2012 MFA Rankings: The Top Fifty

Lapwing, it appears to me that you do misunderstand what I'm saying. My Saying that there's no evidence to support a correlation between popularity and quality is not the same as suggesting that applicants should apply to one type of program (e.g., the "reviled" ones) over another type. I'm simply commenting on the assumptions that have been made by the pollster about the respondents' knowledge of various programs and their reasons for choosing the programs they do. The words "It's reasonable to assume..." (or words very close to those) appear more than once in the methodology. I remember what I thought when I first read that statement: that I wouldn't have dared include such an assumption in any of my undergraduate papers.
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Some programs are chosen by certain applicants precisely BECAUSE those programs are easier to get into, as the author, Seth, acknowledges in reference to his latest list of "The Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs." My program's listed in the top 50 AND among the underrated (and who knows where it'll end up next), but that's not my point; it's the overall APPROACH I object to--though I won't pretend that I'm not stunned by the low positions several extremely reputable programs are taking in these so-called rankings.
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On the other hand, the raw data, to whatever extent the'yre accurate, are extremely valuable, I think, and it would be stupid of me to have any problem with the compilation of such information.
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From a professor emeritus at UT-Austin, a former abstract algebraist who also did/does work in statistics (this is basic stuff, but the considerations she includes are no less important when interpreting survey results):
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/StatisticsMistakes.html

Thanks for passing this along to the stats person, Hello World. (I like your username, by the way!) My brother found the choice of sampling, among other details, "curious"--his polite way of putting it. (Yeah, he's my brother, but it's not as if we think alike.) Since he's a professional statistician, I'm going to have to defer to his judgment over Seth's on this one. Not that his judgment would come as any great surprise to many who are troubled by the rankings.

Those comments predated my current contract. It's the current contract that was earlier referred to as prohibiting "advising" applicants. As to the quote you provided, it was in response to an applicant query about whether CU is a program "you have to attend if you're accepted, regardless of price." One purpose of the rankings is to educate applicants about their options; no one should ever feel they "have to" attend any program, whichever program that may be. The question on the table at the time was whether an applicant can turn down a program they cannot afford; I did say, prior to my current contract, that programs one cannot afford can and should be turned down if one is only accepting an offer because one feels one "has to"--had I said otherwise, it would have implied a position the diametrical opposite of that position taken by both myself and P&W: that the rankings are some kind of absolute, that getting into a "Top 50" program (Columbia or any other) is an offer one "has to" accept. That's a position which would dangerously elevate the rankings above and beyond what they are intended to be. As the P&W FAQ says in response to the question, "Should I rely on these tables to choose where to apply?", the answer is "No." So yes, in the past I did explicitly encourage applicants to use the rankings responsibly (ironically, I am falsely accused of implicitly doing the opposite) and not to confuse the perceived prestige of a program (any program, CU being only one example) with whether that program makes sense for each individual applicant artistically, financially, or otherwise. There's been no hiding the ball here; in fact, the 2010 Methodology Article (published online for free and still available), notes that one aim of the rankings has been, in the past, "less overall student debt among MFA graduates." For their part, MFA faculty members recently surveyed by P&W also listed "funding" as the top concern for applicants (i.e., it is their stated position that this _should_ be applicants' top concern). All of this is consistent with the idea that applicants should not confuse the rankings with an encouragment to either apply to or matriculate at programs which don't suit their individual needs. As the P&W FAQ indicates, some individuals will be able to take on debt for an MFA, some will not; I took the individual I was responding to to be indicating that she could not readily afford to pay for her MFA degree, which made her comment about "having to" accept an offer from a high-prestige program worrisome to me. I would have given the same response (and indeed _have_ done so) had an under-resourced student indicated that they felt they "had to" attend any _other_ program financially beyond their means. All this said, under my current contract--the only one now relevant to this discussion--I would not have responded to that applicant at all. As to the second quote, which was also pre-contractual, you of course leave out the question I was answering in order to make my comment appear unsolicited. An applicant had queried me directly, asking, "Why do you think that such 'popular' or 'high-end' programs like Columbia still choose to not fund their students?" As a working scholar whose area of research is MFA programs and their history (a scholar and researcher being what I am when not acting under contract), I am often asked this question. My answer to this applicant was an accurate portrayal of the history (the factual history) of the program he was asking about. Others may dispute my presentation of that history--history, you may know, is often a bone of contention even among scholars--but that is most certainly what I was portraying in my response. It's historical fact that some graduate creative writing programs were originally conceived to increase university revenue, while others were intended to be revenue-neutral. One reason I have spent time researching this question is to correct the misimpression many have that all MFA programs are revenue-producers. Many are not. I am certainly not the first person to write about the unique history of the CU School of the Arts, nor am I the first person to observe that previous ranking methodologies tended to overvalue "pedigree" by essentially doing no more than quantifying the publishing-business luster of program faculties. No doubt I could have worded my responses to both applicants more delicately; when you're answering more than fifty MFA-related queries every week (sometimes more than a hundred), one begins to use shorthand and speak less artfully, it's true. You have the advantage of being able to sift through hundreds and hundreds of online comments by me to selectively present (and misrepresent) my overall conduct and views; I am differently situated--that is, I've had to do (for free) the hard work of answering hundreds of queries directed at me by strangers for the past five years. I envy you your armchair-quarterbacking, especially as you're paid the same amount to do it (nothing) as I was getting paid to try to answer those applicants' questions honestly and comprehensively. Having said this, I'll say again that under my present contract I would not have replied to that applicant (for which, you can be certain, I would have received as much vituperation as you're now giving me; the only thing people hate worse than having their questions answered is having them _not_ be answered).

