For Ferreira, the problem is clear.

“It’s just that there’s not enough to go around,” she says.

A COMMON PROBLEM

Although Harvard is not alone in its lack of creative writing opportunities, recent growth at many peer institutions highlight the relative dearth of options that Harvard gives to students interested in these genres.

“Offering only limited creative writing opportunities—and those reserved for students who are already good—is very common, especially at private schools,” Alfred E. Guy Jr., the director of the Yale College Writing Center, wrote in an email. “It’s so common that those schools who do a better job really stand out.”

At MIT, for example, every student who seeks an introduction to creative writing is guaranteed a spot in a class, according to Thomas Levenson, the head of MIT’s writing and humanistic studies program.

Many other Ivy League schools similarly offer introductory courses that do not require applications.

Yale offers a “giant” creative non-fiction course that meets in 35 sections of 15 students each, according to Guy. At Harvard, only two creative non-fiction courses are offered each semester, which pales in comparison to offerings at Princeton and Yale, said Evan W. Thomas, a Princeton journalism professor who taught a program in writing during Harvard wintersession this year.

Guy adds, however, that Yale’s poetry and fiction offerings, just like Harvard’s, leave some students without options.

The programs at Yale and Princeton also outnumber Harvard in the size of their creative writing faculty. At Yale, students can concentrate in writing within the English department, and Princeton offers a certificate in creative writing, according to the program websites.

“Both of our schools have a lot of money, and nurturing your voice as a creative writer pays giant dividends for your soul,” Guy wrote.

AN OPEN INTRODUCTION

After graduating from Harvard without writing a creative thesis, Cook-Stuntz says he has mostly stopped pursuing the craft.

He never wrote his screenplay after his thesis proposal was denied. Now, he is content to kick around ideas, write notes, and “file it away in case I ever decide to come back to it.”

Although students who have taken creative writing classes agree that raising the limit past 12 students per class would reduce the effectiveness of the workshop experience, many emphasize the importance of adding more opportunities for students of all levels.