Brian Evenson, the director of Brown University’s MFA program and an excellent writer (I gave love to his collection Fugue State), recently finished reading a wheelbarrow full of MFA applications. He saw plenty of mistakes, and handed out some free tips on Facebook. With his permission, I reprint his advice here.
Tips for MFA Applications by Brian Evenson
Now that I’ve almost read through this year’s batch, here’s the advice I’d give off the top of my head to future MFA fiction applicants. Most of the applicants were interesting people and trying hard and it’s deeply appreciated, particularly when I’m reading so many applications. I don’t think any of the applications I read this year had a single malicious bone in their body. But here are a few tips that I would want to be told if I was thinking about applying. Please feel free to steal, revise, mutilate, or dispute:
1. Turn in your very best piece of fiction. This really, really matters to me, more than anything else. If I love a piece of writing, I will fight for it, and am willing to overlook a multitude of other sins.
2. Better to turn in one shorter excellent piece than a good piece and one bad one. Don’t turn in work just to max out the page limit. And if you’re finding yourself trying to cram all sorts of things into the page limit by changing the font and single-spacing, then step back and take a deep breath and think again.
3. Don’t try to pretend you’re something you’re not. Most of you don’t, and those of you who do don’t do it maliciously, but just kind of slowly convince yourself into it as you write and rewrite your application. Look, it’s easy to tell if you’re faking. So don’t fake.
4. Be honest, but “we’re dating and getting serious” honest rather than either “First date honest” or “Now that you’ve proposed, here’s all the stuff you need to know about me (like the fact that I killed my first wife)” honest. You can and should talk about your struggles and successes and trials and etc., but in moderation.
5. In the personal statement, write about yourself in a way that allows us to get a real sense of you and the way you are now, right now, and where you’re going. If you feel you have to go back to childhood to do that, that’s okay, but if I go away with a better sense of how you were when you were in 2nd grade (or whatever) than how you are now, that’s not good.
6. Read interesting things and learn how to talk about them in interesting ways. Read, read, read. And read eccentrically. Take chances. There’s no reason, no matter what your job or your circumstances, that you shouldn’t be reading an interesting book every week or two, and that’ll do a great deal for your development as a writer and as a person. It’s okay to let us know what books led you to writing, but better if we find out what books you continue to go back to and who you’re interested in now.
7. Don’t pretend to have read something that you haven’t read. Don’t google the faculty at a program and then try to include a line in your personal statement that suggests what their book is about. This rarely works, and as a result usually does more harm than good.
8. We’re interested in knowing what makes you unique, but within reason. And even if you have a great set of experiences and are incredibly interesting and we’d love to have an 8-hour long coffee with you to learn about your experiences running Substance D. from the American camp to the Norwegian camp in Antarctica, if your writing sample isn’t good enough you won’t get in. There comes a time when you need to choose to work on the writing instead of getting life experience as a carny.
9. If you already have an advanced degree, you have to explain convincingly why you want to get another, and why we should give this opportunity to you rather than to someone else. If you already have a PhD, we need to be convinced that this is the right thing for you and for us, and that you’re not just collecting degrees. But, honestly, the default acceptances for MFAs is usually (but not always) someone who doesn’t yet have an advanced degree. We’ve taken people with advanced degrees in our program, but it’s very much the exception rather than the rule.
10. If you already have a book out, same thing. Are you serious about improving your writing or do you want to treat this as a sort of an artist colony? If the latter, well, I’d suggest an artist colony: they’ll feed you, and we usually won’t. If I get the impression that you want to get the MFA mainly to have a teaching credential, that can be one or more strikes against you.
11. MFA programs make mistakes. We don’t always see the potential of people, which may be partly our fault and partly your own. Do everything you can when you put together your application to make sure that the fault is on our side rather than yours. But also remember: any really good program ends up with many more people they’d like to admit than they actually can admit. When it comes down to that final cut, it’s very very hard, and we’ll have to let people go who, ideally, we’d love to have come. So, if you don’t get in, don’t take it as a judgement. To our shame, we’ve turned down many great writers before, and probably will again. But fingers crossed that it won’t be you…
5 comments
Thank you for sharing this information. I find it very useful as I begin putting together my portfolio to apply for the undergraduate degree here at ASU. The Creative Writing program is small, so it is competitive. Evenson’s suggestions mirror some that were provided by the program director here, as well.
Thanks again!
Good advice, but one wonders this: why ask for anything other than the fiction (or poetry)? Seems like most of the problems that annoy Evenson occur in personal statements, which, as we all know, are an articifical and awkward genre. And, the books out there on writing “winning” personal statements for grad school suggest the exact opposite of his advice–they all state to mention someone on the faculty, for instance.
I remember the head of the Iowa M.F.A. program was interviewed once, and she said flatly that “we look only at the work. Personal statements and letters of recommendation don’t matter.”
Don’t ask for them. The application process is already onerous and expensive enough.
Some advice for M.F.A. directors: Cease application fees.
Stop asking for personal statements, biographical statements, statements of purpose, or, in some cases, all three.
Ask for just the work. And if you need to know more about the candidate, you can always get in touch.
Why does already having an advanced degree work as a handicap? If anything, an advanced degree shows that the candidate can already succeed in a graduate-level academic environment. What does a degree in, say, engineering have to do with writing? Discrimination against previously earned degrees is a form of age discrimination. There are plenty of older candidates with degrees that want to formally learn a new craft.
Same goes for candidates with a published book. If an MFA opens career opportunities, why begrudge the candidate that opportunity?
Of course, as part of a private school, Brown’s MFA program can do anything it wants, but Evenson’s highly arbitrary selection criteria seems unfair at best.
No, I am not a disgruntled former rejected applicant, just an amused blog reader….
Hg
These are quite helpful suggestions. As a (potential) future MFA applicant, this inspires me to focus on my writing and to “read eccentrically.” Despite my interest in it, I often find myself straying from contemporary literature because I’m trying to develop a scholarly repertoire. The contemporary literary scene includes the texts and authors I am most interested in talking about though. Thanks for the post!
Thank you for this post. This is a stressful subject for many students in my B.A. Creative Writing program and I appreciated your honesty mixed with your humor in this article. One of my favorites was #4 Be Honest (like the fact that I killed my first wife) honest. I think students can get carried away with what they “should” be writing or what they “should” be talking about, when being honest is more natural and interesting. If only I could heed this advice. Thanks again!