The Architect Registration Examination is one of the most visible parts of the licensure process—but like practice itself, the exam continues to evolve. This episode explores how NCARB updates the ARE and what those changes mean for candidates.

Andy speaks with Jared Zurn, NCARB’s Chief Programs Officer, about the evolution of the exam, recent accessibility improvements, and why the future of licensure requires a more holistic view of education, experience, and examination.

Then, Brent Lance, Chair of NCARB’s Examination Committee, discusses upcoming ARE updates, case study changes, competency alignment, and the research-driven process behind exam development.

Find out more about Pathways to Practice.

Welcome to the NCARB podcast, where you get an inside look at licensure, regulation, and

the initiatives shaping the future of architectural practice.

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And I'm your host, Andy McIntyre.

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In this, the fifth episode of the series, we're focusing on the architect registration

examination, how it works today, how it's evolved over time, and why NCARB continues to

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make changes to ensure the exam remains fair, relevant, and focused on protecting the

public.

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We'll explore recent exam updates,

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emerging testing technologies and how the exam fits into NCARB's broader Pathways to

Practice initiative.

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We'll start with a conversation about the exam as it exists today.

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I'm joined by Jared Cern, NCARB's Chief Programs Officer, who has worked across multiple

generations of the ARE and brings a long term perspective on how licensure programs

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evolve.

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Jared, if there isn't a Mr.

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ARE examination, but if there was a Mr.

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ARE examination, I'm afraid to say you would be

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the overwhelming favourite candidate for that title.

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would agree with you, Andy.

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think I have been at NCARB long enough and experienced all aspects of the examination to

own that title for the time being.

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So digging in Jared, just tell us a little bit about your role and your history with the

exam.

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My history at NCARB is actually quite long.

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I have been at NCARB over 17 years and throughout that time I have worked on multiple

variations of the exam.

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So when I started we were still delivering ARE 3.1.

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I was here when we navigated to ARE 4.0 all the way through the creation of what is now

ARE 5.0, the transition to it, and now we're still working on what is yet to come.

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for the future of the examination.

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So I have touched everything from the original graphic vignettes that were computer based

all the way through the current technology.

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And Jared, in this podcast series, we're sort of exploring NCOP's Pathways to Practice

initiative and the rationale and hopes behind this effort to really reimagine and reinvent

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the licensure process.

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And straight away, you alluded to the fact that these things aren't stagnant and the exam

itself is something that evolves.

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And I think that's an important part of the conversation that we've been having here is

that

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These aren't static things and there has been evolution and adjustment.

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So pulling on that thread, thinking about how we got to the current day, what would you

describe as sort of, paint a picture for how the exam evolves and some of the changes that

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happening in those transitions that you've been involved in from 3.0 through to 5.0 now.

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Yeah, I would say even when you know, I know we're talking specifically about the exam,

but I think it's important to say all of the NCARB programs for licensure have continued

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to evolve this entire time.

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So I personally have worked on the exam for many years, but literally sat next to the

people who were evolving the experience program and we were adapting to changes in the

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education space.

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And so I think all of those, so if I were to tell a story right now about why NCARB is

focusing on the things we're focusing on.

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is because I really think we're finally at this point of convergence, which I have seen

coming for many years, that 17 years ago, when I started at NCARB, it sounds kind of silly

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to say it out loud, but education, experience and examination were three discrete programs

that had very little conversation even with the other programs.

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And over the course of the 17 years,

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slowly education and experience came together in a much more structured way and experience

and the examination started to align in a way that it didn't in my early days at NCAR.

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And it really has set us up for the inevitable of no, like the licensure process needs to

be looked at holistically.

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The idea that there used to be three silos is like I said, kind of silly when you think

about it, that nobody stepped back and said, wait, let's take a holistic perspective.

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of the licensure process and then what opportunity does that provide?

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So you've talked about this convergence and talked about the current program and the fact

that these programs have been evolving together and alongside each other and aligning in a

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better way.

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But when we talk about pathways to practice and this initiative and a sort of new era, if

you will, if what you've said has been happening and we've had this convergence, it sounds

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like everything should be working well.

