So, is anyone here currently in or a graduate of the Creative Writing program at NC State? I've been accepted as a transfer student into the English program at both NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill and am still awaiting a decision from Duke, and I'm just trying to weigh my options.

I want to teach English at the high school and possibly college level (I plan on attending graduate school after I get my Bachelor's), but right now, what I'm most interested in is pursuing my poetry. That's what State has in its corner--it's the only school that offers a Creative Writing major (UNC only offers a CW minor, and I don't think Duke offers either). If I go to State, the plan would probably be to double major in English (American Lit) and Creative Writing (Poetry).

UNC-CH is the more prestigious school and has the more prestigious English program on paper, but all I've heard from writers I've met whom I respect is that they really, really love what State is doing with the Creative Writing program. So, the question is, how pleased were or are you Creative Writing graduates and students with the CW program at State (or, even how pleased are you guys with the English department in general at State)?

[Edited on April 19, 2011 at 2:03 PM. Reason : .]

4/19/2011 1:59:57 PM

I have a friend who graduated in Creative Writing, I can forward this along to him

4/19/2011 3:52:47 PM

I've taken 8 English courses at NCSU, one of which was creative writing course. Those courses being: COMP AND RHETORIC, STUDIES IN FICTION, INTRO SHAKESPEARE, CLASS BACK ENG LIT, LIT WESTN WORLD I, AMERICAN LIT I, AMERICAN LIT II, and EXPL CREATIVE WRIT. I remember the creative writing professor talking about how she taught some at UNC and some at NCSU, and she liked how much bigger NCSU's creative writing department was.

I know that NCSU, Duke, and UNC all participate in the inter-institutional program, wherein you can take courses at any of the universities and only pay your own school's tuition, so long as your own school doesn't offer that exact same course or so long as you can make the case why the other school does it a lot better.

Quote :

"even how pleased are you guys with the English department in general at State"

One of my favorite professors/classes was with Dr. Hunt in the English department. And I obviously found enough value in the department to spend many of my electives there. I do not believe you will be disappointed with the quality of instruction if you pursue a degree at NCSU. But I think that should be balanced against research about which school will provide you the best in-roads into whatever you hope to do with the degree. And I think you should consider the inter-institutional option too, so that you can sample from the best of each, so long as you don't mind a little commuting.

4/19/2011 4:11:35 PM

I'm ThePeter's friend who got a BA in Creative Writing.

I would say the English dept itself is better than the Creative Writing focus. There are plenty of good professors that really know, and have a passion, for what they teach. Pretty much all of them are heavily egocentric, but typically not in a detrimental way, merely interesting to watch.

As far as Creative Writing itself, the requirements are ridiculously easy to achieve and the classes tend to have a narrow focus. The teachers and most of the students seem overly focused on classic writing so if you have a pull, like myself, towards fantasy or (technically) horror genres prepare to be outcast unless the class has an atypical spread of nerds. Because of that, my growth as a writer is questionable and I wouldn't be able to tell you straight if it was worth the money. I'm sure that sort of thing is common in most CW programs because majors with a creative focus rely more on personal growth and the direct results of the program are less tangible. As far as poetry specifically, I couldn't go into specifics myself because its not my cup of tea, my girlfriend, who is in the process of her CW degree, feels it has similar problems.

Now with that said, I can tell you I legitimately liked the program, but I honestly couldn't tell you how it stacks against UNC's.

Hope that helps. And sorry if there are any weird phrasing or spelling; my phone's autocorrect is a bit off sometimes.

4/19/2011 4:20:35 PM

and there it is

4/19/2011 4:21:07 PM

Interesting. Thanks for the responses and the help, guys. I don't tend toward the fantasy or horror genres, Shinte, so I don't anticipate that being a problem for me specifically, but that is very helpful nonetheless.

And, Supplanter, I had no idea about the inter-institutional program; that's great to know, so thanks a whole lot for tipping me off to that.

Honestly, I think one of the things I'll end up doing to decide is reading the poetry of some of the faculty at each school and see who I like the most and think I can learn the most from.