I'm still not reading Seth's postings. If I were to do so, and if his previous postings all over the Internet are any indication, I would certainly take issue with much of their content, and I don't have time to waste on the futulity of trying to argue rationally in response to his defensive (and self-interested?) position--though I readily acknowledge that he might truly believe he's impartial. I'm going to listen to my own reasoning and the opinions of the professional statisticians (three, now) with whom I've discussed this topic, discussions had only after those statisticians read the "Methodology" section.

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(Someone else out there who knows me can let me know if there's anything in those postings I should know about; otherwise, I'm not going to bother with them. Seth has had his say on this plenty of times, and thanks to this magazine, he's been given a highly visible podium for doing so. Also, I've followed this debate online long enough to doubt he'll offer any new arguments.)

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The opposite of the scientific method is choosing a position and then cherry-picking evidence that supports that position while ignoring other evidence, and the anti-scientific cherry-picking approach is what I see happening in the author's personal , passionate, and often hostile justification of these "rankings."    -C.

Thanks, Mary, for your response.

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In my second-to-last posting, I didn't say with certainty that I thought I would not get taken seriously by you; I implied, I thought, that I didn't necessarily think I would. The difference in this case was intended as a logical, and not merely syntactical, difference. I based my meager expectations, by the way, on your earlier contact with me (in which you said that you would contact me--after which I didn't contact you again except to thank you and say that you could take your time getting back to me). The next response I got from you, however, was two sentences long (or thereabouts, depending on my memory of the punctuation), which came across as suddenly quite dismissive of the points I raised. (Let's be honest here: You and I have not had a long ongoing exchange, but after your curt response, which I graciously waited for over some number of weeks, I wrote you what’s more or less included in my last lengthy posting on this site.) So, I'm not going to accept without objection the suggestion that I might have contacted you an excessive number of times. You know that I did not, and if you're trying to imply otherwise, that's an unfair method of trying to discredit my arguments.

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I know a couple of brilliant people who are climate-change deniers, but they're in the minority (a tiny minority) of those who work in climate science; I also know a couple of"Truthers" in academe--Truthers being pretty common among the general public but part of a minority of academics (though the Truthers include their own "Scholars for Truth" subset). I also know a range of conspiracy theorists in general who are smart but, nonetheless, throw their reasoning out the window when it comes to their "pet" issues. I'm not simplistically equating these people with Seth, but my point is: Just because Seth possesses enough brains to have finished Harvard Law doesn't mean he can't have huge blind spots in his reasoning when he's invested so much or his time (and ego?) into a particular enterprise. Case in point regarding his reasoning at times: To defend himself, he's often said, "Anyone who knows me knows that I am..." He cannot possibly know what everyone who "knows" him truly thinks of him (none of us can have access to such private thoughts of others). He also said on Scarriet that it made no sense that some commenters there called him "compulsive" while others called him a "loose cannon"; one couldnt' be both, he argued. Of course one can be both! People are complex, and someone can be compulsive--even "anal-retentive" in some areas--while they are loose cannons in other respects; in fact, someone who's anal-rententive to the extreme, even, could get very emotional (erratic —that is, behaving like a "loose cannon”) when their systematic view of things is challenged. (If Seth ever decides to try his hand at fiction writing, maybe he'll need to think less categorically about human beings?)

