My daughter wants to attend the University of Oregon, but it is 3,000 miles away, and so she probably can’t do that. So we are trying to find an east coast ( maybe as far as the mid-west ) university that has what she really wants:
10,000 or less students
Creative writing major / minor
3.Gorgeous campus with lots of trees .... just pretty. It is what makes her happy.
Leans left politically - just so long as it isn't particularly conservative
A place where she won't feel "lost". She is rather introverted.
Not a $50K a year university.
She is an A+ student, and ranks in the top 8% of her class. National Honor Society member, She is a sophomore as of this post.
IMO you should consider letting her at least apply to U of O, you’ll have to cut the umbilical chord one day, and I’ll bet the midwest is still a flight away just like Oregon would be. In the case that you don’t want to hear any of that;
UDel
Suny Geneseo
Suny New paltz
U Vermont
St Mary 's Maryland
Tcnj
Christopher Newport
James Madison
Most oos public’s will be expensive, so see if she may like smaller schools suxhas lacs. Run the NPC for all of these.
Consider letting her apply to U Oregon though.
Kenyon and Denison (plus Columbia and UChicago) would be top choices for her academic interests but run the NPC : if you make 75k and under they’re probably cheaper than a state school at instate rates, if you make 125k and under they’re likely cheaper than an oos public.
University of Vermont was also my first thought. Maybe University of New Hampshire or Maine as well. UNC-Asheville is a liberal arts school with about 4000-5000 students in a great, hip mountain town with tons to do in nature. St. Mary’s College of Maryland is right on the Chesapeake Bay if she likes water. Also maybe the consortium schools in Western Massachusetts (Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, Amherst, and U Mass-Amherst). Students at one school can take classes at all the others. Some have great writing programs/classes. Area is beautiful. Schools are all good, and one might be a good fit for her. Both Amherst (Amherst and U Mass) and Northampton (Smith) are great college towns. Berkshires are right there. If she prefers the South, The University of the South (Sewanee) fits all her criteria. Belmont Abbey, outside Nashville, is a beautiful school with lots of trees.
I echo what is said above about getting money from private schools. Much aid is need-based, but many schools also give generous merit aid, including some of the schools on the above list. If you google “common data set” with a school’s name, you will get a form that includes data on financial aid. This can be very helpful. Say she is interested in School X. You look and 10% of students get merit aid, then you might figure her odds are long, depending on how she seems to compare overall to admitted students (stats near lower end, or higher end). School Y might offer merit aid to 82% of admitted students with an average of 10 to 20 thousand dollars. Then her odds would be high.
For example, check out merit aid at Miami University-Oxford (of Ohio)'s admissions webpage. They provide a one page chart for this year’s applicants that shows a range of merit aid that will be awarded based on test scores and GPA. That would give you some idea for there but also give you some idea of how it might potentially work at other schools, even if they are not as explicit about criteria. One of my kids went to a private national university that gives lots of aid. For them, it did not cost much more to go there than at our state’s most expensive public schools.
Not sure the campus will meet the “pretty” and “tree” test but SUNY New Paltz has the right size, student body typw etc. and offers a Creative Writing concentration as an English major. Nearby Mohonk Preserve area is lovely. SUNY schools have reasonable OOS rates.
If a small school does work (and maybe it doesn’t if she wants to go to Oregon), I agree with the Kenyon and Denison suggestions. Kenyon alums include John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, etc.), E.L. Doctorow, Caleb Carr, Robert Lowell, William Gass, Laura Hillenbrand, and Bill Watterson–pretty impressive. Classic LAC campus. I don’t know much about financial aid at Kenyon. I do know that Denison is a great school with a spectacular LAC type campus. Denison does give lots of merit aid.
University of Maine Orono is in a gorgeous area (but near Bangor, so has airport). It has a tuition matching program for OOS students. I think of it as the “undiscovered UVM” Stephen King was part of it’s Creative Writing program.
“The 25 Most Literary Colleges in America” | Flavowire
Princeton
UIowa
Brooklyn
Pomona
UHartford
Wesleyan
Sarah Lawrence
Oberlin
Williams
Vanderbilt
Smith
UMississippi
NYU
Colorado College
UChicago
Hamilton
Harvard
UIUC
Sewanee
Emerson
UT-Austin
Columbia
Vassar
Bennington
The New School
Well . . . all that’s well and good and must have been a lot of effort, but I’d be curious how they develop those lists. For example. University of Iowa isn’t on any of the lists and it’s widely considered to be a top (THE) of the heap.
My personal feeling about creative writing is that most of what a person learns needs to be self taught. The school can only do so much. And usually creative writing programs teach the writing process, but tend to stay away from the nitty gritty how-tos. They focus tends to be on the literary genre and exclude other genres. The vast majority of writing in the marketplace is other genres. Majoring in CW is a great way to get in 4 years of practice on a lifelong journey.
Maybe one approach in choosing the right program is to look at the schools she likes and then look at the faculty. What have they written? Does she want to learn from them? That may help narrow down the list.
Second, she may want to look at various favorite authors and figure out how they learned to write. This could be a supplement to her own studies.
Finally for nitty gritty how-to, she should probably attend writers conferences in her target genre. Those conferences have workshops on craft that she may enjoy.