4/19/2011 4:45:45 PM

If you're serious about doing Creative Writing, your biggest consideration needs to be the strength of the faculty, not your perceived notion of the Department's reputation. UNC-CH is more well known for their humanities, but when you pit NCSU and UNC-CH's English departments, NCSU is just a far stronger opponent in Creative Writing and Composition. UNC-CH takes the cake in classical literature studies, but their lack of a Creative Writing major and weak composition staff, they're just not focused enough on the subject.

Anyway, I'm a Creative Writing undergrad at NCSU (well, it's one of my majors), and will be graduating next year. I plan to pursue an MFA, so I've taken this program very seriously and have come to know the staff very well. One of the foremost reasons NCSU has the upper-hand here is that we actually have an MFA program. What that means for NCSU is that those MFA directors are also teaching Creative Writing and related fields. Despite our MFA program being relatively new, we have some incredibly strong authors and teachers heading it. Specifically, we have a famous and very talented faculty that is recognized by the AWA, P&W, Huffington Post (which has a lot of MFA-related material) and the MFA Handbook.

The MFA/CW staff include highly awarded, widely published, and varied writers, all of whom have earned our program a rising reputation, and all of whom teach undergrad and graduate level courses outside of the MFA program at NCSU. The stars of the program are:

John Kessel - Two-time Nebula award winner, prolific writer, one of the living "Masters of Science Fiction"
Wilton Barnhardt - Novelist and former Sports Illustrated writer
Jill McCorkle - Best-selling author/novelist, MFA Professor at UC-Irvine and Warren Wilson
John Balaban - Widely-published NBA nominee in Poetry
Dorianne Laux - Famous and highly-awarded poet, recently acquired from an MFA program in Oregon

I'm incredibly lucky to get my undergraduate in Creative Writing here, because it has given me an opportunity to get three reference letters from some very recognizeable names in the writing community, as well as the more obvious advantage of getting to experience the craft from them. I'm actually doing a creative writing study abroad trip with Dr. John Kessel and Dr. Wilton Barnhardt this summer.

Anyway, dillydaliant, if Poetry is your thing, then NCSU should definitely be your choice. There's an incredibly strong poetry staff between Balaban, Laux, Hunt, Barnhardt, and the other professors. The complaint from the above graduate that the CW department is not very focused is a tough one, because it's a symptom of all B.A. CW programs. Without being a B.F.A., CW programs are still mostly taken up by literature instead of writing and composition. CW workshopping at the undergraduate level is not particularly elite in terms of the goals it sets, but it does tend to look away from genre-writing, of which they is virtually none in Poetry so you'll probably be alright. Frankly, I'm astonished that a CW graduate would complain about the lack of genre-writing--John Kessel is one of those authors that has worked to make Science Fiction & Fantasy transcend "genre writing" and teaches it as a genre worth discussion in academia. I've been in a lot of workshops with horror and science fiction, in fact I write a lot of horror myself. That may have just been how his experience was, though.

Anyway, good luck in making your decision. If you don't want Poetry to play a part in your graduate level education, then perhaps UNC-CH is better in that it will look better on paper. If you want to be able to think about an MFA or an MA with noticeable references and a lot of experience to back it up, NCSU is definitely the way to go. Don't even consider Duke. I don't mean to hand-wave on the subject, but Duke is simply not a school to attend for Creative Writing--they offer no immediate advantage in the field and you'd be paying out the ass for it.

4/19/2011 7:18:45 PM

lol

4/19/2011 8:12:14 PM

^^Thanks, Netstorm, I'll keep all that in mind.

^What's funny?

4/19/2011 11:36:08 PM

i found it amusing that our creative writing program could be better than unc's.

4/20/2011 1:14:07 AM

^It plain is. Arguably, our whole English department is. UNC-CH's only real English specialty is Southern and Classic Literature--everything else, including composition, linguistics, and rhetoric, go to NCSU (probably because linguistics is closer to the science of language a-duh). I don't know if you are surprised that NCSU's English department is any kind of excellent, or if you're doubting English on the whole, or if trollin' I dunno, "lol" doesn't really say much.

4/20/2011 2:35:13 AM

Quote :

"I don't know if you are surprised that NCSU's English department is any kind of excellent"

it surprises me, but good to hear.

