the little writer that could.

Hey, all. I posted back in March about my visit to Columbia and whether I would choose to go there, since I was waiting on one more (non-MFA) decision. I decided to go to Columbia....and then a week or two later, had a complete breakdown over financial anxiety and told them I wasn't going to go. I already have graduate degrees and I've been paying on them for 2+ years, and got overwhelmed at the thought of the staggering cost of tuition+books+living in NYC. I've paid my own graduate education up to this point, through grants/loans/workstudy and working part-time, and will be paying for my MFA myself - this isn't a case of mommy and daddy footing the bill, so I wasn't taking cost issues lightly. If anything, my family was super concerned about the debt I would incur. Everything I read online pointed me in a direction far, far away from NY.

We've all heard and read the horror stories about Columbia and the other NYC MFA programs, about being "cash cows" and rude admins and no funding, and so on - it could go on for days and multiple Facebook threads, as we're all aware. Maybe some people have even experienced this themselves. My experience, however, has been far from that. Ever since the beginning, with sending in my confirmation deposit, the School of the Arts and the larger institution have been nothing but helpful and accomodating through email and phone conversations. Being a naturally anxious person, I'm sure I drove them crazy, asking a ton of questions "just to make sure," and they always responded promptly, politely and with a note that it was no trouble.

Very long story short, I decided to go because of a funding offer that opened up that eased my financial worries considerably. Am I still taking out some loans, especially to live? Yes - but drastically less than originally thought. Is this the norm? Maybe not. Maybe this experience is the exception and not the rule, but I never would have known if I didn't take that plunge and try to go for it. It is really easy to get caught up in the funding maze and talk of different programs and debt, and make "practical" decisions in lieu of going balls-to-the-wall and taking a flying leap towards your dream. Of course, practical is necessary sometimes - I'm not advocating going 100k in debt for the sake of not being practical - but if a program is perfect for you, and doesn't necessarily offer full funding, you never know what may happen until you try. Apply. Talk with administrators. Meet with students. Get to know the financial aid, housing and student services people. If you get in, you don't have to go. Be honest with the school about your financial concerns, look at other aid sources and ask the financial aid people about other sources of money. As Tim Gunn would say, make it work.

Because what it comes down to, really, is finding the program that is the best fit for you. But if you really want a program that seems out of reach for financial reasons, it might be worth going for it and seeing what happens.

So long, farewell

by Whitney Gray

Seth Abramson is stepping out of the MFA-spotlight. In a post over at the MFA Blog, Seth writes:

With Thanks

I appreciate how supportive everyone's been over the past three years. I've decided to end my work on MFA programs. That means a number of things, including removing myself as an administrator (or having any special posting privileges whatsoever) for this blog. It's Tom's blog, in any case, and I know he'll continue to offer this blog as a service to all of you, so there shouldn't be any significant effect to this. I wish all of you the very best in the future. I apologize for the briefness of this message; I imagine anything I would have said I've said elsewhere here, or simply elsewhere, and better. I hope I've helped some of you, at least a little, over the years. And I hope I get to meet some of you in the months and years ahead. Be well everyone.


I, for one, found the MFA Blog to be very helpful. I turned to Seth's site (The Suburban Ecstasies) often last year during application season. I was a big fan/tortured soul of the notifications page (and as I went to link to it, I see that Seth's site is completely gone!). I can't say I blame him for leaving the online world of anonymity and haterade. I'm sad to see him go, as he and his resources were very helpful to me last season.

Seth Abramson's Open Letter to AWP

I find this to be an extremely well-reasoned response to the recent controversy surrounding the rankings published in Poets & Writer's Magazine. In particular, he does a good job taking AWP to task for not being upfront with their lack of viable information, despite their insistence that they do possess some of this data. (Since my last post on this subject I found out that I am indeed a member of AWP. Yet as far as I can tell, the data on program acceptance rates and funding Matt Burriesci talked about in his letter on the AWP website is nowhere to be found) As always, read and discuss!

Navigating The MFA Rankings Throwdown

by Tory Adkisson

Here is AWP's response to Seth Abramson's article on MFA rankings that appeared in the last issue of Poets and Writers. I am not completely sold on Matt Burriesci's response, particularly his assertion that "statistically significant information culled from a major, comprehensive survey of these programs––including admissions statistics, program size, tuition information, and many other important facts and figures" are made readily available by AWP. He notes that such information, if it does exist, is available to AWP's members. Currently, I am not a member of AWP, and my sense is that most of us on this blog, and indeed most current and especially prospective MFA students are not members of the Association of Writing Programs. It seems to me that this type of information, if it is being contested, should be made available to the general public, especially given that (until recently) all of Abramson's data on MFA programs was on his blog, and had been for a few years.

That issue aside, I do think Mr. Burriesci is on to something when he mentions the "other stakeholders" left out of Seth's survey, people who are important in the development and maintenance of any MFA program. I don't mean to downplay your role (yes yours!) as applicants, but certainly applicants have their own particular biases. I realize that by publicly disagreeing with Seth Abramson I risk a rhetorical onslaught of epic proportions, but I do think that the inclusion of other groups related to MFA programs, as well as the addition of other important factors (salient data on alumni publication records would be at the top of my list) in the survey would have made it much more persuasive. The methodology does not bother me so much, it's more of an issue of variables than anything else.

I do think that AWP's database of MFA programs is woefully lacking in some vital data that would be useful to applicants, data that Burriesci insists exists somewhere. Information on program size, stipend amounts, acceptance rates, and other figures are of vital importance to anyone considering writing as more than just a hobby. I agree with Burriesci that selecting a writing program is a "complex and serious business," but it's not one that any amount of hard and fast data can elucidate or simplify. The responsibility rests on the applicant's willingness to do the research and consider what they want out of a certain model (full vs low-res), location, aesthetic, legacy, and whatever else you like. I disagree with both camps (AWP vs Abramson) for different reasons: AWP is clearly not doing enough to present alternative data to counteract Abramson's work--if they had the data and made it accessible, Abramson's work would be (potentially) rendered moot. As for Abramson, the holy father of MFA program data, his biases are clear and, as discussed in a post (which I don't wholly agree with) from the Best American Poetry blog, Abramson's poll "reflects only the responses of self-selected readers of his blog" that is, people who agree with him. This point may not be wholly true, but given that the poll was conducted on the MFA blog, the biases seem likely, despite Seth's assertion (in the comments) that the blog is an unbiased he has no ideological control over. He is the most prominent poster on the blog (or was until he started his own MFA blog) and has even advertised his own debut poetry collection on it.

That's really all I have to say about this for now. I am interested to hear what other people think about this whole MFA ranking hoopla given the new parties that have entered into the fray. Please discuss!