This entry was posted on March 17, 2011 by glennshaheen. It was filed under MFArch Madness .

6 Responses

1. 

   Seth

   Oh, man… I hate to point this out (and maybe spoil the Madness?)… but Columbia, say, has graduated 920 total students (in three genres) since 2000, and University of Wisconsin-Madison, say, only 42 (in two genres)… and so on and so forth up and down the line. So some of these programs are at a major, major advantage, and some of these victories are either bigger upsets or less-big upsets than they’d at first appear… for instance, Michigan has graduated twice as many poets since 2000 as BGSU, so that’s twice as many folks submitting to journals, &c. I.e., Michigan poets could actually place their work at _half_ the rate of BGSU poets and still “tie” them in terms of journal publications. And of course not all journals are created equal, albeit there’s no way to judge journal quality — but in any case, I guess all this is to say, I really feel for the Cinderellas here, the tiny programs with no real chance at winning this, no matter how strong their cohorts(!) I can tell you, ranking programs is filled with pitfalls like these…

   March 17, 2011 at 11:02 pm
   

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2. 

   glennshaheen

   True, Seth! Although Bowling Green had a chance for a real upset, since it went to coin toss. I was hoping for more (any?) Cinderella victories on day 1. I’m going to switch up the way the victories are decided for every four matches, though. Partly because, well, journal bios aren’t the best way to rank, as you say, and also partly because it was hecka boring poring over acknowledgments in journals. Any other ideas for simple matchup methods that have an element of chance would be welcome!

   (I liked your Hoagland/Rankine blogpost, btw)

   March 18, 2011 at 12:44 am
   

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3. 

   A. Peterson

   Whoa, whoa, whoa – “there’s no way to judge journal quality?”

   Clearly there is: have people who’ve never been in or seen the journals vote.

   Jokes!

   March 18, 2011 at 10:52 am
   

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4. 

   Seth

   A.,

   That gives me an idea! Maybe if I could find some applicants who, despite spending months and months researching MFA programs which they plan to spend the next two or three years of their lives at, not to mention possibly thousands of dollars to attend, have never done _any_ research whatsoever into any qualities of those programs — who teaches there, how selective they are, whether they fund, what the student-to-faculty ratio is, how long the program is, how big the community is, where it’s located, who their alumni are, what the curriculum is like, what the cost of living is, what the teaching load is, what folks they know (including former students there, faculty there, &c) have said about it, whether they offer health insurance, and the hundred other things one could learn about a program just by doing the basic research every applicant would naturally do — my point is, if I could somehow find some _idiots_ who wouldn’t do any of that basic research, i.e. who would send off an application and GRE scores and an app fee and transcripts and recommendations and a Statement of Purpose and a creative portfolio to a place they didn’t know the first thing about (not even the name of the program, as they’ve never seen it! Just trust the mailman, he knows where the MFAs are! Wait, _are_ there MFAs?)… if I could people like that… man, if I could just find people like that… I could do, I dunno, _something_.

   In the meantime, I think I’ll ask the editors of the journals whether they think their own journals are good. Or better yet — I’ll ask those who’ve “been in” the journals whether they think the journals they’ve been in are good — don’t most people slag off on the journals they themselves have appeared in? I bet they do.

   Thanks, A.!

   March 18, 2011 at 12:58 pm
   

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5. 

   Andy B

   I still rank by Hottest Chicks. Or Dudes, I guess, if you’re into Dudes.

   March 18, 2011 at 2:38 pm
   

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6. 

   Andy B

   Sorry. That should read: I still *say* rank by…
   Want to clarify. I don’t rank programs by Hottest Chicks. That would be totally wrong.

   March 18, 2011 at 2:41 pm
   

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