4/20/2011 2:45:30 AM

it just surprises me. english isnt my thing, looking based on reputation to people not in english, it's unexpected

4/20/2011 2:50:52 AM

The reputation thing is changing now that NCSU's MFA program is starting to get recognized as an emerging, competitive program. Puts us more in the spotlight. It's too easy for non-English NCSU students to just assume our department is awful (because, at least in my experience, they don't exactly think highly of humanities and arts anyway) compared to UNC-CH because we're so much better than them in other fields--so I always get raged when people take a step backwards by taking pot-shots at our department.

But yeah--based on ENG101 and entry-level literature classes, though, no one could get to know the department much.

4/20/2011 2:56:33 AM

I've talked to a ton of writers and poets and such in the area recently and they all think pretty highly of State's English department and especially their CW program. State's reputation is improving in those regards and the misconceptions are definitely changing.

4/20/2011 9:47:44 AM

Quote :

"If I go to State, the plan would probably be to double major in English (American Lit) and Creative Writing (Poetry)."

Have you talked to any advisors at State about this? I'm pretty sure you'd be able to do this, but since they're technically two concentrations of the same major, you might want to make sure.

I echo all of the positive talk about the English department at State. Also, besides the professors in the CW program, there are some Literature faculty who write poetry and are poetry experts (Jon Thompson, Nick Halpern, Tom Lisk, probably some others I'm forgetting).

4/20/2011 12:40:52 PM

^Damn, how could I forgot Thompson and Halpern. Thompson is a little wacko, but he's an expert on poetry and he's pretty damn interesting to take a class with, and Halpern is probably the best professor I've ever had in terms of enjoyment, he's hilarious and knows his stuff.

Oh, and I didn't even realize what you said before about wanting to double major in two English concentrations. Sadly, you can't do that, because Creative Writing and Literature are both English concentrations, so they're treated as the same major. You can get either of them as a minor, though.

4/20/2011 3:30:14 PM

It might also be worthwhile to inquire about their funding situations. I know the new GOP general assembly in NC doesn't prioritize higher education as much as the previous Dem general assembly did budget-wise. And budget cuts are hitting a lot of UNC system schools, including NCSU and UNC Chapel Hill. So it might be worthwhile to investigate just how stable your primary areas of specialization will be at any given school.

That might be one of the few benefits of Duke as a private university, not being tied to the whims of the electorate for their funding. Although from what others have shared about Duke, it still sounds like it isn't a very good choice for what you're looking for. From what everyone has shared, it also sounds like NCSU is probably edging out UNC value-wise (but that isn't necessarily a surprising finding to hear when you ask on an NCSU message board).

4/21/2011 2:48:32 AM

^Yeah, the program isn't going anywhere. It could use more funding from NCSU, but that stems more from a general abuse of the humanities on the whole. The Creative Writing department has gotten more and more attention in that line due to the MFA program. There's no sign of stability being an issue, at least right now. They want to expand, but that likely won't happen until they get more attention.

4/22/2011 3:11:15 AM

if you career goal is to teach english at the high school level, i really don't think it matters how "prestigious" your college is. college may be a different story

[Edited on April 24, 2011 at 6:12 PM. Reason : ]

4/24/2011 6:12:40 PM

Quote :

"college may be is most definitely a different story"

4/24/2011 11:33:49 PM

Damn, simonn beat me to it.

4/25/2011 1:24:58 AM

I don't know if you've considered Queens College in Charlotte, but my sister-in-law did her MFA in creative writing there. They have a Minor, BA, Certificate program, and MFA. It seems to have served her well. She's had some plays put on, she had an offer to write for Grey's Anatomy (which she turned down b/c her kid was really young at the time & she was focused more on the mom thing then), she has been a regular writer for some magazines I believe, and she's got a reading for a script of Army Wives soon.

http://www.queens.edu/Academics-and-Schools/Schools-and-Colleges/College-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Degrees-Majors-Programs-and-Certificates.html

4/26/2011 2:56:27 PM

^Yeah, but OP is looking at undergrad right now.

4/26/2011 4:47:27 PM

(hence the mention of the BA/link that includes the BA)

4/27/2011 11:17:37 AM

You can always PM pdrankin. I know he did Creative Writing.

5/1/2011 6:52:49 PM