Is Columbia or Amherst better for aspiring writers?

For an aspiring writer who wants close faculty attention, small workshops, and a campus literary community built into daily life, Amherst is likely the more nurturing undergraduate environment. For a student who wants to write in New York City, draw on a major university’s arts network, and pursue internships or readings across the city, Columbia offers unusual access and energy.

Amherst’s creative-writing opportunities are closely tied to its small, discussion-centered academic culture. Students can take workshops in fiction and poetry, work with visiting writers, and participate in the Creative Writing Center’s readings and programming. Amherst’s open curriculum can make it easier to build an English and writing-focused course plan without fitting it around a large set of core requirements, and the Five College Consortium expands course options beyond Amherst itself.

Columbia is compelling for writers whose work will benefit from New York as a setting, subject, and professional ecosystem. Its undergraduate creative-writing courses and workshops sit alongside Columbia’s English department and a large community of student literary publications. The Core Curriculum can be especially valuable for fiction and poetry writers who want a common foundation in major texts, philosophy, history, and art, though it leaves less curricular freedom than Amherst’s open curriculum.

At either school, the most important undergraduate experience will be sustained workshop participation, serious reading, and relationships with professors.