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Sounds like we've kept pace with things.

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So why pathways to practice?

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What is the...

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the rationale for another leap forward or another conscious push to evolve these programs.

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I think the reason we're having this very conscious conversation right now about how can

we do this better is driven by just really that philosophy of how can we do this better?

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I would say having been again at NCARB for a long time, but even before NCARB, I taught at

a community college in an architectural technology program.

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So my world has been assessment for several decades now.

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I guess I have to admit that I have been in this industry for several decades and

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what any educator knows, right?

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What anybody trying to teach anybody anything knows is some things work better than other

things at getting the message across, at ensuring that the person really knows what they

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need to know.

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And kind of the old philosophy, and even a little bit of the current philosophy, if you

look at our current programs, it's go to school, learn some things in school, maybe some

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things directly apply to licensure, maybe some things don't, that's perfectly okay.

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Then come out, get a job at an architecture firm, you work at an architecture firm, you

learn some things at the firm, other that related to school, you learn other things at the

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firm that they never talked about at school.

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And you're like, Wow, didn't know I needed to know that as an architect, but I guess I do.

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And then you take this exam, and the exam tests you on some of the stuff you did in

school, and it tests you on some of the stuff you did at work.

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And then it tests you on some totally new stuff that I didn't know I needed to know that,

but I guess I do because the exams testing me on it.

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It's that mindset of like,

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wait a minute, like now that we can step back and look holistically at everything, we can

say, why did we ever think that was the right approach, right?

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To like, give you a little bit here, but not everything.

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And then give you a little bit more here, but not everything.

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And then we're going to test you on some stuff that maybe you'd know, or maybe you don't

know, but you should know based on our opinion.

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That's the reality of we can do this better.

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We can identify the core things that it really takes to be an architect, a licensed

practitioner.

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And we can ensure that those are into the individuals, but we can do it in a way that's

more efficient, more effective, and hopefully more transparent so that every licensure

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candidate gets like, oh, I'm going to this school.

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And I know this school that's giving me a, and c.

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And I love that about that school.

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And then I go to work and I know work is going to give me E, and G.

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And I still know that there's this maybe K and L at out there.

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But I'm going to do that independently.

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And I'm going to do that auditing.

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That

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transparency, I think is what our licensure candidates want.

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I actually think it's what our licensure candidates deserve.

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There's two kind of threads there to pull on and one is the what.

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What are we testing?

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Or what are we asking people to be competent in?

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And then there's the how and there's the how we're going to do it and how are we going to

validate that and assess it.

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And those two things are obviously related, but they're different questions.

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And in terms of the evolution of assessments, and I think you alluded to that in your

terminology, when we think of the exam, we think of the ARE, anyone who's taking it would

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presumably know that the format

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across the six divisions is pretty consistent.

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Sure, there's difference in terms of times, but often similar formats across those.

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When you think about those two things, the what are we testing and the how are we doing

it?

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What's changing?

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What is driving those changes?

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the driver of change is us being honest about picking the right tool for the job.

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And we can take this back to the analogy again, if all you have is a hammer, everything

looks like a nail.

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And the reality is the exam today, like you described is sort of a hammer.

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It's one tool that we have and we treat every division exactly the same.

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Maybe there's a different number of questions, but still have discrete items, you have the

same item types, you still have case studies on every one.

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And so

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that when you really step back and take a fresh look, you go, but if I'm trying to assess

someone's ability to design and make design decisions, that should probably look and feel

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different than if I'm assessing somebody's ability and knowledge around managing a

project.

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As an architect, I am a licensed architect and what it takes to design a building is very

different than what it takes to manage an architectural project, which is also very

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different.

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than what it takes to run my architectural practice that I used to write those are very

discrete skill sets.

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But yet we use the same tool today to try to measure skills in each of those areas.

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And what I'm challenging ourselves to do is to say, wait a minute, there's probably better

ways to do this.

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And I will be one of the first people to say it, I think the best place to demonstrate

design skill is in a firm or in education, they have a

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context around them that allows them to be much more rich in doing true assessment of your

ability to design, put a building together or at a farm to be able to put that real

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project together and respond to the client needs and expectations.

