Financial Support
Tuition costs will be covered for every admitted student for the MFA degree in the BU Creative Writing Program. In addition, admitted students will receive one year of university health insurance, and all admitted students will receive stipend support for the academic year; for the 2024-2025 academic year, stipends total $20,000 per student. To receive their stipend, students must teach for one semester of Creative Writing at at Boston University at nearby Boston Arts Academy, a dynamic public high school for painters, musicians, dancers, actors, composers, and choreographers.
Stipend support is made possible for fiction writers through the awarding of the Leslie Epstein fellowship, the Saul Bellow Fellowship, and the Helen Deutsch Fellowship. MFA fiction writers are also eligible for the Saul Bellow and William A. Holodnak Fiction Prizes. MFA poets are eligible for the Hurley Prize in Poetry.
Finally, upon completion of their academic requirements, all MFA poets will be eligible for a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, allowing for up to three months of travel, writing and study outside the United States; MFA fiction writers will be eligible for a Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship. Global Fellowship amounts in 2024-2025 will be approximately $4500 per student.