What is the difference among the MA, MFA, and Ph.D.?

The MA is an additional credential that will make you a more attractive candidate for jobs that involve writing (advertising, editing, journalism, public relations, etc). It is required for high school teachers. An MA will also qualify you for teaching in a private high school and in a community college, so if you want to teach but aren’t sure you want to deal with public-school administrative and disciplinary hassles, you might think about those options. It usually takes about three years, and you pay for it yourself.

The MFA is a professional degree that equips creative writers to become university faculty members. It involves intensive workshop work, total dedication to one’s writing, and a desire to train oneself to become a professor of fiction, poetry, prose, or drama. In other words, don’t do the MFA if you just enjoy creative writing and want to play around with it for a few years; in that case, look for an MA program with a creative-writing track.

Should I go to graduate school?

Some people want an MA just because they love literature, which is perfectly legitimate and, indeed, the need that the MA was designed to serve.

Some people want an MA because they’re thinking about going on for the Ph.D. but not quite sure. This is also a very good reason to get an MA. You will get a sense of what graduate-level work is like and be able to decide whether it’s really right for you.

Some people want an MA because they plan to teach high school; that is also fine. For more details, see below.

But for a Ph.D. or MFA you need a very different feeling. You need to feel that you passionately love literature – that you have such a strong drive to study or write this stuff that you can imagine nothing better – that spending a few years holed up in a research library communing with Chaucer, or having other people critique your poems word by word, is the most blissful thing you can imagine. For a Ph.D. or MFA you need to feel that you have found your calling.

Do NOT get a Ph.D. if you just want to study literature for a few more years. The Ph.D. is not another MA program. It is much longer, much more arduous, and demands complete commitment.

What can I do with a graduate degree?

An MA enables you to teach high school. If you teach high school in New York, you will have to get an MA for your certification. But here are two facts people don’t usually know:

• With an MA you can also get jobs at private schools, where you may not need certification and where conditions are often much cushier (well-laid out campuses, a picked body of academically strong students, small class sizes, interesting course topics).
• With an MA you can also get jobs at community colleges. You generally will not be teaching literature there, but introductory composition. It can be quite grueling (you teach about five courses a term, to students who are often very needy), but the pay is excellent, you have the cachet of being a professor, you can enjoy teaching adults who don’t have the disciplinary and developmental problems of high school students, and you can sometimes get motivated, diverse, mature students.

An MFA enables you to teach creative writing at the university level. However, this is a very competitive field, especially if you hope to stay in New York. So in order to win a job as a professor of fiction or poetry, you have to have other credentials as well: at least one published book, preferably two.

A Ph.D. is different from an MA. It is, specifically, job training to become a professor. If you enter a Ph.D. program, you are planning to become a professor of literature, teaching at the university level. You should know, however, that academic jobs are scarce and highly competitive, and it may take years to land one. Therefore you should also have some backup options. These may include: working at a non-profit institution, popular writing, journalism, prep school or community college teaching, computer work, etc. In other words, do a Ph.D. only if you plan to become a professor, but keep in mind that you may have to resort to something else if that doesn’t work.

How much does it cost?

If you go for an MA, you will have to pay tuition. If you are teaching in a high school, the school may cover that cost. Tuition costs vary from school to school. An MA generally takes two or three years, depending on how long it takes you to write your MA thesis, so you can figure out the costs. Our MFA program also requires you to pay tuition.

If you go for a professional degree, a Ph.D., you will not have to pay anything. Normally, you will get a tuition waiver and a small stipend – about $18,000 per year for living expenses. The graduate school is not doing this out of charity. They will be using you to teach their basic English classes. If they had to hire a professor to do that, they’d have to pay the professor $40,000+ per year, so by paying you $18,000 per year, they are saving considerable money. Do not go to any grad school that makes you pay your own money for the privilege – this is exploitative and indefensible. (The CUNY Grad Center does not waive tuition, but it offers other ways of making up the money.) Different grad schools will offer you different financial packages. You need to consider not just how much they pay, but how much it costs to live in the area (Princeton is far more expensive than Iowa State) and how much teaching they make you do (teaching will slow down your own work and force you to spend extra years in grad school).

What is it like to get an MA?

