Why would you want to take Advanced FYW over standard FYW?
Before I get into this section, do note that people who took Advanced FYW haven’t taken standard FYW and vice-versa, so I can’t make a comparison between the two. I can, however, tell you what I gained from and appreciated about the course, as well as the (subjective) pros and cons from my point of view.
You should take Advanced FYW if…
- You like any of the pros I’ve listed below
- You love writing!
- You’re at the point with your writing where most of the feedback you get isn’t really that helpful
- You’re not that confident about academic papers that aren’t the standard literary analysis or persuasive papers you do in high school, but you’re interested in improving
You should reconsider taking Advanced FYW if…
- You intend to take a particularly challenging courseload in your first semester (ie. you’d expect your workload to be significantly higher than that of an average first-year in their first semester)
- Any of the cons I listed below are dealbreakers
- You only want the “prestige” of having taken an advanced course --- there really isn’t any associated prestige
Pros
- You’re guaranteed to get into a FYW course your first semester, which some people found difficult to do depending on their registration time
- All your classmates are guaranteed to enjoy writing!
- You’re also guaranteed a specific professor (Professor Wetzel). She’s generally pretty good and I personally enjoyed her teaching quite a bit. She’s also very open to meeting with you 1:1 to talk about your writing anytime.
- You learn a lot of nuanced details about the craft of writing: your mileage may vary, but one such detail we learned was about sentence structure complexity and how it looks in AI-generated content vs. human professional writers
- Anecdotally, it’s a very fun class if you enjoy writing
Cons
- You will be writing a lot: around the middle of the semester I started regularly spending half of my weekend time working on my essays. This is because we primarily focused on a few intensive, lengthy papers. I was perfectly fine with this, but you should assess your own comfort levels
General course info
- The course is taught every year by Professor Wetzel (Profetzel)
- Every FYW class should have about 18 students, so there is no class size benefit to taking Advanced FYW
- Profetzel chooses the class theme: in my year and the year before it was The Good Life
- You will be challenged to write at least one “critical synopsis,” which I believe is unique to Advanced FYW
- You will also be doing a collaborative writing assignment, most likely as your final. This was a fairly involved, multi-stage process that involved a poster session and a policy recommendation paper
- You will probably meet at least once with your FYW prof 1:1 for feedback regardless of which course you take. I met several times with Profetzel
Application Process + Tips
Portfolio
One of the vaguest parts of the application (found on the first-year writing page) is the portfolio. I submitted a scientific poster I did for class, a 10-page analytical paper I wrote for history and English junior year, a creative short story, and a creative non-fiction piece.
There’s not a lot of guidance as to what they’re looking for, and ultimately I picked pieces I felt could best showcase the breadth and depth of my skill. Here are some ideas to get you started. I am not explicitly endorsing any of these, but often people forget that “writing” can mean many different things:
- any essay you wrote for class
- a scientific abstract and/or paper
- creative writing: poetry, creative non-fiction, short stories
- DnD campaign backstory
- an opinion piece
- a mathematical proof (I considered this, but ultimately decided it didn’t really showcase my writing as well as my other options)
- a syllabus you wrote
- a Goodreads review
- a petition you authored
- a policy proposal
If you’re having trouble deciding between pieces, take a look at the section below. Understanding what you’re selecting these pieces for may help you create your final portfolio.
Argument
Probably the most daunting portion, this question asks you to justify why your selected pieces “provide evidence for advanced placement.” Here, I would encourage you to consider the following questions:
- What are your writing strengths?
- What have you learned from the pieces you selected? If they were written some time ago, what have you learned since then?
- What’s unique about each piece? Why did you choose these over other options you might’ve had?
- What’s your background as a writer?
- What do you like about writing?
- What were some challenges in the writing process for these pieces, and how did you grow from them?
- What is your writing/communication/thinking/ideating/brainstorming/revision style? Does it change? How does your writing voice come out in the pieces you selected?
The rest of the application
Really, don’t overthink the rest of this. For the question that has you summarize the first year writing options, I essentially just read the pathway descriptions and whatever I found on the first year writing webpage and rewrote it in my own words.
The part that asks why your current writing knowledge should place you in Advanced FYW should generally be an overview of the “Argument” section (see above) that highlights your skills. You could also add in any relevant past experience here that doesn’t quite fit into the “Argument” section. I personally found this part easier to write after I’d completed everything else.
Final Thoughts
Try not to overthink it! And if you get accepted, don’t forget to email to confirm your spot on the waitlist! I didn’t realize I had to, and nearly lost my spot…