university of iowa personal essay

University of Iowa

• Cost & scholarships
• Essay prompt

Want to see your chances of admission at University of Iowa?

We take every aspect of your personal profile into consideration when calculating your admissions chances.

University of Iowa’s 2023-24 Essay Prompts

Common app personal essay.

The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don‘t feel obligated to do so.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you‘ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

What will first-time readers think of your college essay?

The University of Iowa

Writing Center

There are many great resources for writers available. Two of the most comprehensive are the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Writing Center . You'll find everything here, from the structure of academic writing to grammar and punctuation. See below for direct links to particular topics and a few more of our favorite sites. For help with speaking, conversational fluency in English, and digital projects, see the other Rhetoric Centers .

The basics of academic writing

The key to writing good papers is understanding that academic writing is based around a claim that is backed up with evidence . The resources below describe some of the key features of academic writing and are designed to help you master the rules of the game. 

Writing in College: A short guide to college writing by Joseph M Williams and Laurence McEnerney. This guide teaches the basic principles of academic writing and is oriented towards first and second year students. A great resource for students, and for instructors to use with their students. From the University of Chicago's Writing Program.

Six key features of academic writing: This handout maps out the structure of an academic paper, breaking it down into its component parts.

Moving from the the five-paragraph essay to college writing . From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The argument,  the centerpiece of the academic paper. From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For information on how to structure a paragraph, UNC has another helpful handout .

Writing Tips: Thesis Statements. From the Purdue OnLine Writing Lab (OWL).

Developing a good argument. OWL at Purdue. You might also look at the article on common literature essay prompts .

Hedging is an important skill for writing cautiously and factually. From the Newcastle University Writing Development Centre.

Avoiding bias. From the Walden University Online Writing Center.

Revising drafts. It's always a good idea, and this article explains why and gives helpful tips. From the UNC Writing Center.

How to quote a source. This resource from The University of Wisconsin - Madison Writing Center discusses how to situate quotes in academic writing.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos: Three Ways to Persuade. Dr. John R. Edlund of California State University, Los Angeles explains these famous rhetorical angles.

An example of mapping a controversy . John J. Wolfe III

Professional development writing

The Pomerantz Career Center assists UI students with resumes, cover letters, personal statements, and more.

Writing the Personal Statement. OWL at Purdue.

Write a Graduate School Essay that Will Knock Their Socks Off. This guide from Peterson's discusses what to include and what to leave out when writing a graduate school application essay.

How to Write a Cover Letter. From the University of Wisconsin - Madison Writing Center.

Application Essays. From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You might also have a look at the guide to business letters .

Resumes and Vitae Guide . Tips on how to write resumes and CVs. From Virginia Tech.

Citing sources

Purdue's Online Writing Lab  has the most comprehensive descriptions of the three most commonly used citation styles, Chicago, MLA, and APA. See here for a side-by-side comparison of reference lists and in-text citations.

Also from OWL, a comprehensive list of the styles used in different disciplines from the most common to the more obscure.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  also has an easy-to-read summary of in-text and reference list citations using MLA, APA, Chicago and CBE/CSE

On the Hacker Handbooks site you'll find a comprehensive research and documentation section that covers several of the main citation styles.

APA Style Blog  can answer many of your more obscure questions about APA. Type them into the search box on the right. Hosted by the American Psychological Association.

A step-by-step MLA formatting guide for your Word documents. From UMUC.

The Chicago Manual of Style online at the UI library. Log in with your hawkid and password.

ESL resources

ESL resources at OWL . A great collection of resources for students and instructors at Purdue's Online Writing Lab.

Key Concepts for Writing in North American Colleges. Purdue OWL.

Glossary of English Grammar Terms. This glossary from UsingEnglish.com gives definitions for grammatical terms like 'clause' or 'stative verb.'

English Grammar Guide at edufind.com. This site explains some advanced English grammar topics in detail.

The Basics of English Language. This guide from studyandexam.com has resources for parts of speech, clauses, verb tense, and vocabulary building.

Advanced English Lessons. This guide from englishpage.com provides explanations and interactive quizzes on advanced English grammatical structures.

Punctuation and grammar

Punctuation is important. Poor punctuation can lead to all kinds of confusion, as we all know from the joke about the panda who walks into a bar . It also results in lower grades and unfair assumptions about the writer's intelligence or level of education. Fortunately, it's easy to learn and quick to fix! There are thousands of good websites about punctuation out there, and here are a few of our favorites.

The Oatmeal Grammar Comics . From how and when to use whom, to the ten words you need to stop misspelling. In particular, check out the comic 'How to use a semi-colon: The most feared punctuation on earth...'

Rules for capitalization: When you need an uppercase letter at the start of a word.

The Punctuation Guide: Comma . A thorough guide to comma usage. The rest of the website is similarly helpful for different punctuation marks.

Grammarly Handbook. This site provides in-depth articles on topics like parts of speech, mechanics, syntax, and even planning and organization for writing.

Twelve Common Errors. The guide from the University of Wisconsin - Madison covers common issues to look out for when you're proofreading your writing.

Plagiarism: What it is and how to avoid it

Plagiarism is copying words or language created by someone else and presenting it as your own. Most students understand it as copying a paper written by someone else, or asking or paying someone else to write their paper, but it also includes accidentally or deliberately copying strings of words from the sources you are citing without putting them in quotation marks. Plagiarism is considered a form of academic dishonesty and can result in a fine, an F for the assignment, failing the course or even expulsion. 

