umass76
Feb 21, 2007, 1:39 AM
Post #439 of 764
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Re: [wiksty] Current MFA Rankings
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Wiksty,
I agree with Clench that you should look at the National Research Council rankings when they come out in the fall, though I'll note that--if the Council's rankings of PhD. programs or undergraduate institutions are any indication--there's going to be some head-shaking going on around these parts this autumn. The NRC tends to heavily weight the financial resources of the various schools (e.g., endowment), though it's not clear whether they'll do this for MFA programs or not. Also, the NRC, because they tend to use mathematical formulas, is more likely to rank programs by, say, the number of grants and awards won by its professors, than by the "mushier" question of which poets and writers are actually most respected in their respective fields.
As Clench is well aware, the rankings I put on my blog aren't "personal" because they're not based on my own opinions or data I "created." They're based a) on the rankings in a book by Tom Kealey, and b) a poll taken on several websites, and c) data taken from the various schools' websites (as to number of applicants and acceptees and, more recently, 2006 and 2007 response times), and d) the Stegner website and the pages of the Legitimate Dangers anthology (poetry only). While Clench is right to imply that none of the data on TSE is scientific, and wrong to omit that I never said it was, it's a fact that no one has ever compiled rankings in this way before, and that since December 31st thousands of visitors to my website have perused the rankings and (if e-mails and web-posts are any indication) often found them enormously instructive--if not dispositive (nor should they be) of anyone's final decisions.
If anyone thinks rankings of this level of complexity and structure (e.g., taking a poll with more than 165 samples) come out "every year," I'm sure he/she will provide a link to those rankings right now. As in, immediately.
Seth
(This post was edited by umass76 on Feb 21, 2007, 1:43 AM)
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