Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Thank you for your interest in the Boston University MFA Program in Creative Writing, one of the oldest and most prestigious programs in this country. Our alumni in poetry include Elizabeth Alexander, Erin Belieu, Rafael Campo, Melissa Green, Glyn Maxwell, Carl Phillips and Don Share, in fiction, our alumni include Peter Ho Davies, Arthur Golden, Ha Jin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Askold Melnyczuk, Melanie Rae-Thon, Weike Wang, and Lisa Taddeo. The Atlantic magazine has ranked our program among the top five percent of all creative writing programs for the distinction of its faculty and alumni, and has ranked ours among the top ten programs overall.

Most notably, however, our program offers to poets and fiction writers in a single year (usually including summer study) a rigorous combination of literary study and focus on craft equivalent to what other MFA programs accomplish in two years. Our program also offers practical experience in teaching creative writing at the high school or undergraduate level through teaching fellowships. Such an intensive curriculum is only possible because of the dedication, talent and energy of the students who choose to attend the BU MFA Program. The accelerated nature of the program creates close bonds between each year's cohorts of poets and fiction writers, who also benefit from the intellectual and artistic stimulation of being part of a large university in one of the most lively and beautiful cities in the United States. Finally, our students have the opportunity for world language study, including the option of taking BU's renowned Translation Seminar, culminating in a Global Fellowship that affords them the opportunity for travel, writing, and study for a period of up to three months anywhere outside of the United States.

The IELTS minimum requirement is 7.0
TOEFL Paper Based:- 550
TOEFL iBT:- 84 (Minimum 21 in each section)
A writing sample (for poetry, submit 10 poems, for fiction, submit no more than 40 double-spaced pages, if you submit stories, submit more than one)
A personal statement, roughly 2-4 pages in length
Two letters of recommendation. Recommenders must upload letters online.
An updated CV.
Transcripts from any college or university you have previously attended (even if no degree was earned)
Optional: examination scores from the GRE General Test. We no longer require you to take the GRE in order to be accepted into our program.