Hey, chance me or lmk how these camps are?
Main camps I’m looking into:
Iowa Young Writers’ Institute
Carleton College Summer Writing Program (seems great)
Reynolds Young Writers’ Workshop
Stats:
Sophomore year grades are ok, As and Bs are a mix quarter1
Freshman grades all Bs (will this seriously hurt application?)
ECs:
Debate awards/leadership positions
School newspaper
Starting a community service club + have a ton of hours
Any tips for getting in/do you think I can?
Just some comments: Iowa has the most prominent MFA in creative writing in the country, so that program would be outstanding, I imagine. You might also consider Kenyon, Rhodes, and Sewanee for their writers workshops.
As for chances- they will be looking mostly at your portfolio (which obviously you shouldn’t be posting here!)- so my advice personally would be to apply and see what happens. No one can really say just based on stats/ECs whether you will get into any of these.
As ProfessorMom1 said, Iowa’s program is great- and is also the most competitive to get into. I’m not sure where you’re based, but I do know that UVA has a pretty good Young Writer’s Workshop you can try applying to, if distance isn’t an issue.
Iowa Young Writer’s workshop is known as the “premier” writer’s camp. Kenyon College also had an excellent program. Both require a writing sample for admission as well as recommendation from your English teacher.
iyws alum here. nothing matters but your portfolio.
last year, iyws had a ~20% acceptance rate, as far as i know. can’t speak for the others. many people had been published in various magazines or won awards, but many (including myself) had not.
New poster here, a parent. I found this thread because I’m looking into summer writing programs for my daughter.
Several replies above about Iowa, but can anyone speak about the programs at Kenyon, Denison (Reynolds Writers Workshop) and the ones mentioned above, Sewanee, Rhodes, UVA? Beyond just saying this or that program is good, can anyone who attended (or had a child who attended) talk about whether the program had good faculty support (not just undergrads or grad students teaching/leading discussion), if kids worked collaboratively or seemed competitive with each other, if the focus really was on creative writing or if there was more of other types of writing than you/your child wanted–? Trying to see if high school daughter would be interested, and every college makes its program sound good on its web site, but would like some day to day details. Thanks!
To original poster Kjohnson1023 – I found this just now at Carleton’s web page about its Summer Writing Program: “The Summer Writing Program emphasizes a writing process approach, teaching you how to compose academic papers similar to those you will write in college.” Focus is on reading literature (Plato to Atwood) and writing about it, not on creative writing. Looks like a great humanities program but not a creative writing workshop, so it sounds quite different in focus from some other programs.