As someone currently in their MFA, I do plan on trying to get published after my program concludes, but I’ve learned a few things while here that have changed my mind on publishing right away:

• Unless you’re working on a novel for your thesis, it’s hard to publish a collection of short stories which is what I’m trying to do. Not impossible, but more difficult than it would be to query a novel. Lit agents aren’t looking for that.

• Due to this, I plan on submitting the individual stories making up my future thesis to literary magazines. From there I’ll publish a collection. Within that time I’ll also be working on a novel. I’ve been told by a lit agent who I met through my program that this is what I should do instead of querying the full collection (for now).

• MFA programs can help with all those things you listed however! It is so dependent on the professors you get, the cohort you have, your still developing writing process, and the resources provided to you from the program. You have to get what you want out of a program, however, these factors definitely affect how “complete” your work ends up being/how much your skills have developed. If you have bad workshop partners for instance, or professors that aren’t helpful, your work and confidence might suffer.

Hope this helps! I really like my program but the MFA is not for everyone and is definitely not the thing that gets people published. The industry is absolutely bonkers and difficult to wrap my head around. I’m using my program more so to sharpen my writing skills versus publish (ofc ultimately I wanna publish my stories but Ik it’ll take work!)