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Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

October 12, 2008

In 1996, the popular news magazine U.S. News and World Report conducted a nationwide survey of professors from nearly a hundred Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (M.F.A.) programs.  The result of this survey was the publication, in 1997, of the first-ever program rankings in the field.  Each program was given a numeric score based upon a single factor: the reputation of the program, as assessed by current faculty at various M.F.A. programs nationwide.  At the time, the top five programs were listed as (in order), University of Iowa, The Johns Hopkins University, University of Houston, Columbia University, and University of Virginia.
In the four years following the first publication of these rankings, the survey results were republished several times by U.S. News and World Report, each time without alteration or update.  Eventually, in 2001, the magazine publicly announced that it would, in fact, cease ranking M.F.A. in Creative Writing programs, and had no present or future plans, therefore, to amend or augment the data it collected in 1996.  The rumored reason for this editorial decision was that the magazine felt its statistical paradigm and assessment tools were ill-suited to assessing studio-art graduate programs (though, interestingly, the magazine continued publishing annual rankings in the fields of Ceramics, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Multimedia/Visual Communications, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture).
In 2005, a fiction-writer and Lecturer at Stanford University, Tom Kealey, wrote and published the first comprehensive guide to M.F.A. in Creative Writing programs, The Creative Writing MFA Handbook (Continuum Publishing, 2005).  While the book did not formally rank programs, it was notable for both the depth of its treatment of its subject as well as its introduction of a then-novel concept: that the quality of the financial aid package offered by an M.F.A. program should be as important a consideration in the matriculation decision of an applicant as a program’s reputation and location.  The theory behind this maxim, according to Kealey, was that as the M.F.A. degree was a “studio” degree, rather than a professional degree–inasmuch as the degree alone did not guarantee employment in any specific field–applicants should avoid, where possible, programs which did not fully or at least generously fund all their students.
The result of Kealey’s funding-centered analysis of M.F.A. programs was a fundamental reordering of the program rankings previously published by U.S. News & World Report.  Whereas these latter rankings had not included funding as a factor, the implicit rankings of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook–which discussed the comparative quality of various programs without formally ranking them–significantly privileged fully-funded programs.  Consequently, the top programs, in Kealey’s assessment, appeared to be (in order), University of California at Irvine, University of Texas, University of Michigan, Cornell University, Indiana University, University of Virginia, Syracuse University, The Johns Hopkins University, Brown University, and University of Houston.  Notably absent from Kealey’s top-ten rankings were the popular New York City-based programs at Columbia University and New York University, both of which had been ranked in the top ten in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, but were now felt to offer sub-standard financial aid packages.  Kealey’s implicit overhaul of the earlier U.S. News and World Report rankings presaged a new era in the ranking of M.F.A. programs, in which much of the old conventional wisdom–for instance, that apart from the much-vaunted program at the University of Iowa, programs on the East and West coasts were categorically most desireable–would be discarded.
In December of 2006, I published on my website, The Suburban Ecstasies, my interpretation of the largely-implied M.F.A. program rankings contained in The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, calling the resulting rankings The Kealey Scale.  Realizing that The Kealey Scale was, by dint of its origin, heavily weighted toward consideration of funding, I augmented The Kealey Scale with an informal poll of M.F.A. applicants conducted primarily on the website of the literary magazine Poets & Writers.  While in no way sponsored or endorsed by Poets & Writers, the resulting Poets & Writers Reader Poll was nevertheless significant in that it was the first-ever assessment of which programs the most well-informed M.F.A. applicants favored.  The results were striking, largely in their substantial deviation from the rankings published by U.S. News and World Report in 1997.  The top-polling programs, amongst a group of 200 respondents, were (in order) University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, University of Texas, Cornell University, Indiana University, Syracuse University, Brown University, and University of California at Irvine.  This new data had the effect of confirming the significance and accuracy of Kealey’s earlier-published rankings, as the correlation between Kealey’s research and the opinions of the largest gathering of M.F.A. applicants on the internet was striking.