See here for the University of Iowa's policy on plagiarism and other forms of academic fraud.

Indiana Bloomington's plagiarism website provides a good overview and examples of plagiarism. Students are advised to do the practice questions and take the certification test to ensure they know exactly what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Instructors can ask students to complete the test and submit the certificate of completion as a course assignment. To prevent accidentally copying the language in a source, we suggest taking notes and working from your notes and not with the original text open in front of you.

University of Southern Mississippi's guide has explanations and interactive quizzes to help recognize and avoid plagiarism.

University of Wisconsin - Madison has a concise guide to what information needs to be cited. It also includes articles on how to paraphrase an argument or couch a quote.

Other UI writing support services and centers

The Judith Frank Business Communications Cente r provides help to Tippie undergraduates (with all papers), pre-business students (only Tippie course assignments) , M.Ac. and MBA students.

The Accountancy Writing Program works with all students with a declared major in Accountancy .

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication Resource Center offers writing and research assistance for students with journalism writing assignments.

The Pomerantz Career Center  offers help with CVs, resumes and personal statements . Schedule an appointment here .

The University Housing Tutoring Program offers free, walk-in help with rhetoric and other writing, and the tutors are located right in the residence halls .

The Teaching and Writing Center, History Department  is a writing tutorial center which provides assistance with assignments for undergraduate History and American Studies courses .

Hanson Center for Technical Communication, College of Engineering  is a writing tutorial center for undergraduate engineering majors .

The Writing Resource   assists College of Education graduate students .

Writing Resource Center, College of Law  is for students, faculty, and staff in the College of Law and non-law students enrolled in a law school class .

The Writing and Humanities Program helps medical students with a wide variety of writing, including things like CVs, research papers, or even creative writing.

The Graduate College provides one-on-one consultations and feedback on job application and fellowship materials to graduate students.

The Center for Teaching offers graduate students and faculty one-on-one consultations on developing teaching philosophies.

Invitations to Write

The beloved Lou Kelly, director of the Writing Center from 1965 to 1989, developed a series of invitations to write which are still used in the Writing Center today and by instructors across campus. In response to the many requests for copies, we've posted them below. There is also a very useful list of writing prompts collected by the New York Times ,  Over 1,000 Writing Prompts for Students .

Autobiography of a Reader

College: What language is spoken here?

Creating Words: Is lexicography for you?

Culture Shock

Creative Writing Invitation II: What does creativity mean to you?

Creative Writing Invitation III: Where to you get your creative energy?

Creative Writing Invitation IV: Free-writing -- knocking down the walls .

Creative Writing Invitation V: Writing vivid description.

Creative Writing Invitation VI: Where are you?

Creative Writing Invitation VII: Character development and dialogue?

Creative Writing Invitation VIII: Writing your own story?

Growing Up with TV: A sequence of two invitations

Indulging Dreams

Instances of Injustices: A sequence of two invitations

An Invitation to Evaluate Your Work

An Invitation to Talk on Paper

An Issue of Interest to You: A sequence of three invitations

More Creative Writing Invitations I: Ways to get the creative juices flowing.

More Creative Writing Invitations II: Invitations to go somewhere new .

More Creative Writing Invitations III: Invitations to go deeper.

Roots: Where do you come from?

Self as Writer

The Skills Exchange

For Instructors

2023-2024 Tutor Guide: Policies and Procedures for UI Writing Center instructors

WCONLINE Videoconferencing system overview (video)

The Document Review System (video overview)

Teaching Rhetoric at Iowa : An explanation of the goals of Iowa's Rhetoric course, and some tips and strategies for teaching.

The Australian Society for Evidence-Based Teaching : Reports on research in education and translates it into teaching practices.

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University of Iowa Requirements for Admission

Choose your test.

What are University of Iowa's admission requirements? While there are a lot of pieces that go into a college application, you should focus on only a few critical things:

• GPA requirements
• Testing requirements, including SAT and ACT requirements
• Application requirements

In this guide we'll cover what you need to get into University of Iowa and build a strong application.

School location: Iowa City, IA

Admissions Rate: 82.6%

If you want to get in, the first thing to look at is the acceptance rate. This tells you how competitive the school is and how serious their requirements are.

The acceptance rate at University of Iowa is 82.6% . For every 100 applicants, 83 are admitted.

This means the school is lightly selective . The school will have their expected requirements for GPA and SAT/ACT scores. If you meet their requirements, you're almost certain to get an offer of admission. But if you don't meet University of Iowa's requirements, you'll be one of the unlucky few people who gets rejected.

We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies . We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools , from state colleges to the Ivy League.

We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools.

Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in.

University of Iowa GPA Requirements

Many schools specify a minimum GPA requirement, but this is often just the bare minimum to submit an application without immediately getting rejected.

The GPA requirement that really matters is the GPA you need for a real chance of getting in. For this, we look at the school's average GPA for its current students.

Average GPA: 3.81

The average GPA at University of Iowa is 3.81 .

(Most schools use a weighted GPA out of 4.0, though some report an unweighted GPA.

With a GPA of 3.81, University of Iowa requires you to be near the top of your class , and well above average. Your transcript should show mostly A's. Ideally, you will also have taken several AP or IB classes to show that you can handle academics at a college level.

