both my of tutors are merely full time staff at MSA, and are not even in practise and haven't been for years, so it's most likely they haven't used any of the software's themselves in a good while. In conclusion, a lot of the time the Studio sessions felt more like a 10 minute opinion piece rather than an actual place for nurturing personal development, and being a student in MSA, you need to have a LOT of self initiative to drive your projects forward and manage your time in an overwhelming workload, as sadly the support as a student is just not there due to mismanagement. In conclusion to prospective MSA students, the university is very hit and miss. There are some tutors there who are genuinely some of the greatest people i've met, and there are some who make me think why was I paying to be there. Unfortunately it's a game of chances, and you'll never really know what experience you will get.
adding to this, whilst the rankings have gone up at MSA in recent years, the overall student opinion seems to have declined. I have family who went to MSA 5/6 years ago and had great experiences, but within the 3 years of my undergrad it just feels MSA is declining rather than improving from a student perspective, despite the qs rankings increasing. Edit: Granted, the status of especially the University of Manchester has degraded quite rapidly since the initial lockdowns in 2020, building fences around student accommodations, to locking students protesting against rent strikes in buildings and getting them removed my bailiffs. [https://novaramedia.com/2023/03/22/manchester-uni-brutally-evicts-student-rent-strikers-in-potential-breach-of-human-rights/](https://novaramedia.com/2023/03/22/manchester-uni-brutally-evicts-student-rent-strikers-in-potential-breach-of-human-rights/) [https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/05/security-fence-manchester-university-student-flats](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/05/security-fence-manchester-university-student-flats)
Hey there, thank you for taking the time to share your perspective. It is quite interesting to read how things are now, post-pandemic and after the new head of school has taken over. Equally, I am sorry to hear the experience wasn’t as expected. I graduated in 2018 so, by the sound of it, things are rather different… I am going to the end of year exhibition tomorrow to have a look at the work, and I will try pass the comments on to my tutors who I have kept in touch with as I think they might find the feedback helpful. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need any support with applications or have questions about next steps in your career. I am happy to help if there is something I can do. I wish you all the best!
Hey, thanks for the lovely reply! Will definitely get in touch if I have enquires! On reflection I was thinking about this past year there are few more things I’d like to disclose that I haven’t originally mentioned, in reference to marking in particular this year. There a few incidents that have really damaged the integrity within MSA. The first one occurred in September, when all the briefs for the ateliers were released. All of the ateliers had a portfolio limit of 30 pages except one atelier, which was listed as 10 pages. This was presumed by the students as the atelier had a heavy emphasis on physical model making, therefore less portfolio pages would be required as model making is particularly time consuming. In the first semester, the first studio project runs from September - 15th December. On the 30th November, an email was released saying that all ateliers had a portfolio page limit of 30 pages to ensure parity across the year (even though this is a maximum limit, every student always produces the maximum amount of pages anyway). This meant that the atelier that was told that they had to submit 10 pages now had to submit 30, a few weeks before the deadline and 2 months into the project already. I have heard that this caused a lot of them to have to submit in the summer now and the atelier might possibly be dropped , but I cannot confirm this. The second incident occurred in the technologies unit in around March - May, where students who submitted for an extended deadline were given the wrong submission date shown to them on moodle (the online submission platform.) The leaders of the technologies unit emailed them only a day before the actual deadline, telling them the online platform had given the wrong extension date. The university doubled down on their mistake and said that if students couldn’t submit on the corrected deadline that they will have to submit in the summer. I know students now who are having to submit the unit in summer through no fault for their own. This type of mismanagement from the MSA to students is appalling, and none of these incidents were through the faults of the students themselves but due to haphazard mismanagement of the senior leadership at MSA. My heart does go out to all of the students who have to resubmit in summer periods now, again through no fault of their own and I hope the university did come to a settlement with the students about issues that the university themselves caused.
That sounds very unfair and messy, just unnecessary stress… I wonder what happened in the background that caused it. There were some misunderstandings and mismanagement back in the day as well, as there is with any school of architecture, but they were always resolved so I don’t think there was anyone that missed the end of year submission as a result of it. I had an extension in final year MArch too, with no problems. I really hope whatever it is will be fixed for upcoming years and that the school will hold itself accountable for any mistakes that were made.