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In any case, it seems clear to me that Seth likes to categorize and label things--which is fine to a point, I think, in the realms of genuine science and mathematics, though the latter is different in certain respects from empirical reasoning (and I'm writing this in anticipation of a Seth-like objection from someone): mathematical "induction" is, in fact, deductive reasoning, not scientific empiricism. 

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I don't believe that there's such a thing as truly "objective" journalism; journalists have biases (in fact, I wouldn't trust a journalist who lacks opinions). We can, however, try to be fair by acknowledging our biases. If this "ranking" system were presented as an op-ed piece, I never would have objected to it. However, Seth Abramson presents it as reflecting statistical merit—a position he expresses in spite of his having so often expressed online his own feelings about the purpose of an MFA and about specific programs, etc. Therefore, based on his followers’ comments online, I can't help but wonder if their views are influenced by his own views.

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The more important point, from my perspective: To confuse this "methodology" with science is a mistake that Poets & Writers ought to take seriously into account if they decide to honestly reconsider where to move forward in their attempts to help future MFA applicants.

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C./L.

I don't know, I was a quiet member of the group last year and while Seth never specifically said, "I advise you all to do x" -- wait, actually, he probably did, casually, in his discussions encouraging us to seek fully funded programs. Specifically telling us everything negative he could find about the New York programs, too, to the point that he would get in arguments with people. This is all casual and offered as opinion, but where is the line drawn between someone's opinion and the opinion of the guy who does the rankings? When does it become advice about what Seth thinks is important?

Hey Everyone, I hope that the acceptances keep rolling in this MFA season! I know how exhausting the application process can be and that even writers with exceptional work are not always given the chance to attend the program of their dreams. A friend and I are planning to launch a fiction anthology--Best New American Slush--that will feature the work of MFA applicants that have not been accepted to a program this year. We are hoping to showcase a portion of the great talent that has not yet made into the madness that is the MFA world. If you are interested in submitting, please feel free to check out our page for instructions and further updates. 

https://www.facebook.com/BestNewAmericanSlush

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise, given that this is the "Poets & Writers" site, but y'all are some wordy so-and-so's...

Reading this a few years later, I want to make it clear that I NEVER hoped to get into it with Seth here. I don't think it's even appropriate for him to responsd directly to people's comments. I know nothing about hiis personal life, and I'm not interested in it. What I AM interested in is flaw in the methodology behind the rankings. I took a fair amoing of math in college, but I'm not a statistician. My brother, however, IS a statistician; he has a PhD in mathematicstatistics, and he looked at the exceedingly long description of the "methodology" and found numerous problems with it. Perhaps an actual statistician should design the methods used and then interpret them.

As for the person who called me "paramoid" or "needing love": childish cheapshot. If one can't transcend namecalling, then she probably should learn some more restraint in her comments.

I didn't pose in search of a response from Seth. Again, I think he should refrain from commenting in response to others' comments. Rarely have I seen the author of a piece in any major publication respond to comments unless a clear question has been posed or a serious error about what the author wrote is made, and those writers usually respond with great restraint. All I know about Seth is his incredibly long, defensive, and argumentaive posts on numerous other sites. (So what's that about "need[ing] love"? I should be able to criticize these rankings without being attacked by their creator for doing so. Oh, and I also know his credentials because he regularly presents them online.

I wholeheartedly agree with the ethical reservations posted by an earlier commenter: the person advising people regarding where they should apply should NOT then be ranking the schools to which those people, in a closed online community, appliy. Lots of less "popular" schools are chosen for other reasons: geography, ease with which one can be accepted, familiarity with one particular writer on the faculty, cost of living in the town...

By the way, Columbia--a fine program in many respects that offers LIMITED funding--is the program from which recent MacArthur Fellow Karen Russell is an MFA grad.

And one more time: Richard Ford did NOT attend any of the New York Schools. Not knowing how selective it was, he ended up in UC Irvine's MFA program. If Seth is a genuine journalist, might he do a better job of fact-checking than that?