MFA Program FAQ

All of our full-time MFA students are fully funded with two-year graduate assistantships. Currently, assistantships include a stipend of $15,624 per academic year, a tuition and fees waiver, and student health insurance. The teaching load is excellent: one course per semester. Our students may also receive summer stipends up to $2,000 for the summer between the first and second years of the program, plus up to several hundred dollars of support for travel, publication, research, and other needs each year (all depending on available funding, year-to-year). Beyond assistantships and summer stipends, we offer a range of other benefits. Students can participate in various writing retreats across Wyoming and Colorado, funded by the MFA. We also actively seek other opportunities for our students once they've arrived in the program, and we regularly collaborate with students on grant applications for research, travel, and writing support. Our students win numerous departmental and university scholarships, including English department scholarships, ENR program grants, and coveted Arts and Sciences Independent Study Awards that support summer writing projects. Recent students have traveled, with UW financial support, to Mexico, China, Uzbekistan, France, Paraguay, Spain, Lebanon, Romania, India, Iceland, and Uruguay.

Further information about graduate assistantships is available in the MFA graduate handbook. Please feel free to contact our program with any other funding-related questions.

We typically accept between 3 to 5 students in each area-- fiction and nonfiction--but this may vary in a given year, depending upon the applicant pool, range of genre interest, and funding levels.

The UW MFA program is committed to full funding for every full-time student. Over the last decade, we have averaged a fully funded class of 6 new students per year.

Four workshops (including cross-genre opportunities); one course in pedagogy; 3-5 elective courses (may include further workshops or courses in any university department or program); the MFA Project; thesis. A minimum of 36 credit hours are required for the degree.

We encourage interdisciplinary exploration. For example, MFA students can minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies or Gender and Women's Studies. In the recent past, an affiliation with the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources has enabled MFA students to double major in creative writing and ENR. We are also working on proposals for dual MFA/MA degrees with American Studies and other programs/departments. Stay tuned for updates.

The program is completed in two years.

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Students double-majoring in ENR often take an additional semester to complete all coursework.

No. The program does not require GRE scores for admission.

One’s perspective depends a great deal on previous experiences.  Laramie (population 32,000) is situated on the high plains of southeastern Wyoming, two hours north of Denver, near the foot of the Snowy Range of the Rocky Mountains. Laramie has an Old West charm but also a funky college-town feel. It's home to some fine independent bookstores and coffee shops, and the restaurant options include vegan (in addition to steak houses), Thai, Mexican, and more. Laramie was also recently named by Outside magazine as one of the 40 best college towns in the United States, and for good reason: the rugged mountains of the Snowies and the Medicine Bow National Forest to the east and west of town offer vast areas of public land and boundless opportunities for hiking, camping, trout fishing, mountain biking, and rock climbing.  Winters can be long and cold, but that’s all more reason to take up snowshoeing, skiing, ice skating, ice fishing, sledding, or curling (or hunker down in the first-rate gym on campus).

Various opportunities for MFA students exist at The Owen Wister Review, UWYO magazine, Western Confluence, the student-led online journal Meadowlark Review, and the Wyoming Public Radio (see FAQ below).

The MFA program collaborates with the Ucross Foundation to bring Ucross residents to Laramie for readings and events with MFA students, to place MFA students in internships and community-outreach projects. For more information about Ucross, visit www.ucrossfoundation.org.

The MFA program has placed numerous students in extended internships with Wyoming Public Radio.  Interns get hands-on experience in all aspects of WPR’s work, and their reporting frequently appears on the air and on WPR’s website.  The partnership creates rare opportunities, especially for writers interested in pursuing future work in journalism and nonfiction reporting. Recent MFA graduates with WPR experience have gone on to full-time positions at respected radio stations across the country.

MFA in Creative Writing application instructions.

To get around town, walking and biking work for most errands and destinations, although winters can be a challenge!  And to get up to the mountains for recreation, you’ll need a car.  Hiking, camping, fishing and skiing are only 15 minutes to the east and 45 minutes to the west, but driving is pretty much a necessity.

The University of Wyoming has just over 10,000 students. The majority of students (72%) are from Wyoming. Full enrollment summaries can be found at the Office of Institutional Analysis.