SEPT OCT 2019 94Gionni Ponce
2019 MFA in Fiction
Indiana University in Bloomington
Established in 1980, the three-year
MFA program at Indiana University
offers degrees in poetry and fiction.
It provides full funding in the form of
a stipend through a combination of
fellowships, teaching assistantships,
and tuition coverage for all three years.
Incoming class size: 8. Application
deadline: January 2, 2020. Application
fee: $60. Core faculty includes poets
Catherine Bowman, Stacey Lynn
Brown, Ross Gay, and Adrian Matejka
and fiction writers Brando Skyhorse
and Samrat Upadhyay.
english.indiana.edu/graduate/master
-of-fine-arts-degreeThe core faculty of Florida’s University
of Miami includes Jaswinder Bolina
and Maureen Seaton in poetry and
Chantel Acevedo, A. Manette Ansay,
M. Evelina Galang, and Amina Gautier
in fiction.special section MFA PROGRAMSTo how many programs did you apply? It took two years of applications to find
the right MFA program. In my first round I applied to only three schools in the
immediate area surrounding Los Angeles, because that’s where I was living at
the time. Though I was accepted into a program, I ultimately turned down the
offer because there wasn’t enough funding. I applied to thirteen programs for my
second round. I opened my geographic criterion, but I only applied to fully funded
programs with a strong representation of people of color on faculty. Before my
second round of applications, I signed up for evening writing courses at UCLA
Extension and worked on creating a stronger writing portfolio. I drafted new
stories for workshop and integrated the feedback over the summer before ap-
plications were due. I also studied for and took the GRE, which gave me signifi-
cantly more options for schools to which I could apply. What criteria were most
important to you during the application process? My No. 1 criterion was funding,
but working with a diverse faculty was the most important factor in my decision.
As a person of color, I didn’t want to have to justify my work and its existence to
my professors as I had read about other people doing. To how many programs
were you accepted? In my s e c ond r ound of applic a t ions , t wo of t hir t e en. O f t hos e
two, I was first wait-listed at both schools before being accepted. Why did you
choose the program you attended? At the end of my first round of applications,
it was extremely difficult to say no to the first program that accepted me. I was
worried that I might never receive another offer. But after much back-and-forth
with my admissions officer, it was clear that I’d never be able to afford it. During
my second round of applications, I received an offer from Indiana University one
week before the deadline. On the day of the deadline, I received an offer from the
University of Miami. It was a really tough decision, especially given that Miami is
run by a group of stellar women of color. In the end it came down to the funding.
The packages each university offered were comparable, but the cost of living in
Bloomington is much more manageable on the available stipend. Did you receive
funding? Indiana University provided a full tuition remission as well as a very
modest stipend—about $15,000—to cover living costs. In the past three years,
students and faculty have been lobbying to raise the graduate student stipend,
and the faculty has been working to secure more funding. In exchange for the sti-
pend, students are given a 1-1, 1-2, and 1-2 course load. Of course, this all changes
slightly from year to year, so any time you’re considering a program, be sure to
check if the stipend information is up to date. How did you make ends meet while
you were in the program? Even with full funding, I picked up odd jobs to bring in
ex tra c ash — the most shocking of which is that I sold my pl asma for about a year.
I had plenty of other options at the time. It isn’t as desperate as it sounds. I had
a friend who offered to take me with him, and we could do our homework while
we “worked” at BioLife. In my more professional work, I transcribed interviews
as a research assistant to one of our professors. I took on departmental jobs like
coordinating visiting prospective students. I also picked up extra work as the as-
sociate director of the Indiana University Writers’ Conference, which provided me
with about $3,000 of funding each summer. The grad school stipend life is one of
strict budgeting, careful pre-planning for expenses, and taking advantage of free
In a semester system, a 1-1 course
load means the student teaches one
class in the fall and one in the spring;
a 1-2 means the student teaches one
class in the fall and two in the spring;
and so on.