Anyone have experience with creative writing as a major? Advice on how to evaluate a program? Main interest is fiction. I’m thinking these programs tend to be pretty small so maybe it’s best to go somewhere with a larger program which offers an MFA to ensure a decent size of community? Class sizes are small and I’m wondering how much to worry about getting in to classes. Looking at the writing of faculty and at student publications…anything else we should be thinking about? Are faculty usually receptive to having prospective students sit in on this kind of class?
Also interested in school suggestions for my sophomore to look into. Very high stats, looking for a community of talented writers. She prefers a location with some culture in the community–not rural, not a conservative school, not a tech school (she vetoed MIT which was mentioned to me on a thread a while back), not a women’s college. I would like a school with a lot of strengths in case she changes her mind about writing.
If you can, look at recent class schedules to see who actually teaches the undergrad workshops. At a school with an MFA program or PhD in CW program, undergrads might be taught by TAs, esp the lower level courses. That’s not always bad, but you’d want to know.
You might also find that if a school has one or two big-name authors, they teach few classes or only grad students.
ETA
Also look at things like housing for writing communities, lit mags with staff positions for undergrads, reading series open to undergrads, guest writer series. I did some of that and it made a big difference.
Also make sure you understand if you have to compete to get into creative writing classes. At a lot of schools you have to submit a sample to get into a class. I knew people who never got into a class but tried every semester.
@WasatchWriter has a lot of good advice. I think a school with an MFA program can sometimes be to the detriment of the undergrad department. The top professors will be focused on the grad students, for the most part. (However, there are always exceptions to everything! Which is why the advice above is spot on - to see who actually teaches the undergrad classes.)
Things to look at: depth of program. How many fiction professors are there? Are there any writers whose work she really loves? Do they bring in visiting professors on a regular basis? Do they have a reading series?
What about the other courses in the college? She’s not only going to take writing classes - if she’s going to be a great writer, she’ll want to take a wide range of courses. Have her look at the course catalog and read about the actual classes offered. See if they are intriguing or not.
And, yes, the best creative writing programs will usually have an audition element - one will need to submit a portfolio for admission, and usually starting in Freshmen year to get into the major’s sequence. This is not a bad thing - it means the caliber of the students will be high. But it also means one must be willing to compromise for a different major if not admitted - such as literature…
Also, consider whether majoring in creative writing is really the best way to reach the goal. If the goal is to become the next great American novelist, credentials don’t matter. Perhaps majoring in English, or History, or Religion, or Classics, or whatever and taking some writing courses (which are also easy to get outside a degree program) would provide a richer background to draw from when writing that novel.
As far as school suggestions, if she prefers a school in or near an urban area (but one not better known for its tech like MIT or JHU), look at Northwestern, Columbia, NYU, and Emory.
Columbia college in chicago has a well-respected MFA program. I have no idea how competitive/selective it is.
And of course, there’s University of Iowa, considered the Holy Grail of creative writing programs.
I’d recommend trying a creative writing class/workshop in undergrad if she has time. Good practice (I don’t have an MFA, I just have taken lots of writing workshops, in undergrad and elsewhere, and I’ve met a lot of MFAs. Most of them in the Chicago area went to Columbia College. )
Thanks for the comments. Yes, I am thinking a double major might provide helpful background and expand career options in case the writing thing doesn’t work out. Most likely alternative/double major would be psych, though there has also been some talk of teaching if the writing doesn’t sell, for which maybe English would be more marketable? Not sure if writing majors are allowed to teach English when a major in the field is required.
Yes, I am a little concerned about the competition to get into classes and/or the major. She is very good but it’s hard to know whether she would be successful at a top program if it is competitive and spots are limited, especially since judgements about writing are somewhat subjective. She is entering some national competitions this year and that may give us a better idea how she is likely to be judged. I guess we will have to ask the heads of each writing program for data on how competitive it is to get into the classes.
She is looking for an undergrad major, not MFA. (Yet…). I have heard that the Iowa undergrad program isn’t really on par with the graduate program but that was just the opinion of one alum I asked. She is applying to the Iowa summer program for hs students, so if she ends up attending that I hope she can get a better idea what it’s like there. She takes creative writing as an elective at her school and has been involved with some local writing programs, competitions, and literary magazines, pretty much all that’s available locally.
