Mailbag (Jun. 17)

Time for a new bag for your general comments and queries.

The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 List, and MFA Rankings

So, as you will have no doubt heard, The New Yorker recently released its list of 20 fiction writers under 40 years of age -- the names we should all be looking out for in years to come, though several of them are pretty well known already. There's been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about the validity of such lists and the methodology behind them but I'm interested in one aspect here: does the appearance of a few writers from particular MFA programs have any influence on your decisions about where to apply?

Here's the list broken down by MFA (this was taken from a comment on HTMLGiant, and I haven't fact checked it -- if anything proves to be inaccurate, let me know.)

IOWA (6)

Chris Adrian
Daniel Alarcón
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Yiyun Li
Z Z Packer
Salvatore Scibona

COLUMBIA (4)

Rivka Galchen
Dinaw Mengestu
Karen Russell
Wells Tower

JOHNS HOPKINS (1)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

UC IRVINE (1)

Joshua Ferris

NYU (1)

Nell Freudenberger

CUNY (1)

Gary Shteyngart,

CORNELL (1)

Téa Obreht

UT AUSTIN (1)

Philipp Meyer

NO MFA (4)

Jonathan Safran Foer
Nicole Krauss,
David Bezmozgis (MFA in film from USC film school)
C. E. Morgan

Full disclosure before we go any further: I'm a graduate of Columbia and I know two of the people on the list, so, yeah, I have a horse in this race. But still, for a program that has been pretty thoroughly bashed around on various MFA websites (including this one), not a bad showing. Most of the Columbia-bashing has been about their funding -- but people have made the link between that and the quality and diversity of their cohort. This list would seem to counter that argument, at least.

For the record, I do think it's a bad idea to go into debt for an MFA, and I have advised many of my students and clients against choosing expensive schools such as Columbia for that very reason. Still -- does this list make anyone reconsider? Or is Columbia's good showing just evidence of a New York publishing conspiracy? Or is it just a numbers game: big program = more names to choose from? Or...or....leave your opinions after the jump.