An MA class is like a souped-up undergraduate class. You read twice as much material, have longer classes, and write longer papers. As a general guide, where professors may assign about 150 pages of reading per week to their undergraduates, they will assign 300 per week to their graduate students plus critical and theoretical texts. The discussion moves very fast and covers a lot of ground. It usually has a 20-page seminar paper due at the end, a 10-page presentation, and sometimes a 10-page paper due in the middle as well. It is more challenging than undergraduate courses, and therefore you can only do two or three per semester. Most people do the MA part-time while working full-time, and may therefore stretch it out further, doing only one or two courses per semester.

After you’ve completed the course requirements for the MA, you will write an MA thesis. This is an in-depth, thoroughly researched investigation into a literary topic that interests you. It must be at least 60 pages long (though it’s usually longer, 75-90 pages) and generally falls into three chapters. Think of it as three 20-page seminar papers back to back. Most people enjoy the chance to achieve mastery over something – you read all the relevant material and really do become an expert. You work closely with your main advisor but you also pick a reader (or even two readers) who will get the final draft of the thesis before your oral exam. At Queens, you can opt for the “three-paper option” instead of a thesis, which means revising three seminar papers and taking an oral exam on them. QC’s MA program is fairly typical of MA programs nationwide.

What is it like to get an MFA?

Information about QC's MFA program is available at http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Creative_Writing, and you can talk to the faculty in that program: Jeffery Allen, Nicole Cooley, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn, Richard Schotter, and John Weir. But, in general: an MFA program can be tough. You will be writing more and faster than you’ve probably ever written in your life, and everything you write will be workshopped down to the last comma. That means that a group of ruthlessly ambitious writers will be dissecting your work, word by word, and you in turn will be critiquing theirs. In other words, you will be immersed in writing: your own, other students’, and of course the work of contemporary and earlier writers from whom you can learn about craft. Don’t go to an MFA program expecting to find admiring acolytes or tips on selling your screenplay to Hollywood . Go only if you have the strength, courage, and ambition to strip your writing down to its bones and rebuild it.

What is it like to get a Ph.D.?

A Ph.D. is a completely different course of study from the MA. You will be immersed in an intense academic environment where you think, learn, talk, study, and argue about literature 24 hours a day. For the first two or three years (depending on the program) you take courses. These are even more challenging than MA courses; you may be doing 300-500 pages of reading per week plus critical texts, and again, you therefore take no more than two or three at a time. Like MA courses, you will do a 20-pp seminar paper, a 10-pp presentation, and often a short paper as well. They are intense and exciting opportunities to delve into a field, where you read the most controversial, up-to-date, or intriguing materials. Often they are driven by the professor’s own research. When you’ve finished your coursework, you generally take some kind of exam and then get awarded an MA, but the MA is not a big deal, just a marker that you are past your coursework.

After you’ve finished coursework, you start working on your dissertation. It may take you anywhere from 3 to 5 years to write the dissertation. You will be teaching freshmen at the same time, so your rate of progress will vary depending on how much teaching you have to do. This is usually at least 120 pages but is often 200-300 pages. Like an MA thesis, it should show mastery of a field, but it goes beyond an MA in that it should also advance that field. You will be expected to make a new argument or masterful analysis that constitutes an original contribution to literary studies. This means you might study texts that nobody else knows about, make a new kind of argument about well-known texts, or sum up the work of a whole field in an intriguing new way. Think of it as a first draft of a book. (This is, in fact, what it is, since you will have to publish it when you become a professor.) Like a book, then, the dissertation needs to feel profoundly compelling, deeply linked to your most fundamental interests, fascinating enough to drive you to keep working. The dissertation can take years, and because it is original research, by definition there is nobody else out there who knows what you know. This means that you are writing in isolation much of the time. It may be the most challenging thing you have ever done, but also the most fulfilling.

If I know I want a Ph.D., should I go get my MA first?

No. When you go to a Ph.D. program, you will get the MA along the way anyhow, and you won’t pay for it because you’ll be in a Ph.D. program. There is no reason to spend your money and an extra two or three years to get the MA separately. Nor will an MA save you much time in your Ph.D. program. Some Ph.D. programs may give you some credit for the MA, but this is highly variable. You probably won’t save more than a year from your Ph.D., and you’ll have spent two or three years at the MA to do it.

There are some exceptions. Get the MA separately first if: a) you’re not sure you want a Ph.D. and need to test what grad school feels like; b) you feel you’re not emotionally ready to embark on a Ph.D. yet and want to have a transitional experience; or c) your undergraduate record is spotty and you want to improve your chances of admission to a Ph.D. program by showing you can do an MA.