SAT and ACT Requirements

Each school has different requirements for standardized testing. Only a few schools require the SAT or ACT, but many consider your scores if you choose to submit them.

University of Iowa SAT Requirements

Many schools say they have no SAT score cutoff, but the truth is that there is a hidden SAT requirement. This is based on the school's average score.

Average SAT: 1235

The average SAT score composite at University of Iowa is a 1235 on the 1600 SAT scale.

This score makes University of Iowa Competitive for SAT test scores.

University of Iowa SAT Score Analysis (New 1600 SAT)

The 25th percentile SAT score is 1140, and the 75th percentile SAT score is 1330. In other words, a 1140 on the SAT places you below average, while a 1330 will move you up to above average .

Here's the breakdown of SAT scores by section:

SAT Score Choice Policy

The Score Choice policy at your school is an important part of your testing strategy.

University of Iowa has the Score Choice policy of "Highest Sitting."

This means that you can choose which SAT tests you want to send to the school. Of all the scores they receive, your application readers will consider the SAT score from your single highest test date (the sum of math, reading, and writing).

This is important for your testing strategy. Because you can choose which tests to send in, and University of Iowa only considers your highest score on a single test date, you can take the SAT as many times as you want, then submit your strongest score. Your application readers will only see that one score.

Therefore, if your SAT score is currently below a 1140, we strongly recommend that you consider prepping for the SAT and retaking it . You don't have much to lose, and you can potentially raise your score and significantly boost your chances of getting in.

Download our free guide on the top 5 strategies you must be using to improve your score. This guide was written by Harvard graduates and SAT perfect scorers. If you apply the strategies in this guide, you'll study smarter and make huge score improvements.

University of Iowa ACT Requirements

Just like for the SAT, University of Iowa likely doesn't have a hard ACT cutoff, but if you score too low, your application will get tossed in the trash.

Average ACT: 26

The average ACT score at University of Iowa is 26. This score makes University of Iowa Moderately Competitive for ACT scores.

The 25th percentile ACT score is 22, and the 75th percentile ACT score is 29.

ACT Score Sending Policy

If you're taking the ACT as opposed to the SAT, you have a huge advantage in how you send scores, and this dramatically affects your testing strategy.

Here it is: when you send ACT scores to colleges, you have absolute control over which tests you send. You could take 10 tests, and only send your highest one. This is unlike the SAT, where many schools require you to send all your tests ever taken.

This means that you have more chances than you think to improve your ACT score. To try to aim for the school's ACT requirement of 22 and above, you should try to take the ACT as many times as you can. When you have the final score that you're happy with, you can then send only that score to all your schools.

ACT Superscore Policy

By and large, most colleges do not superscore the ACT. (Superscore means that the school takes your best section scores from all the test dates you submit, and then combines them into the best possible composite score). Thus, most schools will just take your highest ACT score from a single sitting.

We weren't able to find the school's exact ACT policy, which most likely means that it does not Superscore. Regardless, you can choose your single best ACT score to send in to University of Iowa, so you should prep until you reach our recommended target ACT score of 22.

Download our free guide on the top 5 strategies you must be using to improve your score. This guide was written by Harvard graduates and ACT perfect scorers. If you apply the strategies in this guide, you'll study smarter and make huge score improvements.

SAT/ACT Writing Section Requirements

Currently, only the ACT has an optional essay section that all students can take. The SAT used to also have an optional Essay section, but since June 2021, this has been discontinued unless you are taking the test as part of school-day testing in a few states. Because of this, no school requires the SAT Essay or ACT Writing section, but some schools do recommend certain students submit their results if they have them.

University of Iowa considers the SAT Essay/ACT Writing section optional and may not include it as part of their admissions consideration. You don't need to worry too much about Writing for this school, but other schools you're applying to may require it.

Final Admissions Verdict

Because this school is lightly selective, you have a great shot at getting in, as long as you don't fall well below average . Aim for a 1140 SAT or a 22 ACT or higher, and you'll almost certainly get an offer of admission. As long as you meet the rest of the application requirements below, you'll be a shoo-in.

But if you score below our recommended target score, you may be one of the very few unlucky people to get rejected.

Admissions Calculator

Here's our custom admissions calculator. Plug in your numbers to see what your chances of getting in are. Pick your test: SAT ACT

• 80-100%: Safety school: Strong chance of getting in
• 50-80%: More likely than not getting in
• 20-50%: Lower but still good chance of getting in
• 5-20%: Reach school: Unlikely to get in, but still have a shot
• 0-5%: Hard reach school: Very difficult to get in

How would your chances improve with a better score?

Take your current SAT score and add 160 points (or take your ACT score and add 4 points) to the calculator above. See how much your chances improve?

At PrepScholar, we've created the leading online SAT/ACT prep program . We guarantee an improvement of 160 SAT points or 4 ACT points on your score, or your money back.

Here's a summary of why we're so much more effective than other prep programs:

• PrepScholar customizes your prep to your strengths and weaknesses . You don't waste time working on areas you already know, so you get more results in less time.
• We guide you through your program step-by-step so that you're never confused about what you should be studying. Focus all your time learning, not worrying about what to learn.
• Our team is made of national SAT/ACT experts . PrepScholar's founders are Harvard graduates and SAT perfect scorers . You'll be studying using the strategies that actually worked for them.
• We've gotten tremendous results with thousands of students across the country. Read about our score results and reviews from our happy customers .

