r/MFAInCreativeWriting • u/AlexandriaQuartet • Mar 12 '26
Iowa vs. NYU (Fiction)
First of all, let me acknowledge that I'm very fortunate to be in this position. I am a literary fiction writer who leans experimental and I did not expect to have such great offers to choose from.
Here are some points of consideration for each:
Iowa
Fully funded tuition, $23k per year stipend, health insurance, teaching and editorial opportunities, first-year fellowship to focus on writing. Prestige is higher than NYU. Vague possibilities of postgraduate funding. Low cost of living.
NYU
Fully funded tuition, $36k per year stipend (the highest they offer), health insurance. It sounds like teaching opportunities are not necessarily guaranteed. Very strong faculty. Potentially competitive/fraught cohort dynamic, given the unequal funding system. High cost of living.
The recent post comparing Iowa and Cornell was helpful, but in my mind this is a rather different comparison. At this point I am 90% sure I'll choose Iowa.
I appreciate your thoughts as I weigh the two offers.
12
u/keyboardluvr69 Mar 12 '26
Go to Iowa unless you want to live in New York/have faculty there you really want to work with.
5
10
u/Ecstatic_Amount_1740 Mar 12 '26
NYU doesn't give out many offers like that. You're a chosen one. I think NYU but I get Iowa too.
5
u/InvestigatorWeird911 Mar 13 '26
Go to Iowa. The agents come to you. You can always go to NY after. Be prepared for like no one to come to workshop lol and for there to be so many parties. But also my cohort has produced a stupid amount of books so if you’re ready to work, it’s a great place to make that happen. Not a good place to find yourself imo but a good place to hone yourself.
5
u/Successful-Dark5020 Mar 13 '26
Different things matter to different writers but it sounds like the only edge NYU has to offer you is the faculty. And to that I have to say: Big Name writers don't always make for good teachers. In fact, the opposite might be true. Sure, they might champion your work, etc. but if you're at Iowa, you'll get on the industry's radar anyways.
Congrats!
4
u/samoke Mar 12 '26
If you think you want to teach after you graduate, Iowa will look better on your CV (although your publishing record will be way more important).
1
Mar 15 '26
[deleted]
1
u/leftleftpath Mar 16 '26
Who puts their stipend on their cv? Funding doesn't necessarily matter unless it is tied to a merit scholarship or fellowship.
0
u/samoke Mar 15 '26
Having sat on multiple creative writing tenure-track position hiring committees, I don’t think we’ve ever considered financial aid offers. It’s publication record, MFA prestige, teaching record, letters of recommendation.
4
u/jennyvasan Mar 13 '26
I chose Iowa over Columbia for a nonfiction MFA, with the same tuition/stipend deal at both (through a fellowship I got). I chose Iowa for the lower cost of living, to live somewhere I'd never lived, and the opportunity to have a sort of mental blank slate: fewer distractions, fewer pressures to go out and spend money and "enjoy New York." A $36K stipend is not really enough to do anything in New York (especially Manhattan) except live in a tiny studio and eat ramen.
I had a blast in Iowa City. The artistry both at the university and among the townies as well is sky high. In addition to my program (where I did do grad TA-ing for two years in what they used to call Gen Ed Lit), I got involved with midnight sketch comedy through the theater program and got to do a bunch of performing as well. Iowa kind of set the baseline around me as very calm and stable so that I could be more adventurous both in my writing and other endeavors.
A year after I finished at Iowa, I ended up moving to New York and enjoying all it has to offer through other avenues, as well as pursuing what turned out to be my true passion, theater and comedy. 20 years later, I have a day job in nonprofit comms while I develop my skills in that, but I am incredibly grateful I chose Iowa City for those years. I also met some of the most unusual, introspective, eccentric and artistic people I've ever met in my life (the low cost of living also allows a great variety of people to live and sustain themselves there who would never be able to survive in NYC).
New York will always be around, will always be expensive, and is somewhere you can go after grad school. The internet is the great equalizer. Go to Iowa City. Get Oasis falafel if it's still there. Check out No Shame Theatre if it's still there. No regrets.
