Considering I just reviewed Iowa State University, it only makes sense that their arch nemesis be my next school. The University of Iowa.
The University of Iowa is located in Iowa City and has a student body roughly around 31,000 students. The campus is considered urban and The University of Iowa is number one in the country for their M.F.A. program. See the Iowa Writers Workshop. But I will, as always, be focusing on their M.A. program.
The University of Iowa has a M.A. in Literary Studies which is similar to the previous degrees in English. What is nice about their program is that they allow for either a thesis or a creative portfolio option.
Ranking: According to U.S. News Ranking, University of Iowa ranks #32 in the country for their M.A. in English. This is two slots up from the University of Minnesota.
Application Fee: $60
Requirements: Click here for the actual requirements. The University of Iowa does expect its prospective students to take the GRE, like Iowa State and the University of Minnesota. They also list their preferred score for the GRE on their page. Their minimum GPA requirement is a 3.5. Geez, and I thought that the University of Minnesota was intimidating.
Funding: The funding that I could specifically find for the English department did not prove to be promising. The funding was mainly addressed to M.F.A. and PhD students, offering teaching and research assistantships. I found this particular offering for funds interesting; called graderships, no other university that I have researched yet offers this.
“Graderships are generally allotted as quarter-time appointments (ten hours of work per week), grading papers and exams for one of a number of large undergraduate courses. A quarter-time or more appointment qualifies a grader for resident tuition.”
The other form of aid listed was loans. There were also highly competitive fellowships and awards listed.
Faculty: The nice thing about the faculty pages is that the information is easily accessible. There are not a lot of pages to browse through. All of the professors are listed on one page, along with their position (professor, assistant professor, etc.) and their specialties. This is a good thing because then potential students can choose to read about a professor based on their specialties.
This is a school that I have already visited. I went there and walked around their campus. I visited their English Department and was thoroughly traumatized by their floating stairs. For English and Writing, the University of Iowa is one of the best schools in the country. However the esteem of their Writers Workshop (M.F.A.) pulls a lot of the attention away from their other degree programs. This could make funding difficult to come by, which is one of the key requirements for going to graduate school.
I am going to stick to the theme I have going with researching schools in Iowa and research their other university, one that is slightly smaller than the two giants I just focused on; The University of Northern Iowa.
Rants, Raves, and Obsessions 
April 29th, 2013 → 4:56 am
[…] made it out of the Midwest. This past week I focused on three schools; Iowa State University, The University of Iowa, and The University of Northern Iowa. Are we sensing a theme yet? There sort of was but it was not […]
May 10th, 2013 → 4:15 am
[…] last week was all about Iowa; Iowa State University, University of Iowa, and University of Northern Iowa. Which actually brings us to now. I haven’t finished my […]