There's a lot more to PrepScholar that makes it the best SAT/ACT prep program. Click to learn more about our program , or sign up for our 5-day free trial to check out PrepScholar for yourself:

Application Requirements

Every school requires an application with the bare essentials - high school transcript and GPA, application form, and other core information. Many schools, as explained above, also require SAT and ACT scores, as well as letters of recommendation, application essays, and interviews. We'll cover the exact requirements of University of Iowa here.

Application Requirements Overview

• Common Application Not accepted
• Electronic Application Available
• Essay or Personal Statement
• Letters of Recommendation
• Interview Not required
• Application Fee $40
• Fee Waiver Available? Available
• Other Notes Minimum Regent Admission Index (RAI) requirement of 245 for residents, 255 for nonresidents required for freshmen

Testing Requirements

• SAT or ACT Required
• SAT Essay or ACT Writing Optional
• SAT Subject Tests
• Scores Due in Office May 1

Coursework Requirements

• Subject Required Years
• Foreign Language 2
• Social Studies 3

Deadlines and Early Admissions

• Offered? Deadline Notification
• Yes May 1 August 1
• Yes November 1

Admissions Office Information

• Address: 101 Iowa City, IA 52242-1316
• Phone: (319) 335-3500
• Fax: (319) 335-1535
• Email: [email protected]

Our Expert's Notes

We did more detailed research into this school's admissions process and found the following information:

You will apply to Liberal Arts and Sciences, Business, Engineering, Nursing, Education, Pharmacy, or Medicine colleges. Application requirements vary by program. For more info on specific colleges, see this page. For the Liberal Arts and Sciences college, you must meet the minimum high school course requirements and have a Regent Admission Index of at least 245 for Iowa residents and 255 for out-of-state students. (For more on RAI and how to calculate yours, see this page. )

There are various scholarships available. Most are considered automatically, but for the Presidential Scholarship you need at least a 30 ACT (or a combined SAT Critical Reading and Math score of 1330) AND a 3.80 grade-point average (GPA) on a 4.00 scale, as well as a separate application. More on scholarships here.

• a GPA of 3.8 or higher and ACT composite of 27 or higher,
• ORa GPA of 3.7 or higher and ACT composite of 30 or higher
• a GPA of 3.8 or higher and ACT composite of 30 or higher.

If you don't meet those minimums but want to be considered, you can submit an appeal consisting of a personal statement, letter of recommendation, and your transcript, by May 1. Learn more about honors here.

Other Schools For You

If you're interested in University of Iowa, you'll probably be interested in these schools as well. We've divided them into 3 categories depending on how hard they are to get into, relative to University of Iowa.

Reach Schools: Harder to Get Into

These schools are have higher average SAT scores than University of Iowa. If you improve your SAT score, you'll be competitive for these schools.

Same Level: Equally Hard to Get Into

If you're competitive for University of Iowa, these schools will offer you a similar chance of admission.

Safety Schools: Easier to Get Into

If you're currently competitive for University of Iowa, you should have no problem getting into these schools. If University of Iowa is currently out of your reach, you might already be competitive for these schools.

Data on this page is sourced from Peterson's Databases © 2023 (Peterson's LLC. All rights reserved.) as well as additional publicly available sources.

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General Catalog

Magid center for writing.

This is the first version of the 2023–24 General Catalog. Please check back regularly for changes. The final edition and the historical PDF will be published during the fall semester.

Undergraduate certificate: writing

Faculty: https://magidcenter.uiowa.edu/people

Website: https://magidcenter.uiowa.edu/

The Magid Center for Writing takes seriously its mission to offer all undergraduate and nondegree-seeking students at the University of Iowa (regardless of major or area of study) the unique opportunity to enhance their academic, creative, and professional communication skills by focusing on the written word. In addition to sponsoring the Certificate in Writing , the center also publishes the student literary magazines Ink Lit Mag  and Earthwords ; advises and coordinates the publication of Fools Magazine, Boundless, Snapshots, and Wilder Things; supports the Iowa Writers Living Learning Community (in association with University Housing and Dining); and is home to the Iowa Youth Writing Project (a nonprofit K–12 literacy outreach endeavor), the Iowa Young Writers' Studio (a selective summer camp for aspiring high school writers), and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival (a noncredit, open enrollment creative writing program for adult learners).

The Magid Center for Writing was established in 2011 through a gift from Marilyn Y. Magid and family, in the name of the late Frank Magid, who believed that writing was a key component of a liberal arts and sciences education and a successful career.

The Certificate in Writing is administered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences .

Learn more about the university's wealth of writing resources by visiting The Writing University website, and read about the university's central role in Iowa City's designation as a UNESCO City of Literature .

College Program

• Certificate in Writing

The Certificate in Writing (offered on campus and online) enables all undergraduate and nondegree-seeking students the opportunity to benefit from the university's wide-ranging writing programs and resources by pursuing a concentration in writing related to their academic success, career goals, or personal interests.

Precollege Program

Iowa young writers' studio.

Website: https://iyws.clas.uiowa.edu/

The Iowa Young Writers' Studio is a creative writing program for high school students at the University of Iowa, housed in the Magid Center for Writing. The Summer Residential Program, offered both in-person (on the UI campus) and online, gives promising high school–age creative writers the opportunity to spend two weeks studying fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, TV writing, or playwriting with teachers and counselors from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and other renowned UI writing programs.