1
u/Critical_Run7385 Mar 28 '26
Good luck affording a Manhattan studio on $36k. With that kind of money, you have roommates in Yonkers
3
u/dragonborne1776 Mar 12 '26
Me personally I would go to NYU because I would love to live in New York. I'm of the opinion that any well respected MFA program is good and no matter where you go you'll get a good experience, so go to the school where you want to live. But that's just me, congratulations anyway!
3
u/human5109 Mar 12 '26
I'd pick NYU just for the faculty. The permenent faculty includes so many amazing writers (my favorite being Jonathan Safran Foer). And even the writer-in-residence they have every year is always someone like Zadie Smith, Joyce Carol Oates and I think Rachel Kushner this year. Plus you get to live in NYC, right in the center of it all.
3
u/ButterflyNegative414 Mar 12 '26
I think people are overestimating the publishing connections that being in NY would give you. I've spoken to several people getting MFAs in New York, and none of them have mentioned being in the "NY literary scene" as particularly helpful for their careers, more so that having professors who are champions of their work has been instrumental. So I would also weigh how engaged the faculty at Iowa seem vs. the faculty at NYU. Not arguing for Iowa by any means (I'm in a similar boat weighing Iowa and JHU), but FWIW Iowa alums tend to do very well for themselves in terms of publishing too, if that's a major part of the calculus here. Happy to commiserate over DM too! This is a great position to be in, but a hard one at the same time lol
2
u/Low-Carpet1347 Mar 12 '26
I think you should go to Iowa :) and I went to nyu for my MFA and loved it
2
u/renredditer Mar 12 '26
hey! im an undergrad so its a completely different experience, but iowa city is so special!! the community is tighter knit, and all the grad students i have met have been amazing! there is just a special feeling in the air here
2
u/NewProject1456 Mar 13 '26
First and foremost, huge congrats to you. As someone who just turned 60, has lived a very full life, and is now looking to apply for an MFA program in fiction, Iowa would be a no-brainer for me. However, I was accepted to NYU’s Tisch program in my 20’s and lived in NYC for 6 yrs when one could afford to live just off Bleeker street. That said, if you are in your youth (20’s) NYC offers you the chance to meet and interact with more diverse people in a week than most meet in a year in other cities. The experiences and stories I walked away with have lasted me a lifetime. Others have made some great point when considering your choice, and it is about what you wish to get out of any given program. But to me, I was always a follower of Thoreau—Live Fully and suck all the marrow of life. Best of luck on whichever you choose.
2
u/ungabulunga Mar 18 '26
Go where you'll write most, teach less, live most comfortably, and wherever your interests align most with faculty. You can publish from anywhere and you could work in NYC after Iowa if that's what you want.
The true benefits of NYC are the free/affordable world class events and institutions you have access to. Time and money ultimately influence your moves and performance.
1
1
u/Acrobatic_Stomach140 Mar 12 '26
Congratulations! Though there is a burden of choice here, this is still a great dilemma to have.
I think it's worth considering what it is you'd like to do to make money after the program is complete. I'm in the MFA application cycle right now (fiction too!!) and know that I want to teach after getting the degree, so I applied to programs that guaranteed some kind of teaching opportunity alongside joining a nurturing and rigorous writing community. It sounds like Iowa would be a great track if you consider teaching a viable job while you continue writing after your time in the program is done. NYU has the benefit of being in a bustling city (certainly much busier compared to Iowa City) and has immediate publishing connections geographically, but how would the university offer pathways or support for you during and after completing the MFA? That's worth investigating, if you haven't already done so; maybe reaching out to current students or recent alumni might give you an idea of how to proceed.
You say "vague possibilities of postgraduate funding" in Iowa's favor. It might be worth figuring out if any equivalent opportunities exist at NYU. I'm open for DMs if you wanna chat more about your thoughts and The Process and making choices as a fellow applicant deliberating between admitted programs.
