Undergraduate CW Programs

Here is an exhaustive list of what the Association of Writers & Writing Programs thinks a good undergraduate creative writing program should offer. It's right on the money.

Here's a completely unscientific (and utterly non-exhaustive) list of interesting places to study creative writing as an undergraduate:

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA)
Knox College (Galesburg, IL)
Hollins University [womens' college] (Roanoke, VA)
Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC)
DePauw University (Greencastle, IN)
Davidson College (Davidson, NC)
Kenyon College (Gambier, OH)

Most of the schools above award writing-related scholarship money (for current and/or prospective students) and/or prize money (for current students).

Below you'll find five totally random BFA programs in creative writing. There are others, I'm sure. What's a BFA, you ask? Hrmm. Well. I mean. You know. We'll talk. Here's those five schools:

University of Maine - Farmington (Farmington, ME)
UNC - Wilmington (Wilmington, NC)
Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, OH)
Converse College [womens' college] (Spartanburg, SC)
Chatham University [womens' college] (Pittsburgh, PA)

Lastly but not leastly, Alabama isn't a bad option for undergrad CW-study either, though you're very likely to get an MFA student as a teacher for some of your classes, and it's nearly impossible to get out of taking the Intro class. They have a great reading series, though, and the full-time faculty is good -- both in the classroom and in helping their students further their "careers." Anecdotally, I've heard mixed reviews for some of the other schools in the state.

The other "strategy" (such as it is) is to go to one of them high-falutin' Ivy League (and its ilk) schools. Columbia. Princeton. Harvard. Yale. Etc. Lots of published writer types -- and the people who publish them -- have matriculated at those sorts of places (and that's likely to continue). If you got a spare $150-$200k rattling around in your pockets, go for it.

Truth is, you can make your writing life happen wherever you go to college. It's up to you.