HONORS PROGRAM 2011-2012

If you will graduate in May 2012, and wish to apply for the Honors Program in Creative Writing for the 2011-12 academic year, please read the following guidelines carefully.

You are eligible to apply for Creative Writing Honors if you have a 3.5 cumulative GPA and are a Creative Writing major. You must have the required 3.5 GPA at the time of application. You are responsible for telling the program director if your GPA drops below 3.5 after the Spring 2011 semester.

All Creative Writing majors who wish to do Honors must apply to do so. The deadline for Honors applications for next year is Friday, March 25, 2011.

All applications must include the following:

• Your name, address, student ID number, email address, and summer contact information.
• A resume including your activities at Emory, and the writing workshops you've taken, with the names of the instructors.
• A one-page synopsis of your project. Include enough detail to demonstrate your current thinking about the project: its genre, the form (a novella, for example), and what you know now about its possible content. Proposals are an important part of the application; work to make yours compelling.
• A sample of work in the genre in which you plan to do the thesis--20 pages of fiction or nonfiction, a substantial group of poems, 20 pages of a screenplay or play.

Submit this material to Paula Vitaris in the Creative Writing Program office, N209 Callaway Building, by the March 25, 2011 deadline.

If you are abroad during spring 2011, you may submit your application via email to Paula Vitaris at pvitari@emory.edu by the March 25 deadline.

If you propose a project in a genre of writing in which you have already taken workshops, and in which your writing sample demonstrates real proficiency, you increase your chances of acceptance into the Honors Program. Proposing a project in a genre in which you have not taken workshops substantially decreases your chances of acceptance

If you are accepted into Creative Writing honors, you will be assigned a faculty member to direct your project. Faculty availability in 2011-12 will affect how many students we accept into Honors. The process of selection, always competitive, will be especially so this year. Eligibility for Honors does not guarantee that you will be able to do an Honors project. The strength of your application, and the faculty's appraisal of your readiness to undertake a project, will be the major factors considered in the selection process.

There may be some students in the Program whose GPAs rise to the required 3.5 at the completion of spring semester, or over the summer. If all available spots filled in the application process in spring 2011 remain filled by fall 2011, we will not open the application process to students who have just met the required GPA. If one of the Honors places becomes available in fall 2011, newly eligible students may apply for it. We must send an updated list of students enrolled in our Honors project to the College Honors Program by August 31, 2011; students who acquire the requisite GPA late must be in touch with Program faculty by August 15, 2011 so that we may consider their applications if Honors places have become available.

If your GPA does not make you eligible to apply for Honors in spring 2011 but you have an exceptional record in the Program and strong support from Creative Writing faculty, you may submit a petition for a waiver of the required GPA to the Emory College Honors Program. That would happen only if one of the Creative Writing Honors places became available. You will need to discuss this possibility with Program faculty in spring 2011; students with a GPA below the required 3.5 must have the Creative Writing Program’s support to appeal for a GPA waiver to the College Honors Program. Students who have the Program’s support must submit their petition materials to the College by August 26, 2011 (tentative date). To secure the Program’s support for a waiver petition, students must be in touch with Program faculty by early August at the latest. (There is a sample petition letter on the College Honors Learnlink conference. A letter of reference from the Creative Writing program and a transcript are part of the waiver petition; a second letter of recommendation is optional but strongly encouraged.).

Any member of the Creative Writing faculty, including your advisor, is available to talk with you about your Honors proposal. Making an appointment now to talk with a faculty member (or more than one faculty member) is an excellent way to begin the process of preparing your application.

Examples of past applications of students accepted into the Honors Program may be viewed in the Creative Writing Program office, N209 Callaway. You may also look at past Honors theses in the Creative Writing office; bound theses also are housed in the Woodruff Library. Honors theses are now submitted electronically via the library's Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) repository system and may be viewed via ETD.