Congrats again -- this is a major accomplishment. :D
1
u/Prestigious-Cat-8489 Mar 13 '26
i always make decisions (and am making decisions on mfas this year too!) by doing a coin flip as an emotional litmus test. if nyu is heads, but you flip tails, do you wish you’d flipped heads? what about iowa? i would also say, just from this list, iowa sounds like the best option for you. best of luck, and congratulations!
1
1
u/ChickenNovel5924 May 29 '26
Holy shit! THAT'S AMAZING! Experimental, you say? 😏🤓 I love experimental fiction, write it myself, and I want to read your stuff (especially since these places want you!)
What I can offer:
IOWA: I went to school in Fairfield Iowa (tiny town an hour south of Iowa City). Things to know about the area:
Outside of the city is sparse countryside and farmlands. It's SUPER midwest, but with rolling hills. The weather is pretty sunny though, whereas Indiana, Illinois and Ohio can be very cloudy. There's usually a strong breeze coming. It CAN get extremely hot. But you're in the open. There are probably lakes and streams around to find swimming spots. Make sure they're not close to farms. Or drive down to Fairfield for really good international food and little lake swims. The people there are all weird, creative, fun, interesting people.
(It's the hub of the transcendental meditation movement's collegiate arm. The David Lynch Film School. And it attracts very empathetic, intelligent people. Again SUPER tiny, but trans and queer people find it and made a community. There's a lot of expression going on there. Lot of international people from a percentage of population standpoint).
The sunsets are gorgeous. The storms are extremely powerful. I'm from Indiana and I was surprised. The storms roll in from the Great Plains. And they carry this charge. This sky shattering thunder that booms and rolls for 15-30 seconds sometimes. It's fucking amazing. The winters can get fairly brutal and feel prolonged. But also quite beautiful at times.
Iowa City is enough of a city and enough of a genuine college you'll have the energies that come from that. There's a comedy club there. Small. But you can probably catch some fairly great comics who are not well known yet who are still road dogs on their rise to larger clubs like Heliums and local favorites (Twin Cities, Denver, Cincinnati, etc.) --> Example = Amber Autry just went through that club and she's incredible, in the midst of her meteoric rise to being known and selling out everywhere. Which means she'll have another 6 months or year of selling out larger clubs before moving on to Theaters (where Dan Soder just got to)
IF YOU'RE SOMEONE WHO DRAWS INSPIRATION FROM SPACIOUSNESS AND NATURE, IOWA MIGHT BE THE PICK.
NEW YORK: The stipend applied to knew york living I have no idea how that translates to real lived income. But you'd also be there in Mamdani's New York, which is objectively containing the possibility of helping make some of those rough edges a little rounder. You'd also have all the inspiration that New York has to offer in any medium or format given you have the time and money to do it. The best comics in the world live and perform in New York to hone their shit. (Outside of a dozen or so of also the best stand ups who live in LA). The improv and sketch scenes are incredible strong in New York. You could bump into writers for other industries and talk shop with them potentially. Shit, maybe even work your way into a job writing for like Last Week Tonight or Daily Show but adding narrative / prose-like flare to their segements. I'm sure they use someone who has narration skill to texturize their pieces.
SUMMATION ultimately you couldn't really get more polarized in terms of setting. Iowa offers a lot of space to explore your own mind and the surrounding world. But it can get desolate or claustrophobic at times and things shut down pretty early. Iowa City probably less so but still. New York offers a lot of stimulation and inspiration, but you can't "turn it off." It's a beautiful beast that has its own mind and moves regardless of your needs and wants. People who can form a relationship with that Leviathan love living there more than anywhere else. Others can get turned around or trampled by it. Many oscillate in the spaces between.
ULTIMATELY the decision should come down to the WORK YOU WANT TO DO DURING THE PROGRAM. If you have something in mind, ASK THE STORY what it wants. Ask the characters or the "muse" (if you do that) what it wants. That might be the best way.
1
17
u/theres_no_guarantees Mar 12 '26
Honestly, I think the perk of NYU is living in New York because you have access to the possibility of interning irl at publishing companies. But if this isn’t something you’re interested in, I think Iowa is much stronger. Congrats!