<p>If she wants more diversity, especially in the socio-economic realm, I’d take NYU off the list. NYU’s miserly FA policies are such that the student body tends to skew overwhelmingly upper/upper-middle class. </p>
<p>Even back when my high school classmates were applying to colleges in the early '90s, the only kids who ended up going among those who were admitted were wealthy and upper-middle class kids and the few middle class kids foolhardy enough to take on such a gigantic debt load even back then. Most of the middle/working class kids who were admitted to NYU turned it down to attend schools with better FA/scholarship packages…including many elite LACs/Unis. On this, I speak directly from experience as one of the working class kids who turned down NYU for an LAC (Oberlin). </p>
<p>The New School has a similar issue with lack of socio-economic diversity because of their low endowment, poor FA, and high tuition. In this respect, they’re very similar to NYU’s undergrad divisions. Moreover, from the several visits I’ve made to the New School…it seems to have less diversity in all the areas most people think about when they used that criterion. </p>
<p>Second those who said to keep more of an open mind regarding location and to look at various LACs/unis with great English/Creative writing programs.</p>
<p>I am happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but I think of Southwestern, Trinity and Austin as drawing primarily from Texas and thus not having a very diverse body of students at all.</p>
<p>A school which is more competitive but pledges to meet 100% of need may be more economically diverse than a school that has a gap in their fin aid packages.</p>
<p>I would agree that Reed would be somewhere worth looking at- it is in a city- albeit not one of the most diverse in the country.</p>
<p>From what I’ve read, Iowa has recently taken their creative writing success at the graduate level and started applying it to an undergraduate creative writing track.</p>
<p>That plus the AWP list should cover the vast majority of schools that would interest her. A lot of the schools on the list offer creative writing minors, or an emphasis in creative writing as opposed to a BA or BFA in Creative Writing. Once you narrow the list down, that’s when you start looking at the course catalog to see what kind of classes are required/offered.</p>
<p>If she is this far along in a potential writing career, perhaps she should identify the things she most wants to study that are NOT writing, and go for that, or just go for large / diverse / location. Like Natalie Portman going to harvard – she didn’t go there to further her acting chops, but to get an education in something or other. (Or to be impressive? you know what I am getting at.)</p>
<p>There is also the TIME factor. Does she want to go somewhere where she can spend time writing and earn credit for it? Then she needs a school with a writing program or writing classes, and those need to be workshop style. Otherwise she’ll be wasting her writing energy on stupid, stupid assignments… or constructive ones, but they still might drain creativity she might rather use elsewhere.</p>
<p>Now that I think of that, it is another reason to consider some of the schools where one makes one’s own program…or has more freedom to do so… where writing a novel can be part of how one earn’s one’s degree… rather than squeezing creative writing into the moments between distribution requirements and 8 core courses.</p>
<p>Unless she will otherwise not take any courses and spend all her time writing, and then why pay tuition?</p>
<p>Nothing is right (write?) or wrong. Just things to consider.</p>
<p>^^^which for me, as a parent, makes schools like Brown more appealing, or schools that are very generous with AP credit (so she can opt out of those classes that she has no interest in, i.e. math & science, as well as being able to jump over the basic English 101 & 102 classes.)</p>
<p>Reed doesn’t have Eng 101 & 102, it does have [url=<a href=“http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/hum110/]Hum110.[/url”>Humanities 110 - Reed College]Hum110.[/url</a>] which is required for all freshman no matter your AP score.
Reed also requires all graduates to take a junior qualifying exam & to publish & defend their senior thesis which may provoke some students to transfer.</p>
<p>Probably not one that would come to mind first, as it’s pretty far from a “vibrant metro area”, is College of the Atlantic. It fits virtually every other criteria you listed. It’s fairly diverse at 15-16% international, definitely a quirky student body, and she would have the freedom to explore many academic areas as all students design their own major. Everyone is awarded a Bachelor’s in Human Ecology. If she’s looking for characters, she should not dismiss it out of hand just due to location. I find the school very intriguing.</p>
<p>Analytic Dad, heres another vote for Brown. It seems to me that it fits all five what she wants categories in your original post. I can attest from my visits that it is filled with brilliant but fun-loving students from every corner of the globe, who have a passion for their classes because the open curriculum allows them such great breadth of choice. Plus Providence just seems to me to be a real writers town an old, fun, quirky harbor town.</p>
<p>Just throwing this out there as I don’t know too much about the place, but Tulane occurred to me because of the really interesting and perhaps quirky culture of New Orleans, and the school’s efforts to attract top students with great merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Tulane does not end up with very many top students, despite their efforts to attract them. I think the OP’s D is looking for a much higher concentration of brilliant, as well as quirky students than Tulane provides.</p>
<p>^^^Yup. Despite getting 43,000 applications for the incoming Fall 2010 class and a 26% admission rate, they only had a 14% yield. Another school on D’s list…I’m figuring at least I’ll get to visit New Orleans ;)</p>
<p>Why does your D need to go to college? If she already has an agent in high school (which is extraordinary!!!), why not just write and then also travel, work, etc., to gain life experience?</p>
<p>I’m confused. What’s more important- a school that meets her socio-intellectual and location needs or a school with a great writing program? I disagree that a good programs can turn a plebian writer into a good enough one (unless the idea is to become a 9-5 writer, for a corp, institution, magazine, etc.) And, if she is a brilliant writer, an ordinary program can be boring and isolate her. I look at some and have to ask: after you take CR1, Poetry1 and the few others, what do you do? Are you working with fellow students who will become your long-time peers and help refine your work?</p>
<p>^ budding writers go to college for the same reason budding artists do- to refine their perspective, obtain reference knowledge, have the advantage of critiques from pro’s, as well as hone their own critical thinking and self-eval skills. Doesn’t always work, but that’s the theory. Plus, she may not want to write for the youth market forever.</p>
<p>PG: Before I posted, I checked the Iowa website. I don’t want to post the entire website, but below is first part of the description. From what I’ve heard of the community, it sounds wonderful for writers, aspiring or already publishable.</p>
<p>Courses for Undergraduates
All undergraduate students are encouraged to enroll in the following courses offered by the Writers’ Workshop:</p>
<p>8C:001 Creative Writing Studio Workshop
8C:023 Creative Writing
8C:097 Fiction Writing
8C:098 Poetry Writing
8C:107 Creative Writing for Health Professionals
8C:166 Undergraduate Poetry Workshop*
8C:163 Undergraduate Fiction Workshop*
*These courses are conducted in much the same way as the Graduate Poetry and Fiction Workshops.</p>
<p>Just adding Bennington. It seems as if this daughter would fit there really well, great writing program but a chance to explore all kinds of cool classes, very independent work, lots of quirky kids, many of whom turned their backs on Ivies to go there. It is in Bennington VT, but there is a 7 week “field work term” in which the students leave and do projects on their own, all over the world.</p>
<p>Not to repeat everyone else, but I would say also Brown, NYU, Oberlin maybe, Barnard.</p>
<p>One thing I notice with such threads is for any question, there are tons of suggestions…but it seems its always sooo in the eye of the beholder. Name any positive attribute that isn’t a fact, and almost every school will get mentioned eventually (especially all large schools that because of their size of course have a bit of everything). And some schools mentioned so far on this list, IMHO, don’t at all fit the bill of what his D is looking for. </p>
<p>I wonder to myself: what schools would any of us agree he NOT look at?</p>