Students in the Summer Residential Program share their writing with teachers and peers, receive constructive critique, participate in writing exercises and activities, and attend readings and literary events. The Iowa Young Writers' Studio operates under the philosophy that the study of creative writing is essential not only to students who want to pursue writing as a career, but to any student hoping to function effectively in a writing-centric world. The studio encourages students to explore different genres and approaches, and to express themselves freely, without censorship. Students are taught to be generous, respectful critics.

Students who have completed grades 10, 11, or 12 are eligible to attend the Summer Residential Program. Those interested submit an application, a creative writing sample, a statement of purpose, a high school transcript, and a letter of recommendation. Applications are taken online during the first week of February for the following summer.

The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio also offers six-week online creative writing courses for high school students. These courses are offered in January-February and in late June-early August. The courses are asynchronous, so students can complete the assignments and participate in the discussions on their own schedules. The courses offer students the chance to study creative writing with graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and other UI writing programs, and to connect with other high school-age writers around the country and the world. Students who complete the course and meet all the requirements will receive a certificate of completion. Applicants must be enrolled in high school and have a grade-point average of 3.00 or higher. Applicants must submit a statement of purpose, a teacher statement of support, a parental permission form, and a transcript. Applications are taken online in the fall (for January–February courses) and in the spring (for June–August courses).

Visit the Iowa Young Writers' Studio website for detailed information about the summer program and online courses.

K–12 Opportunities

Iowa youth writing project.

Website: https://iywp.org/

The Iowa Youth Writing Project (IYWP) is an arts outreach organization based at the University of Iowa that empowers, inspires, and engages K–12 youth throughout the state using language arts and creative thinking.

For more information or to get involved, contact the Iowa Youth Writing Project .

Adult Opportunities

Iowa summer writing festival.

Website: https://iowasummerwritingfestival.org

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a noncredit creative writing program for adults. The festival brings some 1,200 writers to the University of Iowa campus each summer to participate in weeklong, two-week, and weekend workshops across the genres, as well as online workshops offered throughout the year. Writers at all levels are welcome.

Participants choose from more than 140 workshops in novel writing, short fiction, hybrid forms, poetry, memoirs, essays, playwriting, screenwriting, travel writing, humor, writing for children, and more. Festival classes are conducted as workshops, where the primary texts are participants’ own creative work.

Weeklong workshops meet for three hours each day, Monday through Friday, and include individual student/instructor conferences. Weeklong sessions feature a daily lecture series on aspects of literary craft, as well as evening readings and other events. Weekend sessions meet for eight hours over two days. Visit the  Iowa Summer Writing Festival website for information about workshops, schedules, and registration. Program information for the coming summer is posted in mid-January.

Undergraduate Program of Study

Certificate, magid center for writing courses.

WRIT:1003 English Grammar 3 s.h.

Recognizing nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech; sentence analysis; subjects, objects; types of sentences; passives, relative clauses; for students with little or no background in English grammar study. Does not count toward the linguistics major. Same as LING:1003 .

WRIT:1030 English Words 3 s.h.

English word formation, basic units of English vocabulary; vocabulary skill expansion; word structure. Same as LING:1030 .

WRIT:1325 Iowa Writers' Room: The Big Binge 1 s.h.

Screening-based course in which students develop skills in television script writing, structural analysis, and story craft by conducting an in-depth review of a season of a television show; includes instruction and class visits by acclaimed industry insiders. Part of the Iowa Writers' Room series offered through the Magid Center for Writing.

WRIT:1500 Writing Commons: A Community of Writers 1-3 s.h.

Varied topics focused on building community and enhancing writing skills through generative exercises, long-form essay and hybrid assignments, workshops, sharing work in public, reading and discussing works of published authors.

WRIT:1600 Fast Fixes: Improving Your Writing in Six Short Weeks 1 s.h.

Varied topics focused on improving common writing problems or specific aspects of craft. Prerequisites: ( RHET:1040 and RHET:1060 ) or RHET:1030 .

WRIT:1740 Writing Strategies: Word Origins and Word Choice 3 s.h.

Study of words, their meanings, and their origins combined with writing; words and word histories; role of English language in the world. GE: Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts. Same as CLSA:1740 .

WRIT:2100 Writing and Community Outreach 3 s.h.

Service-learning course offered in coordination with local community organizations and nonprofits; students critically consider ways in which written content—creative, promotional, and logistical—can help ensure outreach initiatives prioritize inclusivity; assignments include readings and discussions on community outreach and social justice issues, written reflections on relationships between self and community to enhance interdisciplinary perspectives, and volunteering time and energy with a local organization or nonprofit group in meaningful ways. GE: Diversity and Inclusion.

WRIT:2300 Writing Toward Empathy 3 s.h.

Students practice personal narrative, research writing, and professional communication skills to actively understand relevant social justice issues in Iowa; diversity, equity, and inclusion-based writing course offered in coordination with the Iowa Youth Writing Project.

WRIT:2900 Book Design for Publishing 3 s.h.

Introduction to the major aspects of book design, including typography, layout, standard industry software, discussion of trends in the field. Same as ARTS:2900 , ENGL:2900 , UICB:2900 .

WRIT:2991 Publishing I: Introduction to Literary Publishing 3 s.h.