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I'm jealous of what they can do in a firm or in school compared to what we can do in a

test center.

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thinking about your comment about convergence and the fact that there's been alignment and

there's been sort of maybe a better conversation with these, those three programs and some

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duplication and some redundancy inherently built into that.

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What you're talking about there is sounds to me a little bit more like acknowledging the

appropriate nature of different settings for different skillsets or different

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demonstrations.

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Is there a bifurcation here happening where we intentionally go back to sort of the

strengths of these different

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Letting environments.

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would think that that is going to be one of the outcomes is we are going to yes,

absolutely acknowledge the strengths of the different components that exist, and use those

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components to the best of our ability, instead of sort of maybe layering things into

education that don't need to be there.

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Let's be honest, maybe saw the stuff that today exists in education, because they feel

they need to cover it doesn't actually need to happen in education and might be better

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served to be taught post education when somebody has real world experience and

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At the same time, some of the knowledge that we're really trying to assess maybe is still

best for standardized exam that happens after you gone to school and after you got some

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experience.

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So Jared, anyone listening to this conversation might get a little nervy about change and

what does it mean?

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Because we are talking quite high level about some of the things that are going to happen.

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What would you say to any candidates out there who are plugging into this podcast just to

sort of get up to speed on what's happening with NCOP programs and their evolution?

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What's your message to them?

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sure.

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So if someone is a current candidate, what I'm going to say is relax.

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Because one thing you need to understand it in carbon again, this is something that does

come from my years of experience here is we have learned at NCARB how to manage

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transitions well.

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And there is no intention inside of NCARB to create some entirely new process, flip it on

one day and literally just turn off the current process and stop candidates in their

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tracks.

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that would be highly inappropriate for us to do as an organization.

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It would be massively disruptive to licensure candidates all across this country, not all

across the globe.

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And so instead, what we will purposefully do at NCARB is we will develop the new, we will

maintain the existing, and there will be a period where those two will overlap.

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And we will allow, if you are a current candidate, you'll have the opportunity to continue

on, finish out under the current structure.

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If you're down to where you only have one or two exams to go,

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You are listening to this podcast just for fun because of the new licensure process is not

gonna be your process.

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You're gonna be long since done.

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You'll be able to relive glorious stories about taking six divisions at the ARE and new

candidates will tell you their glorious stories of, well, I did this through experience or

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I did this in education and I did this through this new exam that I had.

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There will be different worlds, but we will make that transition happen.

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And if you are, say, a student who's studying architecture, so you're really at the

beginning of that process and you may be someone who is potentially going to go through

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the new process, should you be excited about that?

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And if so, why?

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say yes to them.

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And here's why this is my inspirational speech to anybody who's going to be looking at a

new process in the future is I think the new process is going to be more genuine to what

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it really is trying to assess in us as architects.

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And we know this anytime something artificial is put in front of you that you have to do

to demonstrate your skills and abilities.

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It just feels odd, but you sort of go through it because you think you have to write

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That's not an appropriate use of a licensure process is to just make people do stuff.

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It's better for us to be very genuine about we need for you as a licensed architect to be

competent in designing buildings.

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We need you to be competent in assessing existing site conditions.

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It's our responsibility at NCARB to then come up with the assessment that allows the most

genuine measurement of that.

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And in the testing world, that's what we would call validity, right?

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Like we need to make sure

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that that assessment is as valid as possible and tied directly back to the skills that you

as a licensed architect need to deliver to the clients and the general.

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Obviously we're colleagues, Jared, we've worked together for, and the limiting factor that

I've been with NCOM for 11 years.

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But I will say having been a party to and obviously some respects involved in the

transitions that you've already mentioned, that Pathways to Practice does feel more

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considered and maybe a more holistic assessment of the system.

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And I'm just thinking about why does it need that?

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Why do we need this at this point in time?

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For example.

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We could continue tinkering and we change this and we evolve that and we do that.

