Professors say the application process enablesthem to get quality students who raise the levelof the classes.

"I'm looking for talent and diversity... Ithink it's great to have freshmen mixed withstudents doing their honors theses," saysBriggs-Copeland Lecturer Henri Cole, who teachesEnglish Cpr and Cqr: "Poetry Writing I and II."

For the students who are not admitted into theclasses, however, the application procedure doesnot seem justified.

Maria N. Antifonario '96 applied twice to takecreative writing courses but did not get in.

"I don't think I'm a bad writer and I thinkit's kind of unfair that people who want to can'ttake these classes," she says.

More Applicants

The number of undergraduates applying tocreative writing has grown dramatically, saysMcCorkle, who teaches English Csr: "FictionWriting."

"This semester we gave out 500 applications andwe have 180 people that got in," she says.

In fact, the program ran out of applicationforms this year, she says.

McCorkle says figures are not available forprecisely how many of the 500 actually applied,but she estimates that nearly all of them did.

Last year, according to McCorkle, only betweentwo and three hundred students applied.

McCorkle says she would like to offer moreclasses, but the four Briggs-Copeland lecturers,two guest professors and one full professor increative writing program simply cannot serve 500students. And the full professor, BoylstonProfessor of Rhetoric Seamus Heaney, teaches atHarvard only during the spring semesters.

"The thing is we can't offer more as we'reconstituted [now]," Heaney says.

But adding more creative writing faculty wouldbe "a fairly extensive undertaking," McCorklesays.

Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buellsays he expects at best a slow improvement in theresources of the creative writing program.