This paper examines one of three key findings from a recently completed PhD enquiry entitled 'Architecture Live Projects: acquiring and applying missing practice-ready skills'. Through a mixed methods approach that consolidated evidence from outside as well as inside architecture and academia, the thesis examined to what extent Live Projects enable students to gain risk management & ambiguity tolerance capabilities. This paper principally considers why these skills are important to today's graduating architecture students and how they might acquire them. By asking respondents about their experiences of exposure to, or experience of, risk management and ambiguity tolerance, the study also identified what risk was perceived to be in architecture education and practice.