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I think we've been very good as an organization at being sort of introspective and looking

at what we're doing and asking questions about it.

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But with Pathways, this is a uh different level of evaluation and a different level of

consideration around what the next iteration is going to look like.

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And why does it require, why does this step change require that level of big picture

viewpoints?

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Yeah, your question kind of comes also down to the why now and carp has evolved the exam

multiple times over the past 17 years, and they'd actually involved the exam multiple

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times over the last 50 years, right?

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Let's be honest, the exam continues to evolve the experience program began, you know,

back, why not before I was ever a licensed architect that has evolved as well.

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Why now?

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Why take the time?

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I think that's the key question.

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And I think the answer is because we actually have the opportunity to, I don't think we

could have done some of this stuff.

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10 years ago.

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partly because the technology wasn't in place for us to be able to do it.

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Let's be honest, we are going to need very good computer systems to manage the data flows

that are gonna exist across our competencies, across our multiple assessment methods.

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If we had tried to do this a decade ago, we would have been venturing out on a quest that

no one had ever tried and we would likely have failed.

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I will be very honest, we would have failed because the systems weren't in place to allow

this to happen.

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Whereas now is the opportunity with the advancements in technology that's occurring across

the testing industry, across the measurement industry in general, the way education is

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evolving, the way architectural firms practice is evolving.

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All of those changes has led to the now is our opportunity.

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So in all honesty, we could say, well, we're not going to take advantage of those

opportunities and we're going to tinker around the edges.

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We're going to do things just the way we've always done.

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That would be a choice.

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That would not be a very bold choice.

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That would be a choice that I think actually undermines architects as a licensed

profession.

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If we want to stay relevant to society, we need to demonstrate our creativity, not just in

the buildings we produce, but in all that we do, including how we regulate, how to ensure

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we provide the best services to the public and protect them.

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Why would we not want to own that?

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Why would we as architects, I'm an architect, why would I not want to design

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the best possible solution using all of the current tools available.

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I mean, I would never expect an architect to be like, well, the Romans built that

Colosseum thousands of years ago, stacking some concrete up.

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Let's do that forever.

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No, we're not going to do that.

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We're going to evolve.

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think that's a great note to finish on.

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And I only say this, Jared, because I know you're coming back for a future episode with

us, and we're to dig in a little bit more into some of the detail about where we think we

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might be headed.

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So Jared, thank you so much for joining us today, and we'll speak to you soon.

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Thank you.

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So in that conversation, Jared explained how the exam has changed over time, from its

structure and format to improvements designed to increase accessibility and reduce

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unintended barriers for candidates.

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That discussion sets the stage for a closer look at what's coming next and how exam

changes are actually made.

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So to dig into that process, I'm joined by Brent Lance, a licensed architect who works for

the Illinois Capital Development Board and serves as chair of NCARB's examination

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committee.

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which guides how the ARE evolves from year to year.

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So today I'm joined by Brent Blantz, who is an architect, I believe out of Illinois.

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Is that right, Brent?

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Yes, I'm in Chicago actually.

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Brent, you are the current chair of NCARB's examination committee.

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So thank you for doing that and welcome to our podcast.

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Could you tell us a little bit about your current role as the chair of the examination

committee and how that came to be?

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Well, in my current role, I actually was on the committee for two years prior to becoming

the chair.

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The first year I came onto the examination committee, I was there because I was chair of

the case study subcommittee and those chairs automatically at that time had a position on

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the exam committee.

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I became the chair last year when our chair was elected to the NCARB board and had to step

down.

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Okay, and that was sort of a, someone needs to step into the breach.

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Yes, and that's how I became chair of case study subcommittee too.

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That happened like midstream in the year before because someone had to step down in a way.

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Okay.

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So right place, right time.

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But you've painted the picture that you've been involved in the NCARB sort of examination

oversight, if you will, for four plus years.

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And therefore I'm assuming you're pretty familiar with everything that's happening in the

examination landscape right now.

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I hope so.

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So one of the things we're talking about today, Brett, is really trying to understand the

exam, the ARE, its contribution to the license process, and also how it's evolving and how

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it might continue to evolve in the future.