Introduction to major aspects of book and literary publishing, including evaluating submissions, copy editing, production calendars, and planning marketing campaigns; discussion of industry trends. English majors may apply this course to the following area and/or period requirement. AREA: Nonfiction and Creative Writing. Same as CNW:2991 .

WRIT:2992 Publishing II: Advanced Literary Publication 3 s.h.

Hands-on experience of entire literary publishing process including reading submissions, selecting texts, editing, layout and design, marketing and promotion, and book release. English majors may apply this course to the following area and/or period requirement. AREA: Nonfiction and Creative Writing. Prerequisites: CNW:2991 . Same as CNW:2992 .

WRIT:3000 Publishing Practicum: The Iowa Chapbook Prize 3 s.h.

Experiential learning in the field of publishing through the Iowa Chapbook Prize; students gain knowledge in all aspects of publishing world including assessing submissions, selecting manuscripts, editing and proofreading, layout and design, marketing and promotion, and book release.

WRIT:3005 Professional and Creative Business Communication 3 s.h.

Solid foundation for creative and professional communication in today's modern work world; exploration of techniques, strategies, and craft of writing résumés, letters of interest, email and its related etiquette, and organization of ideas into presentable form; semester-long creative project that builds a bridge between office and the world using modern technology and social media; readings and discussions of literature to better understand issues of ethics, leadership, conflict, moral judgment, decision-making, and human nature; how to navigate and succeed in business or any professional field. GE: Engineering Be Creative. Same as CW:3005 , INTD:3005 .

WRIT:3080 History of the English Language 3 s.h.

Development of phonological and grammatical structure of English, from Old to Modern English; selected issues in the history of England. Same as LING:3080 .

WRIT:3325 Iowa Writers' Room 3 s.h.

Experiential learning in television writing field; first-hand experience as part of a traditional television writers' room—selecting material and show topics, pitching ideas, collaboratively breaking story, and writing and workshopping scripts for a limited series television show of student's choosing; includes instruction and class visits by acclaimed industry insiders. Same as THTR:3325 .

WRIT:3435 Intersectional Identities: Writing About the Twenty-first-Century Self 3 s.h.

Analysis of intersections between systems of oppression, domination, and discrimination; focus on how writers of color represent those connections and critical articulation of students' lived experience of them. Same as LATS:3435 .

WRIT:3526 The Business of Writing 3 s.h.

Students learn how to hone their writing skills and successfully transition into the workforce; objectives include developing the ability to pitch articles, establish personal brands, and navigate the world of freelance writing and editing; students network with professionals and explore writing-centric jobs.

WRIT:3632 Prose Style 3 s.h.

Sentences: how they work, what they do; how sentences can help writing, expand understanding of prose style, stretch options. English majors may apply this course to the following area and/or period requirement. AREA: Nonfiction and Creative Writing. GE: Engineering Be Creative. Same as CNW:3632 .

WRIT:3742 Word Power: Building English Vocabulary 3 s.h.

Analysis of unfamiliar English words through knowledge of the history and meaning of word parts. Same as CLSA:3742 .

WRIT:3900 Writing: Undergraduate Internship 1-3 s.h.

Professional and/or creative experience; students arrange faculty-approved internship. Requirements: undergraduate standing and minimum of 24 s.h. of coursework with at least 12 s.h. in University of Iowa courses.

WRIT:3910 Iowa Youth Writing Project Internship 1 s.h.

Internship with the Iowa Youth Writing Project. Requirements: application and acceptance as an Iowa Youth Writing Project intern.

WRIT:4000 Independent Capstone Project 1-3 s.h.

Capstone requirement for the Certificate in Writing through Program Option B. Requirements: junior or higher standing.

WRIT:4001 Guided Capstone Portfolio 1 s.h.

Capstone requirement for Certificate in Writing through Program Option A. Recommendations: junior or higher standing.

WRIT:4002 Scientists and Writers 1 s.h.

Science communication and collaborative skills that are highly sought after by employers in STEM firms including pharmaceutical firms, biotech start-ups, and many others; these same skills essential for reporting on, writing about, or translating science in any area; studio-style format. Same as CHEM:4000 , JMC:4000 .

WRIT:4100 Iowa Youth Writing Project Mentorship Practicum 1-3 s.h.

Mentor new volunteers on a weekly basis at Iowa Youth Writing Project (IYWP) program sites; work one-on-one with volunteers, write and review lesson plans, provide resources and feedback for volunteers, lead workshops for children. Requirements: WRIT:2100 or completion of Iowa Youth Writing Project internship.

WRIT:4745 The Sentence: Strategies for Writing 3 s.h.

Writing dynamic, cogent, and grammatically correct sentences; effectively communicating ideas; writing with clarity and confidence; review of grammar and various types of sentences; building complexity by adding adverbial, subordinate, and connective clauses to simple sentences; how rhythm, syntax, and word order expand the meaning of a sentence; application and appreciation. GE: Engineering Be Creative. Same as CW:4745 .

WRIT:4760 The Art of Revision: Rewriting Prose for Clarity and Impact 3 s.h.

Writing and rewriting of short stories and essays; specific choices to help writing reach its full potential; examination of first drafts and making strategic or radical decisions on what needs to happen in subsequent drafts in order for writing to better match original intentions; students gain insight from peers on where first drafts are succeeding or falling short, and write second and third drafts of short stories and personal narratives; structural and aesthetic choices. GE: Engineering Be Creative. Same as CW:4760 .