How would I have to change my lifestyle if I pursue a Ph.D.?

You will have to learn to live on a very tiny stipend. This means that you will need to find as cheap an apartment as possible and watch your expenses very closely. If you have a partner who earns a real salary, life will be much easier; if not, be prepared for an austere lifestyle. This would be a good time to become a vegetarian.

Three things that you will find very difficult when you are getting a Ph.D. are living at home with your parents, commuting a long way to the program, or working full-time (or even part-time).

This is an intense immersion in academic culture. You will be staying up till the early hours of the morning, reading more books in a month than you may normally read in a year, living in the library, taking and teaching classes that occur at all hours of the day. Moreover, much of graduate school consists of intense colloquy with other grad students – long discussions over coffee in which you dissect the profession and work out knotty intellectual problems. These discussions occur around the clock, late into the night, over long meals. Therefore:

• You will absolutely need your own space. Even the most understanding and loving family will find it hard to cope with your new schedule, and will resent your inability to meet the ordinary demands, chores, and expectations of family life. If you are still living with your parents, find a tactful way to exit. If you have a spouse and/or children, make sure they understand your grueling new schedule and set aside a space to serve for your study.
• It is not realistic to try to commute to the school from a long way away. You need to live within an hour’s commute, because you will be on campus at odd hours anytime from 9:00 a.m. to midnight.
• At most graduate schools it will not be possible to maintain any kind of outside job. Your teaching duties will consume all the time you can spare from writing. At the dissertation stage, once you have acclimated to graduate school, you may be able to cope with some kind of freelance or minor work, but don’t count on it, since a) any kind of work that you can fit into your schedule probably will not pay well and b) work will slow down your progress through the Ph.D. even more. Some public institutions like the Graduate Center do accommodate outside work, but this means that students take fewer classes and struggle more; they take much longer to finish their degrees and can easily fall behind. In short, if you can avoid it, don’t do it, even if the institution permits it.

How do I apply for the MA?

See our admissions page. Our MA is fairly typical of programs nationwide, so the advice there will help you wherever you decide to go.

How do I apply for the MFA?

See the admissions advice at http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Creative_Writing/admissions.html. For the MFA, your writing sample will be of the utmost importance. Here are some tips:

• Make sure that what you send is the most original, interesting, well-crafted work you have. If you’re not sure, take it by a creative-writing faculty member for advice.
• If you have done your research, you will know that the writing program to which you are applying has specializations, and if your writing fits that specialty, so much the better.
• Make sure it is the length requested in the application; if you send your 150-page novel manuscript nobody will read it.
• Print it out neatly but without frills. You want it to look like a serious professional manuscript that can speak for itself, and if you use fancy fonts or pictures or glossy binding you will make it look like a homemade high school project.
• If you can get something published in a real journal (not self-published or on a dubious website) that will help too. Look for lists of likely journals in the Writer’s Market guides.

How do I apply for the Ph.D.?

Basically, you’ll take the GRE and the GRE’s Literature Subject Test, write a personal essay, and include a writing sample (generally your very best undergraduate essay), a transcript, and recommendations from professors. Applications are generally due in the fall, and you hear in the spring. Some warnings:

• The verbal section of the GRE and the Literature Subject Test ought to have very high scores. If you don’t get scores in the 700s, you will have trouble getting into grad school. The departments won’t care very much about the math or logic parts of the GRE, although obviously it’s better if you do well on them too.
• Instead of making your recommenders produce multiple copies of each letter, set up a dossier at Career Development. Then the professor puts one copy of the letter into your folder, and Career Development sends out the contents of the folder to each school. Click here for tips on how to ask professors to write recommendations.

How do I write the application essay?

You will feel an overwhelming compulsion to write an essay about why you want to go to grad school. Go ahead, do so. Then rip it up and construct an essay about why you would be a good choice for that particular grad school. You don’t have to convince them that you want to come; after all, you’re applying! Instead, think from their perspective. What would make you look like an intriguing candidate? Why should they pick you over Joe Schmoe from SUNY? Here are two hints.

