A number of the most highly ranked architecture programs are offered at the universities that make up the prestigious Ivy League athletic conference in the Northeast. In its rankings of architecture programs for 2011, "DesignIntelligence," a publication of the Design Futures Council, deemed Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art & Planning in Ithaca, New York, as having the top undergraduate program and the sixth best graduate program.
Harvard University in Massachusetts, Yale University in Connecticut and Columbia University in New York City placed first, third and fourth overall in the "U.S. News and World Report" 2011 rankings of national universities, respectively. These institutions also boast some of the country's best graduate architecture programs, according to "DesignIntelligence."
In addition to the Ivy League, there are many other reputable private universities with top-notch architecture programs, including Rice University in Houston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rice has the third best undergraduate architecture program, according to "DesignIntelligence," and MIT's graduate program is ranked fifth in the country.
MIT and several other well-known institutions, such as the Cooper Union in New York City and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, offer five-year Bachelor of Architecture programs accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board. "DesignIntelligence" ranked Carnegie Mellon's the seventh best undergraduate architecture program in 2011.
A number of Catholic universities throughout the country have architecture schools, including the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Both schools offer bachelor's and master's level degrees in architecture. Notre Dame's baccalaureate architecture degree is an accredited five-year program.
Two prestigious campuses of the University of California -- Berkeley and Los Angeles -- offer baccalaureate, master's and doctoral architecture programs.
The University of Virginia and the University of Michigan's main campus in Ann Arbor also confer degrees in architecture, as does the the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which offers the only public professional architecture program in New England. UVa's architectural history program is the oldest in the country.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Architecture was founded in 1869 and is the second oldest architecture program in the country.