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2023-24 Catalog

A PDF of the entire 2023-24 catalog.

Office of Scholar Development

Getting started with your personal statement, definition of a personal statement │ mary hale tolar.

Mary Hale Tolar , Ed.D. is the Dean of the Mary Lynn and Warren Staley School of Leadership Studies and an Associate professor of leadership studies at Kansas State University. Tolar is a member of the Truman and Rhodes Scholarship communities and was a part of founding the National Association of Fellowships Advisors and the evolution of fellowship advising as a catalytic force. She is the co-author and editor of "The Lucky Few and the Worthy Many: Scholarships and the World's Future Leaders ."

Composing A Personal Statement: Invitation to Frustration  │ Kyle Mox

Kyle Mox , PhD is the Associate Dean for National Scholarships Advisement in the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. He has successfully advised hundreds of national scholarship-winning students. Mox is a force for good in the professional field of competitive fellowships advising and is a past president of the National Association of Fellowships Advisors.

Honors at Iowa

Tips and tricks, the honors program application is available on your admissions profile..

You will not be able to access the honors application without having first been admitted to the university. A pplications are due January 12th at 11:59 PM.  If you do not see the Honors application, email the admissions team at  [email protected]. 

Application Materials

Technical issues can happen. Plan ahead .  Give yourself at least a few days in advance to prepare and submit your materials. You never know when you'll experience technical difficulties.

Unofficial Transcript and Senior Year Courses

A PDF Version of Your Essay

Extenuating Circumstances (Optional)

Let's talk about test scores..

The University of Iowa Honors Program is  test blind . That means that your SAT or ACT test scores will not be a factor to determine your acceptance. 

Application Do's and Don'ts

Read the instructions for the transcripts, essay, and activities, twice!  Then reads our tips and tricks at the link below.

Make sure you're answering the essay prompt. 

Ask people to look over your materials before you submit your application! Proofreading can go a long way. 

Give yourself time to submit your application. Don't wait till the last minute. 

Reach out to the Admission team with any questions!

Upload unnecessary materials, such as your resume, pictures of yourself, or anything we don't ask for. 

Pander. Your accomplishments and experiences are important but don't pander to the admissions office. We can see right through it. 

Recycle an essay that you've written for another application, especially if it doesn't actually answer our prompt!

Iowa Young Writers' Studio

Core Courses

If you’re accepted to the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio's Summer Residential Program, you will choose a single  Core Course  of study—Poetry, Fiction, Creative Writing (a survey that includes poetry, fiction, and personal essay), TV Writing, or Playwriting—as your focus for the two weeks of the program. 

The Poetry course will explore voice, image, metaphor, line, language, and other aspects of this most condensed form. If you love writing poetry and want to focus on it exclusively and intensely, with a disciple's devotion, in a small tribe of fellow poets, this is the course for you.

If the short story or novel is your thing, then consider the  Fiction  course .  By focusing on challenges particular to fiction, such as establishing and deepening characters, writing dialogue, using stream of consciousness and interior monologue, working with 1st and 3rd and multiple points of view, managing plot and the passage of time, and creating a vivid setting, this course will help you gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of the genre.

Creative Writing

Because of the scope of the class, which spans the three major genres of poetry, fiction, and personal essay, the   Creative Writing   course concentrates on those elements of writing that are universal: language, image, voice/point of view, structure/story, setting, character. The Creative Writing course is a great choice for you if your work already bridges multiple genres or if you want the freedom to explore new forms.

TV Writing/Writers' Room

In this collaborative course, you'll work as a team with your fellow writers to adapt a short story from the public domain into a dramatic television series. Working with your instructor, who will act as the showrunner, you'll develop, outline and write a pilot script. You'll learn about TV story structure, character development, and conflicts, obstacles, dilemmas and goals. If you love dramatic television, and want to write in the genre, this course is for you!  Important: Writers' Room is a collaborative course. You and your classmates will work together, as a team, to develop and write a pilot script. That's why it's going to be so much fun! While you may have the opportunity to roughly outline and pitch a personal project, this will not be the focus of the course. 

Playwriting

In this core course, each student will focus on writing dialogue, developing characters, building settings and scenes, and designing a plot with the aim of finishing a one-act play by the end of the session. Students will read and discuss their work in class and give each other constructive critique and ideas for revision. Students will also read dramatic texts by established playwrights and study them in terms of craft. If you've always wanted to write for the theatre, this course is for you!

Course Structure

No matter what course you choose for your two weeks at the Studio, your classes will be small, 10 or fewer students. Each course is divided into a seminar component and a workshop component. The same instructor teaches both. With the exception of the Writers' Room, which will have its own structure, the core courses will consist of:

The seminar

To write, you must read. This is a bit like saying, To sing, you must listen, or To cook, you must eat. The emphasis of the seminar is for students to read  as writers . Published work will be scrutinized for what can be gleaned about craft: how a writer achieved a particular effect or result, how a writer astonished or moved you. Students will explore and internalize aspects of craft by engaging in generative writing activities related to the readings.

The workshop

A workshop is a dialogue, a collaboration in which a writer and readers, including a teacher, work as a team to guide the writer’s draft toward the fullest expression of itself. With constructive insight from a teacher and peers, a writer gets a better sense of how the work is perceived. The text for this class is the writing of your classmates, although readings and ideas from your seminar will come into play. Our instructors ensure that workshops present a supportive environment in which each student is encouraged to give thoughtful, thorough commentary to their peers in exchange for the same.