• These admission committees get a lot of middle-class white students from private schools. So already you probably offer something different. If you come from a particular ethnic group, if you identify yourself as working class, if you’ve had to work to put yourself through college, if you’ve overcome personal obstacles to succeed academically, play that up.
• At the same time, admissions committees want to know that you are aware of, and can cope with, the type of work you’ll be doing in their program. So if you have familiarity with a particular theoretical approach, or if you’ve done original research, or if you’re fascinated by a currently hot topic (gender, class, race, sexuality), or if you have experience organizing poetry slams and interning at summer writing workshops, emphasize your interest in the field and demonstrate your mastery of its terms. Generally speaking, you want to construct a narrative of how you got to this point, in which you can incorporate stories of your own difficulties and your own intellectual triumphs. If there’s anything in your record that needs to be explained – a C- in your sophomore year – now is the time to do it. You want to give them a full picture of you.

How long does it take to get a degree?

It’s up to you. You have to write the thesis. An MA or MFA takes two or three years; a Ph.D., five to seven years. It can be longer if you have a difficult subject, get writer’s block, or have personal events or teaching duties that interfere. But it will almost never be shorter.

What are the best Ph.D. programs?

• Among the best English departments in the country are (in no particular order), Berkeley, Cornell, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Rutgers, NYU. The differences among them are largely differences of atmosphere. Cornell, for instance, is an extremely close-knit department in an isolated rural environment, while Yale is a large department in an urban area. Some are generally perceived to be declining (Duke) while others are improving (NYU). Some are tiny (Princeton) while some are vast (Berkeley).
• Don’t, however, apply only to those schools. They get hundreds of applicants for perhaps twenty spots. You need some ‘safety’ schools too, and for these, big state schools are often very good. University of Michigan, University of Florida, University of Delaware, University of Illinois, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, University of Indiana, Penn State, and University of Washington, are all excellent schools with top-notch faculty and superb research libraries, and they are much easier to get into. They may be among the best programs in the nation for your particular specialization, even if they don’t have the all-around reputation of the top departments.
• You need to decide what you want. Talk to faculty members here at QC; we’ve gone to these schools and have friends there who keep us up-to-date. Talk to faculty members who teach at the Grad Center. Look at critics whose work you like; where do they teach? Go to the schools’ websites and glean what information you can from them. If you can be flexible geographically, you will have a lot more options. If you think you want to specialize in a particular field, ask advice from the faculty who teach that field. If you are a creative writer, think about what kind of place would foster your writing: a close community in a beautiful rural environment? an exciting urban center with a large diverse program?

Can I stay here?

Queens College currently offers an MA and an MFA. The vast majority of our MA students are high-school teachers, so if you teach or are planning to teach high school, it will probably be a comfortable environment for you. If you are interested in going on for a Ph.D., however, it makes more sense to go straight to a Ph.D. program.

The New York Ph.D.-granting schools are Columbia, NYU, and CUNY Graduate Center. Further out are Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, and SUNY Stony Brook. Here is John Weir’s purely subjective sense of the good and bad about each place – other faculty might have different perspectives. Columbia is strong in postcolonial, but poor in feminism, and has a reputation for being a difficult place to work because the faculty is composed of superstars with big egos and overworked, dispensable junior faculty. NYU has superb faculty, including a lot of cutting-edge younger people, but they have a large, tumultuous, not very organized graduate program. CUNY has excellent professors, many of whom you already know from QC, and it’s especially superb in queer theory, American studies, and contemporary literature, but it has a poor library and problematic budget. Of the schools further out, Rutgers has an excellent faculty, especially in Victorian studies, and an okay but not great library; Princeton has a great library but is an expensive place to live; Yale has superb resources but reputably makes life very difficult for grad students; and SUNY Stony Brook is the easiest to get into, but has had severe staffing crises and a badly divided faculty.

By all means, apply to the NY-area schools, but be prepared to go further afield. One problem they all share is the cost of living. It is virtually impossible to live in New York on a graduate student’s stipend, which means that you’d have to get other jobs to supplement your income, and this will slow you down. It is also a good idea, for your own development, to get out of here. See a new region, get to know a different group of faculty.

Where can I find more information?

There are lots of guides to graduate school. For MFAs, look at awpwriter.org, the website for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs; they sell The AWP Official Guide to Writing Programs. For Ph.D.s, see if you can get hold of the now-unfortunately-out-of-print Lingua Franca Real Guide to Grad Schools. Page through the other graduate-school guides in the bookstore. Go to the websites of the schools in which you’re interested. Try out their library catalogues; look up their faculty; investigate their towns; peruse their graduate course offerings. Ask QC faculty members who work in the area in which you’re thinking of specializing. You also can go to Career Development (B building, 213) for advice about applications.