<p>hey. does anyone have any experience with or know anything about creative writing and its programs at u of c?</p>
<p>all knowledge and opinions welcome.</p>
<p>thank you, Jim Steele.</p>
<p>Just my impression, from listening to gossip: OK, not super. Adequate. Introductory - Intermediate - Advanced sequences in several broad genres. The introductory courses are essentially by lottery, and have lots of people looking for a fun course who are not necessarily talented or dedicated. A few years ago I heard one of the instructors talk about it. She split her time between Columbia and Chicago, and she said teaching at the two schools was an entirely different experience. The Columbia writing students were all very professional and sophisticated, very careerist, focused on producing manuscripts they could shop, while for the most part the Chicago students were amateurs blowing off steam and having fun.</p>
<p>Writing falls into the class of semi-professional training that Chicago simply doesn't WANT to do well. If, as a writer, you choose to be educated at Chicago, I think you are deciding that its valuable to get a substantive academic foundation rather than writing training. Many peer institutions have a much greater commitment to teaching writing as a serious discipline, among them Brown, Hopkins, Penn, Carnegie-Mellon.</p>
<p>thank you, jhs. that is moderately discouraging, but good to know.
brown is actually my top choice. Besides U of C i am also considering Vassar, Wesleyan, and Middlebury, which I heard all have good writing (especially vassar and wesleyan). curious if you are under the same impression.</p>
<p>I don't know anything about the writing programs at Wesleyan (except . . . Joss Whedon!), Vassar, or Middlebury. My writer-kid was never seriously interested in a LAC, although she visited the first two of those places, and Oberlin, which she liked best of all of them. The LAC that traditionally has a strong creative writing program is Kenyon -- but that phrase pretty much exhausts my knowledge about it.</p>
<p>There is a fair degree of overlap among all elite-type colleges, but Middlebury and Chicago are about as far apart in feel and style as it's possible to be within that universe.</p>
<p>I agree with JHS 100% on the accounts of creative writing here at Chicago, but I would emphasize that a lot of students pursue creative writing extracurricularly and it's not difficult to get involved and keep writing quality work.</p>
<p>I never liked writing classes to begin with, so the fact that Chicago has a small offering didn't bother me a bit.</p>