The response to the publication of The Kealey Scale and the Poets & Writers Reader Poll was overwhelming; within days of their publication, The Suburban Ecstasies began receiving more than 1,000 unique visitors/day, suggesting that the rapidly-expanding field of graduate study in creative writing was desperate for new assessment tools.  In light of the popularity of the two new rankings of M.F.A. in Creative Writing programs on The Suburban Ecstasies, I began collecting additional data on M.F.A. programs heretofore unavailable either on the internet or in print.  Specifically, I researched the yield-exclusive acceptance rates for more than fifty programs, including most of the top fifty programs as ranked by Kealey and the readers of Poets & Writers.  The most significant discovery of this process was that the top creative writing programs were more difficult to get into than the top medical, law, engineering, and business schools in the United States.  Specifically, all of the top-ten toughest-admit M.F.A. programs in the field had yield-exclusive acceptance rates below 3%, headed up by three schools–Cornell University, University of Texas, and University of Wisconsin–each with acceptance rates of 1.5%.  While research into M.F.A. admissions data also uncovered the low number of applications per program, with only University of Iowa receiving more than 1,000 applications total, it also revealed a distinct upward trend in the number of applicants per program, and even the number of programs in the United States overall.  In the ten years since U.S. News and World Report had last published M.F.A. in Creative Writing rankings, an average of six new programs had been founded per year.
In late 2007, I augmented The Kealey Scale, the Poets & Writers Reader Poll, and the data on M.F.A. acceptance rates with a fresh Poets & Writers Reader Poll as well as the first-ever genre-specific polls (including rankings in the genres of poetry and fiction, and a ranking of the nation’s few PhD. in Creative Writing programs).  Interestingly, the 2008 Poets & Writers Reader Poll was so similar to its 2007 predecessor as to suggest a high confidence level, statistically speaking, for the admittedly unscientific results of both polls.  In 2008, the top-ranked M.F.A. in Creative Writing programs were University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Texas, University of Virginia, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Brown University, Cornell University, Indiana University, Syracuse University, and University of Wisconsin.  In poetry, the top five programs were University of Michigan, University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Virginia, and Brown University; in fiction, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Syracuse University, University of Texas, and University of Virginia; among U.S. Creative Writing PhD. programs (of which only thirty-five presently exist), Florida State University, University of Utah, University of Houston, University of Georgia, and University of Southern California.
In mid-2008, I was asked to contribute a lengthy chapter to the second edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook. I determined that, if Kealey’s vision of promoting funding-weighted admissions decisions was to be realized, a funding-only ranking of M.F.A. programs was needed.  This first-ever funding ranking (denominated the Abramson/Kealey Funding Ranking) is now due to appear in the second edition of the Handbook (scheduled for release in late 2008).  By way of previewing this ranking, it can now be said that the top five best-funded M.F.A. in Creative Writing programs are University of Texas, University of Michigan, Cornell University, and (in a three-way tie for fifth) University of Florida, Indiana University, and Purdue University.
The second edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook also contains the first-ever Comprehensive Tiered Ranking of M.F.A. in Creative Writing programs, as well as the “master” Poets & Writers Reader Poll, with nearly 300 respondents across the application cycles of 2006-7 and 2007-8.  The top five M.F.A. programs in the field of creative writing, according to this master poll, are University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and (in a tie for fifth) University of Texas and University of Virginia.  The tiered ranking of programs–which includes, in total, more than sixty programs (four “top” tiers of twelve schools each, an “On the Bubble” classification containing six schools, and a “New and Climbing” category with eight programs represented)–can be found exclusively in the second edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook. This ranking is not available either in whole or in part on-line.
Data collection for the 2009 Poets & Writers Reader Poll is now under way, with the preliminary results–the poll is updated weekly once it is made available to the public–due to be released in early fall.

Posted by white smoke | Filed Under Grammar Correction, Writing Software, editing, english writing, proofreading software, white smoke, whitesmoke, writing, writing proofreading 

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