<p>I’m a sophomore looking for some creative writing summer programs to participate in during the summer of 2014. This year, I participated in John Hopkins’ CTY, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I was part of the Academic Explorations program as my SCAT score was not high enough. As the SCAT is a measure of general knowledge rather than a measure of skill in creative writing, I found my course to be rather easy and was not challenged at all. </p>
<p>Therefore, I am looking for some prestigious summer courses specialising in creative writing for 2014. I have looked at Columbia, Summer@Brown, Cornell and Duke but I don’t know how competitive these programs are, or how beneficial. I was looking for anyone with knowledge on some challenging and prestigious summer writing programs that also have social scene.</p>
<p>I went to Iowa a few years back, so I <em>might</em> be a bit biased, but it was fantastic. It draws incredibly gifted and talented students. Just as a sampling, from my session we have alum at Stanford, Harvard, Brown, Williams, Colorado College… You get the picture. Everyone was just obscenely talented at everything. It was both incredible and humbling.
That said, everyone was there because they were very passionate about writing, with less of a focus on just prestige. Then again, if you’re just a fantastic writer who feels like previous institutions haven’t offered enough like-minded, high caliber students, then I can totally support you! This is the place for you.
I believe I remember the director telling us that about 1,000 students applied our year for about 120 spots (60 for session 1, 60 for session 2, give or take). That would imply a 12% acceptance rate or so, so if that’s an accurate statistic (and if I’m remembering correctly), it’s pretty dang competitive!
Best experience of my life. I highly recommend it. Feel free to PM me if you want to know more :)</p>