My observations and thoughts as a recent MFA student (University of Texas 2022-2024):

(1) The biggest benefit of MFA programs is that they give you 2-3 years to work on writing fiction with a base of financial support. Don’t think people realize how rare this is in human history to be financially supported for years to create art.

(2) The MFA classes themselves will not influence your writing style, at least not directly. You can write whatever you want, and nobody really cares.

(3) There is almost no craft guidance from your professors. I had some famous names: Elizabeth McCracken, Amy Hempel, Oscar Casares, all of whom offered very little in the way of general craft guidance. The range of quality of their workshop feedback on individual pieces varied widely from professor to professor and piece to piece. Some try to work hard to give you feedback (but the feedback may not useful because it’s not aligned with your vision), others are just phoning it in

(4) You do get connections from being in an MFA program. Our program flew 3 literary agents out from NYC to Austin every year to read the work of the students and. A significant number of students (but obviously, the minority) got representation this way.

(5) If you spend 3 years in a program and try to write a novel or short story collection, in a social community where it’s expected to write a novel you have a strong chance of completing a novel or short story collection. Not saying it will be good, though

(6) There is a strong bias towards the most orthodox form of political correctness. I got burned by this — in my first month at my program, I submitted a short story to workshop that was deemed to be “colonialist” (WTF?) and “misogynistic” (more understandable but still a big stretch, IMO) by a group of my classmates, and this one episode so tarnished my reputation that many people avoided me interacting with me for the rest of my time in the program (I was deemed “the guy who writes problematic fiction,” apparently 🙄). I talked to my professor (old white lady named Amy Hempel) about this and she told me she herself had been cancelled the previous year — not for something she did, but because she tried to speak up on behalf of a white female student whose portrayal of African Americans was deemed to be “racist.”