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So I'm going to start with sort of thinking about the current evolution and the current

changes or recent changes that are planned.

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And I'm going to go back and start with the launch of NCOP's competency standard, which

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and NCARB put out a new document that said, okay, from now on, as we move forward, we're

going to be focused on these 16 competences as the of the foundation for what licensure

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framework is going to be built upon.

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Could you tell us a little bit about, I guess, the committee's reaction to that and what

work you've been doing since that time?

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So I remember when the competency standard was announced.

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We were actually in Denver for an exam committee meeting that weekend and the press

release come out and we weren't sure what to make of it at that point in time.

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But the reality of it is that group put together these basic competencies and then what

the exam committee has done is we have taken those and connected them back to

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those 90 plus objectives that we have for the examination.

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And in doing so, that resulted in some tweaking of some of our objectives to make sure

that everything correlated together.

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What's the level of change?

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I use the word tweaking, you know, and I use that for a reason.

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These are not substantial changes to the objectives of the exam.

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These are minor adjustments to the words used, wordsmithing if you'll have it, to make

sure that they align with those objectives as they were published.

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Now, what does this mean for the candidate?

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They need to be aware that it's there, but I don't think it's going to change what they

need to study or how they need to prepare.

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for division of the exam.

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And out of curiosity, Brent, you obviously took the exam at some point in your own career

when you became licensed.

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When was that and what was your experience with taking the exam?

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It was not ARE 5.0.

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It was prior.

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There were nine divisions.

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And for me, I've never really struggled with tests per se.

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They don't freak me out.

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I don't get all nervous.

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I generally just go in, know my material, but go in, take the test.

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And in my case, I took all nine divisions over the course of, think it three or four

months and passed eight of the nine, the first time I took them.

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And the one that I didn't pass,

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I kind of rushed through because I was getting ready to leave for a trip.

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So did that experience haunt you when you started getting involved in the development of

the exam?

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Where I actually started was my first volunteer experience within CARB was on the ARE 5.0

cut score task force.

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And they brought a group of us into Washington DC, we're at the Palomar Hotel.

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And I'll never forget, we walked in that morning to one of the meeting rooms and it was

set up like a computer lab at a school.

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And lo and behold, we took two divisions of the exam that weekend.

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Okay, so this is reminder and first-hand experience.

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It was and you know, I think the exam, the experience in taking those 5.0 was much better

than my initial experience 20 some years earlier when we were using totally different

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software for exam delivery.

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That was back when M-CARB had its own drafting software where you actually drew in the

exam.

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It was not fun.

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One of the things about obviously the ARE and I think that the exam itself is actually the

thing that most candidates associate with NCARB the most.

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It's the pit where you're probably most connected to NCARB for good or worse on your path

to licensure.

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Also arguably the point of greatest consistency across the US in terms of the licensure

requirements for getting licensed across the 55 jurisdictions that NCARB works with.

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And I'm just wondering your take on it sort of

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It's significant because of its consistency and what that means therefore when it comes to

change and evolution and the expectation that sort of our member board members have about

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the exam and also the candidates themselves.

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mean, it's probably sometimes a delicate thing to be mindful of as we move forward those

two constituents and what they each need.

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And I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that.

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I do.

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It was one of the things that I won't say I was shocked at, but I was surprised at the

level of data that's provided to the exam committee about the exam experience.

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NCARB collects so many metrics from the exam administrations, and then the examination

committee gets to see some of that because that data sometimes shows trends that indicate

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things that we're not really comfortable with.

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When we get certain groups of people taking the exam, they're performing substantially

different than other groups, it's time to step back, reassess something, and then figure

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out how to move forward.

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Some of the changes that have come to be in the last couple of years are things just like

that.

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One of the most satisfying moments, and this was my first year on the exam committee, but

one of the things that we did that year,

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was the accommodation for candidates whose first language wasn't English.

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And I had never really thought about that before, but at the time it struck me really hard

because two of my four children were adopted and they both were raised in China for the

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first year and a half to four years of their lives.