This ^ is why S didn’t apply to any place where you had to “audition” to get into writing classes.
It’s true that you don’t need a creative writing major to write, but the feedback can sure help. And my gosh, you’re going to college to learn, and if one thing you want to learn is how to be the best writer you can be, why would you want to pick a place where you might not have that chance?
S passionately wants to be a writer (among other things) but doesn’t expect to make a living at it. No matter what, though, he wants to take classes in creative writing. So actually knowing beforehand that you’ll be IN those classes does kinda matter. It would truly be a drag to pick a college based on hearing it has a “great program” and then not be able to do that program. It’d be applying for an opportunity to gamble. Maybe you think you’re good enough to win the gamble, but it’s still a gamble. Anyhow that’s how we looked at it.
When it comes time to submit that Great Masterpiece for publication, there will be more than enough competition. Or grad school – you either get into the program or not, based on your portfolio. But undergrad? You’re going to fill your schedule with classes anyway, so it’d be nice to know they’ll include the classes you really want to be spending your time on!
And yeah, Matt Weiner managed to talk his way into private tutorials – but I assume he’s a good self-promoter or he wouldn’t have managed to pitch Mad Men. Apparently he had the pushiness / self-confidence for that in undergrad, too. Which is great, but not everyone is like that.
I majored in comparative literature, but managed to take three creative writing classes as an undergrad, one grad-level one i had to apply, or “audition” for. I believe the workshops, even the graduate-level one, was open to all majors.
That is probably the case now, at most schools.
So, if she can’t major in Creative Writing, maybe Literature, English, or anything else, honestly, as long as it gives her time and opportunity to take the creative writing classes and workshops offered.
@MomOnALaptop, How do writing programs avoid being competitive? Is it just based on who has registration priority? Or are the class sizes not limited? Or are they able to add more sections to accomodate everyone?
USA Today discusses these schools in “The 10 Best American Colleges for Writers”:
Emory
Hamilton
JHU
MIT
NYU
WUStL
Iowa
Columbia
Michigan
Colorado College
These articles discuss additional programs: “The 10 Best Colleges for Creative Writing,” The Freelancer; “The 25 Most Literary Colleges in America,” Flavowire.
Sure, @mathyone. Prerequisites, registration timing, having enough faculty to handle the demand, etc. Lots of schools manage to offer creative writing without onerous restrictions – the same way they offer small philosophy seminars or upper-level art classes.
Take Iowa. Sure, they limit enrollment into the official Creative Writing Track. But just taking a cursory glance at it, they seem to have a bunch of great creative writing courses that anybody could take without being in that track (and in fact, before you can apply to be in the track.) So that’d seem to be a place where a kid could study creative writing even if they decided not to concentrate in it or didn’t get into the track. Which would make it a win-win.
The Matthew Weiner story, though, illustrates something that a lot of applicants might not know, which is that a school might have great course offerings, but it’s possible that you couldn’t take any of them. Even if you wrote like Matthew Weiner. Who I assume didn’t start out as utterly incapable of putting a sentence together
And while that was 30 years ago, a quick glance at Wesleyan’s page shows that they promote the Concentration as very competitive to get into. I didn’t look to see if there are lots of courses that don’t require being in the Concentration; there might be. But I’ve seen a few departments that had very little unless you were admitted into the Creative Writing major or concentration. So checking out department policies would seem to be a good idea. If it doesn’t bother someone, fine, but just saying.
Thanks, that is a good listing. I noticed that they list something called prior enrollment probability which I take to mean historical chance of getting into this class. The intro fiction writing classes say 50-75%, not that encouraging, but it’s hard to know what to make of that. There are several sections so I wonder how they consider students who did not get their preferred section but perhaps were able to get into a different one–if they can apply to multiple ones, don’t know how it works. The nonfiction writing is listed as below 50%. So, a lot of classes but still seems somewhat difficult to get in. And these are the intro classes, the higher level ones seem to be by application only.
She might like the fiction writing selections at the Summer High School Institute at Columbia College Chicago. It’s definitely urban. She probably would not be interested in the school for an undergrad degree, as it’s open admissions, it seems, so maybe not a fit. But a summer program in the city would be cool. The degree students do tend to win the Columbia Scholastic Press Crown awards in creative writing each year. That Story Workshop method is lauded.
