Each portfolio is scored against a ten-criterion rubric calibrated to architecture hiring partners and admissions readers: concept and narrative, graphic identity, technical drawing quality, diagramming and analysis, project selection and curation, typography and layout, rendering and visualization, process and iteration, team-role clarity, and submission fit. The rubric is reviewed annually by a panel of senior practitioners and educators.
Internally we benchmark each scoring engine release against a held-out set of 5,000 portfolios that have already received human reviews from the senior practitioners on our advisory board. Our current model agrees with the human consensus score within +/- 5 points on 92% of portfolios. We are transparent about the remaining 8 percent. If you disagree with a score, you can request a manual rerun for free.
Most reviews complete in 60 to 90 seconds for files under 100 MB. Files at the 200 MB ceiling can take up to four minutes during peak demand (typically Monday mornings and the weeks before major application deadlines). You will see a live progress bar with the criterion currently being evaluated.
Yes. Files are encrypted in transit using TLS 1.3 with strong cipher suites (AEAD only) and at rest using AES-256-GCM with keys managed in a hardware security module. Only you can access your portfolios from your account dashboard. They are not visible to other users, and our staff cannot view them without an audit-logged support request from you.
No, not without your explicit and separate consent. Your default privacy setting is "do not use my work to train any model." If you opt in via a granular consent flow, you can opt out again at any time and we will exclude your portfolio from any future training run.
Uploaded portfolios are automatically deleted from primary storage thirty days after the review is complete unless you choose to retain them in your dashboard. Deleted files are unrecoverable after fourteen further days, when our backup rotation purges them as well.
Job Match takes your reviewed portfolio and ranks the architecture studios and roles it fits best. We compare your work against the public hiring standards, recent project libraries, and stated criteria of hundreds of firms across twelve weighted factors — style, scale, scope, role level, geography and more — and return a ranked shortlist with a match score for each, so you spend your time applying where you are genuinely most likely to land.
You can preview your top Job Match results on the free plan. The full ranked list, the per-firm match breakdown, and saved match alerts (which notify you when a firm that fits your profile starts hiring) are part of the paid plans. Your portfolio is never shared with any firm without an explicit action from you.
Yes, first-time subscribers to any paid plan get a no-questions-asked thirty-day money-back guarantee. Email us from the address on your account and the refund lands within five business days. After thirty days we still issue refunds for billing errors, outages, and certain consumer-protection-required cases. See the Refund Policy for the complete picture.
PDF (single file or multi-file zip), high-resolution JPG and PNG, and (for layout-aware analysis) InDesign INDD and IDML. We support files up to 200 MB and resolutions up to 600 dpi. Hand-drawn portfolios scanned at 300 dpi work fine.
Yes. Our free plan includes one full review per month with the same depth as the paid plans, same rubric, same AI, same page-cited specificity. We do not gate quality behind a paywall. Paid plans add unlimited reviews, firm-match recommendations, and priority processing.
Yes, verify with your .edu (or equivalent academic) email address and you receive a 40% lifetime student discount. The discount converts gracefully to the alumni rate when you graduate, you do not lose access by leaving school.
We index the public portfolio standards, recent project libraries, and stated hiring criteria for over 500 architecture studios and schools. Your portfolio is compared against each profile on twelve weighted factors (style, scale, scope, role match, geography, and so on). The output is a ranked list of firms and programs where this portfolio is most likely to land, with a match score for each.
Calibration matters more than people think. A first-year B.Arch student portfolio judged against a partner-level bar gets a misleadingly low score; a senior architect portfolio judged against a student bar gets a misleadingly high one. The level you pick (student / new graduate / mid-level / senior) shifts the rubric weights so the score is meaningful for your stage.
Yes, every review is saved to your dashboard and you can compare any two reviews side by side. The comparison view highlights criteria where you improved, criteria where you regressed, and any new risk flags introduced by the edit.
Every spread is evaluated against the rubric and labeled excellent, strong, needs-work, or dealbreaker. The labels are aggregated to produce the section scores. You also get specific page-cited comments such as "Page 17: line weights are inconsistent with pages 9 and 11" so you know what to fix and where.
Submission fit is calibrated against the most common public application briefs from the firms and schools at your candidate level. We check whether your portfolio is the right length, scope, and structure for the brief. Specific feedback might be: "Your book is 47 pages, most M.Arch programs ask for 30 maximum. Consider cutting your weakest projects."
Yes, every review has a private share link valid for thirty days. Anyone with the link can read the full review (score, breakdown, page-by-page analysis, suggestions) but cannot upload, edit, or download your underlying file.
Yes. Scan your hand drawings at 300 dpi or higher and lay them out into the same PDF as your digital work. The rubric scores hand and digital media equally; what matters is the quality of the drawing, not the medium.
Annual saves you up to 33%. Monthly is right if you are running a single application cycle and will probably cancel inside ninety days. Quarterly is the best value for an 8-12 week active job or program search. Annual is for educators, mentors, and architects who run multiple portfolio updates per year.
Yes, change your plan at any time from account settings. Upgrades are prorated immediately; downgrades take effect at the next billing cycle.
Yes, schools and architecture firms get central billing, classroom or studio dashboards, role-based permissions, and bulk review credits at a meaningful discount to the per-seat rate. Email us for a quote tailored to your team size.
Email our Data Protection Officer at the address on the GDPR page or use the in-app Privacy Center to file an access, rectification, erasure, or portability request. We respond within thirty days as required by law and almost always within five business days in practice.
Yes, like any AI, it can occasionally misread a context (a deliberately rough sketch read as "low quality", an unconventional layout read as "inconsistent"). If a score feels off, request a manual rerun first. If you still disagree, request a human review and a senior practitioner will revisit the file at no charge.
The score correlates with hiring and admission outcomes in our follow-up surveys, but it is not a guarantee. The portfolio is one of several factors in any hiring decision; experience, references, interview performance, and timing all matter. Treat the score as a useful diagnostic, not a destiny.
The rubric supports residential, commercial, civic, master-plan, urban-design, landscape, and interior portfolios. Pick the best-fit specialization at upload and the rubric weights adjust accordingly. Cross-disciplinary portfolios pick the dominant specialization, and the AI flags any rubric criteria that do not apply.
Yes, close your account from settings, and all personal data is deleted within sixty days. Records we are legally required to retain (billing for tax purposes, ip-blocked abuse logs) are kept according to the retention schedule in our Privacy Policy.
Major rubric updates ship once a year, after a panel review with the practitioners and educators on our advisory board. Minor calibration updates ship as needed when a specific industry shift (a new presentation convention, a new portfolio length expectation) makes the rubric drift.
No. The AI tells you what is wrong, what to prioritize, and what concrete actions to take. The actual edits happen in your design tool of choice (InDesign, Figma, Affinity Publisher, you name it). We chose this design because the portfolio is your work and the choices belong to you. We are a feedback loop, not an automation.
Yes, see the Education plan. Many architecture schools use PortfolioMentor as a pre-class diagnostic so the AI catches the boring problems (pagination, line weights, missing role attribution) and the instructors can spend studio time on the genuinely interesting questions about narrative and curation.
Email support, we read every message and ship the most-requested features first. We publish a public roadmap and a fortnightly changelog so you can see what is in flight. Critical bugs go directly to the engineering team; severity-one issues are typically resolved inside twelve hours.
A small team of practicing architects, design educators, and AI engineers. Our reviewers and rubric advisors have worked at BIG, OMA, Snøhetta, Foster + Partners, Studio Mumbai, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Our engineering team has shipped large language model products at Anthropic, OpenAI, and Hugging Face.
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