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My son was speaking Mandarin when we adopted him and it's like, wow, he's going to be at a

disadvantage someday.

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because of that.

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Now, he's going to have other advantages because of that, but from the point of taking an

English-based exam, that's going to be a struggle.

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It really shed new light on that to me, and to see that implemented literally just a

couple of months after we had discussed it was immensely satisfying.

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And we do the same thing when we see different types of questions performing differently.

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You know, some of the things that have already been announced,

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you know, changes to case studies.

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We're making case studies collect valuable information, but they were taking people much

longer to do than the other types of questions.

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So from a time perspective, they weren't efficient.

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So we're changing the format, we're tweaking the format so that they're more efficient by

using the time during the exam, things like that.

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I'll just add for context that the ESL or English as a Second Language accommodation

provides extra time in the test center.

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And I think that the data points you were referring to was that there was evidence shared

with the committee and our organization generally around the fact that it wasn't

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necessarily that the candidates who had English as a Second Language weren't necessarily

getting questions wrong or at a great extent.

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It was the fact that they were running out of time.

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it was taking them just a little bit longer to process that information because in their

mind, they got to translate it back and forth.

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You talked a little bit there, Brent, about the process of how change occurs and from a

volunteer perspective, the amount of data that's presented to you and available to you

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when making decisions.

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Could you elaborate a little bit on that, just in terms of the relationship between staff

support, other expertise that are available to the committee when making these

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adjustments?

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The exam committee works very closely with our psychometricians because they provide the

expertise of the exam itself and testing methods that we just don't have.

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NCARB staff are amazing.

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The way that they coordinate and present the information to us in such an organized

manner.

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But I have also seen, you know, times when the committee is not really in agreement with

the way that the staff's thinking.

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committee is the committee.

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mean, what they recommend is what moves forward.

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I've never seen it go blatantly against, but we've had some lively discussions among

committee members because the examination committee is an incredibly diverse group of

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volunteers.

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We've got folks that are young, folks like myself that are older.

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I'm getting close to retirement age.

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We have people that are in practice, licensed architects, most of them, but we have people

from

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state boards across the country also sit on this and they may or may not be associated

with the profession.

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We have one unlicensed person on the committee now and that's been for the last four or

five years.

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That provides a different perspective.

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We never discussed the test questions in there so it's totally okay but from what their

experience is sitting for the exam today compared to what I may remember from a long time

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ago.

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I'm going to pull on that thread Brent, because we are in this podcast exploring pathways

to practice, the initiative that NCARB has been talking extensively about for the last

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couple of years and will continue to talk about as a main theme for foreseeable future.

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This is, you know, is the effort to of re-envision the licensure process and really kind

of decouple or sort of blend, if you will, the way we

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assess the competences and it goes back to the 16 competences we mentioned earlier about

being very much the foundational piece.

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In our previous episode, we talked to your peer, Gabriella Vermeer, who is the chair of

the experience committee.

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And one of the questions I asked her was around the sort of proprietary nature of like,

all right, my charge is looking after the exam and the exam is sacrosanct and we can't

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make changes to this and it needs to make sure that

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it has a big, big piece of the pie when it comes to future competency evaluation and

assessment.

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So how are you feeling about that?

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Do you feel a responsibility to the exam as chair to make sure it's well represented or

can you see a future where the exam's role shifts, if you will, in the competency

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assessment framework?

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see both.

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I don't see a path to licensure without an exam of some sort.

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Well, maybe I take that back because what's interesting is, you know, we've had

conversations from totally different angles on this in the time that I've been on the exam

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committee.

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I mean, it was just a few years ago, the exam committee was charged with finding an exam

only pathway to licensure without any experience without any education.

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Now, this year is like 180 degrees from that because we've got the three E's basically

working together most of the year.

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Exam, education, and experience have been meeting jointly because we're charged with the

responsibility of determining what comes next after 5.0 and looking at

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how the world is changing, how the practice is changing, and how the tools we have

available to us to administer an exam are changing.

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So you talked about the world is changing, the way assessments, technologies can change.

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What do you think are the big drivers for this conversation at NCARB?

