Columbia Creative Writing Mfa

All have the presumed goal of training soon-to-be-published writers. Each year, some 20,000 people apply for admission to these programs.

All have the presumed goal of training soon-to-be-published writers. Each year, some 20,000 people apply for admission to these programs.Those accepted will, at least in theory, have access to skilled teachers, be surrounded by other talented rising writers, be funded in a way that lessens their financial constraint, and earn an entree into the world of books and writers.Richard Ford, an early product of the University of California at Irvine writing program, eventually won a Pulitzer for his novel Independence Day. This measure often seems more meaningful when a newly minted writer has a quick success that seems directly related to having been in a particular program.

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Boston University has the estimable Ha Jin, along with Robert Pinsky and Derek Walcott in poetry. Many of the top writers at the top programs teach infrequently (one class in a year or year and a half seems typical), because their published works are believed to do more than their teaching for the program’s image.

This is because writing programs must contend with the authorial “star system.” While the stars in most other disciplines are known chiefly to specialists, many of the big names in writing are cultural celebrities; having written The Book They Made Into That Movie, a famous author might even have currency with high-school seniors or alumni donors. program admitted only two fiction writers out of 260 applicants.

Almost every program director says virtually the same thing about the process: GREs, college grades, and what institution one attended as an undergrad are nearly meaningless, used at best as tie-breakers.

Of main importance is the short writing sample each student submits for consideration.

“Most of us are still walking around amazed we got in,” says Drew Keenan, a 34-year-old former software engineer from San Francisco who gave that life up to spend the two years in Iowa’s M. Determining which writing programs are best is an alchemy of hearsay, tenuous connectors, certain measurable facts, and one’s own predilections about the art of writing.

The number of graduate creative-writing programs has risen from about 50 three decades ago to perhaps 300 now.

In writing, more than in almost any other academic discipline, “the content walks through your door,” says the novelist Christopher Tilghman, who teaches at Virginia.

There and at Irvine and Michigan and Texas, to name a few, the numbers of applicants are staggering—often 500 or more.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop may be the best example of a program possessing an aura that puts it high on everyone’s list: A common refrain is “Everyone applies to Iowa because it’s Iowa.” The Iowa franchise, which had a three-decade head start on just about everyone else, has become bigger than any of its measurable components. But one source of reputation is the work and the renown of a program’s graduates.

Among those thousands of would-be writers who apply, many are driven by the implied example of other notable writers who have emerged from one or another program. And by the time success truly comes to pass, judging a writing program by that success can be like observing a star burning brightly in the sky after it imploded an eon ago.