Financial Aid
Our goal is to offer every student full tuition—a goal we usually achieve, often with a bit more in cash. We do this through a mixture of stipends, scholarships, awards, and grants—The Deutsch Fellowship, The Leslie Epstein Fellowship, The George Starbuck Fellowship, The Betsy Leonard Fellowship, The Saul Bellow Award and a number of prizes. Outstanding African-American writers who are U. S. citizens may wish to apply for a Martin Luther King Fellowship, which offers full tuition and a generous additional stipend. Generally, everyone who wishes to teach will receive a Teaching Fellowship, in return for which the Fellow will teach an undergraduate workshop (limited to fifteen students) in creative writing for a single semester. Each year four of our Teaching Fellows may teach for a semester at the Boston Arts Academy—a Boston public pilot high school for painters , musicians, dancers, actors, composers, choreographers (think “Fame!”). For the right kind of person, this is an extraordinarily rewarding experience and a wonderful way to connect one’s own life to the community that surrounds us.
In the semester that one teaches, one usually takes only the two workshops. Thus a very common year would look like this: four courses (the two workshops and two scholarly courses) in the fall, and the two workshops and the teaching in the spring (or vice versa), and then two summer courses—which are half price—in June or July. The most expensive way to attend our program is to elect not to teach and to take all eight courses by the first week in May. The least expensive way is to take the two summer courses and then transfer in two graduate courses from another university—courses that are literary in nature and that, naturally, have not been already used to earn credits for a different degree. The middle way—six courses during the academic year and two the following summer—is that chosen by the great majority of our students. Remember: no matter which path you follow, we will endeavor to have all of your tuition paid for by the time you reach the end of it. Indeed, a number of our students, especially those who take two summer courses and transfer in two others, will find themselves with a good deal of cash for living expenses and one wild party.
Everyone who applies will be automatically considered for financial aid, save for those who check the box saying they do not need it. Those wishing to apply for the Martin Luther King Fellowship must do so by February 1st.
Please bear in mind that those who receive Global Fellowships after completing their degree—and almost all those who apply are granted such fellowships—are in essence being awarded some eight-to-ten thousand dollars in addition to their original aid package. You may read more about the Global Fellowships elsewhere on our web site—oh, I might as well say this much here: a most generous donor has made it possible for us to allow almost all of our students the opportunity to travel wherever they want to do whatever they want for up to three months after graduating from our program. Iran! Nepal! Greenland! Cape Horn! Peru! That’s where our students have gone in the last two years—while others have sat around in Parisian cafes pretending to drink absinthe. Bon voyage to all!