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What's really leading us to look at evolution in this space?

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again, without getting into details of where things are headed necessarily, because I

don't think we know yet.

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This year, it's really about looking at what methods of evaluating or confirming knowledge

and expertise do we have at our disposal, and which ones work best for which competencies.

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That's kind of the big discussion right now.

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There may be a future where it's still a combination of things.

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But maybe there's more experience or more education and less exam.

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I don't know.

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It's too early.

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So I'm going to leave you with this question or ask, well not leave you with it.

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I'm going to ask you to leave us with your answer to this question, which is, if you think

about sort of a future, a new candidate, maybe they've recently graduated, they're sort of

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looking at the licensure process and thinking about it.

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What would you say to that person?

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What would you want them to know about the exam and anything you'd like to say to them

about how they should approach the licensure process today?

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if you knew me, you would know that's a loaded question because I am totally in awe of the

entire ecosystem that is exam prep because I have always felt like, and I've said this

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many times in the examination committee as chair and before I was chair, if our candidates

are having to go out and spend thousands of dollars on test prep materials to pass an exam

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that shows their

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minimally competent, we're asking the wrong questions.

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Because if they're doing this work in their job day after day after day, they shouldn't be

having to spend months, weeks and thousands of dollars getting ready for it.

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You asked me earlier about my experience taking these exams.

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I didn't study.

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The only section I studied for was structures.

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And that's not the one I failed.

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Because I really was in a small firm where I was exposed to all of that.

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I was doing so much of it that I knew it.

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And to me, that's where we ought to be.

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Great point.

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Brent, any final thoughts for us?

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Really appreciate you being with us today.

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Anything you'd like to sign off with?

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I think the main thing would be to the candidates, don't panic.

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Yes, there are some minor changes coming.

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This is not a big switch.

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I knew candidates when we went from 4.0 to 5.0 and there was a lot of stress and tension

and gnashing of teeth.

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This is not that level of change.

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This is just minor adjustments.

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Brent, I'm just going to clarify that.

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I think you're referring to the changes that are going to come about in the spring of 2026

in the examination space.

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As we look beyond that to pathways to practice as a bigger initiative, and we probably a

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the programmatic space.

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I do know, and I've seen the direction of travel for NCARB has been one of a lot of

mindfulness around the candidate experience, what's asked of candidates and really trying

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to make sure that

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things are to some of the points you just made around appropriate level of competency and

making sure we're really focusing on the core things.

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I would be fairly confident say the new system is not going to be more arduous than the

current and that's really a focal point because we know about the cost and we know about

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the time commitment.

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To your point, you just want to make sure that candidates have got the basics down and

they know the core components that are going to keep the public in a good place.

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Yeah, I mean, we're not hazing these people.

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I mean, all we're trying to do is determine minimum competence so that we're ensuring

public safety.

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That's what we're here for.

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Brent, thank you for joining us today.

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Really appreciate it and happy Friday.

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Enjoy the weekend.

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You too.

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So Brent walked us through upcoming exam updates, including alignment with NCOB's

competency standard and adjustments to the case study format.

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He also offered a behind the scenes look at how the exam committee evaluates data, works

with psychometric experts and balances candidate experience with the responsibility to

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ensure minimum competency for licensure.

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Changes to the exam don't happen in a vacuum.

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They're deliberate, research driven and focused on measuring what matters most.

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The key takeaway from this episode is that the exam isn't static and it never has been.

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As architectural practice evolves, so was the tools we used to assess readiness for

licensure.

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And through Pathways to Practice, NCOM is asking bigger questions about how competences

are evaluated and whether different skills are best assessed through exams, experience or

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education.

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In our next episode, we'll step back and look at the research and foundation setting work

that underpins Pathways to Practice.

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and drives the evolution of all our core programs, from the exam to experience to

education and beyond.

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Well, that wraps up another episode of the NCARB podcast.

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Please be sure to subscribe, leave us a rating and review.

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And hopefully if you found that conversation helpful, we'd appreciate it if you'd share it

with a friend.

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Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on the NCARB podcast.