NOTICE: The University of Iowa Center for Advancement is an operational name for the State University of Iowa Foundation, an independent, Iowa nonprofit corporation organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, publicly supported charitable entity working to advance the University of Iowa. Please review its full disclosure statement.

Graduate Admissions

Nonfiction Writing (MFA in English)

The MFA in English with a focus in nonfiction writing is awarded by the Graduate College.

Applicants must meet the  Admission Requirements of the Graduate College  and the department offering the degree program (review the Nonfiction Writing Program Website or the General Catalog for departmental requirements).

Tuition and fees vary by degree program and the type of student you are.

• Fall semester—Dec. 14, 4 p.m. CST.
• Spring semester—not offered
• Summer session—not offered

The graduate application process has two steps

• You must first submit the online application to the Graduate College and pay the $60 application fee by credit card ($100 for international applicants).
• Once you have submitted your application, you will receive an email instructing you on how to upload your supporting documents and submit letters of recommendation. A few programs require materials be sent directly to them. However, almost all supplemental material can and should be uploaded from your Admissions Profile in MyUI , our online service center for applicants and students. You can only access this AFTER you have submitted your application.

GRE scores are not required for this program.

Degree Program Supplemental Materials

All supplemental materials must arrive by the posted application deadline.

• A statement of purpose (no more than 500 words) explaining your reasons for choosing this degree program
• A résumé or curriculum vitae
• Your writing sample may consist of a single 20-30 page piece of writing, a collection of shorter pieces, or an excerpt from a longer piece.
• Submissions should be double-spaced with a one-inch margin in 10- to 12-point font and should include your name and page number.

Recommendations

The application requirement section of your Profile includes an electronic letter of recommendation feature. If your program of study requires letters of recommendation, you will be asked to give the contact information of your recommenders including their email on your Admissions Profile. The recommender will then get an email giving them instructions on how to upload the recommendation letter and/or form.

• Letters of Recommendation may be submitted through a dossier service (such as Interfolio), please inform the service to submit the letters via email to  [email protected] .

Materials to send to Admissions

• A set of your unofficial academic records/transcripts from all post-secondary institutions (current and former UI students do not need to provide UI transcripts). For international records, all records should bear the original stamp or seal of the institution and the signature of a school official.  Documents not in English must be accompanied by a complete, literal, English translation, certified by the issuing institution.
• International students must satisfy the university's English-language proficiency requirement by sending their official TOEFL scores (the university's institutional code on the TOEFL is 6681; the English department's code is 2501).
• Once recommended for admission, international students must send a  Financial Statement .

Apply Online , the $60 application fee ($100 for international students) is payable by Discover, MasterCard, or Visa.

Office of Graduate Studies (Nonfiction ) Department of English The University of Iowa 308 English-Philosophy Building Iowa City, IA 52242 [email protected] 1-319-467-3198

Enrollment Management The University of Iowa 2900 University Capitol Centre 201 S. Clinton St. Iowa City, IA 52242 [email protected] 1-319-335-1523

Academic Advising Center

Tips for pre-health students in writing the personal statement.

1. Detailed, honest self-reflection is the key to writing a meaningful statement. The personal statement should answer the question: “why choose me?” Remember, admissions committees receive hundreds or even thousands of applications. If your personal statement is general, or contains a mere listing of accomplishments, it will blend in with all of the others. Be creative. Write heartfelt, interesting, personal narratives that bring you to life. Your goal is to be so fascinating on the page that your readers want to meet you in person. 2. Please don’t rewrite your resume in narrative form and call it a personal statement. You will list your experiences and accomplishments elsewhere in the application. This is your opportunity to reflect upon how your life and experiences have turned you in to a person who wants to take care of others’ health. The personal statement should illustrate who you are more than what you have done. 3. Statements vary in length depending on the program. Most are short. For example, the AMCAS Personal Statement is 5300 characters and spaces (about one single-spaced typewritten page). Creating a meaningful essay in a single page requires a great deal of work. Start early! 4. We advise you to write the first draft six months in advance of when you plan to apply. You will want ample time to discuss the content with your mentors and to schedule a face to face meeting at Writing Center. (They have an online scheduler on their UI website.) Proofread carefully and polish your statement to absolute perfection. 5. We have provided a list of writing classes for you to consider. A writing class will help you sharpen your skill set during a time when you will be doing a great deal of personal writing. Remember, throughout the world The University of Iowa is famous for its writing programs. Taking writing classes at Iowa is one way to demonstrate that you want to make the most of your educational experiences. Health programs are looking for lifelong learners. Special note: If you were charged with misdemeanors or felonies , you will write a separate essay explaining what happened. Be honest and take responsibility if you made choices that run counter to your career goal. Describe what you learned. Sometimes college students lose sight of the fact that underage drinking is against the law and downplay charges for possession of alcohol under the legal age. Any charge is a serious offense. Write accordingly.

Essayists write essays on the essay

University of Iowa English alumnus Ned Stuckey-French and Carl Klaus, founder of the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, will read from Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time, the book they co-edited for the UI Press , at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 25, Prairie Lights in Prairie Lights Books.

The free event will be streamed live on the UI’s Virtual Writing University website .

Essayists on the Essay is the first historically and internationally comprehensive collection of its kind, a richly varied sourcebook for anyone interested in the theory, practice, and art of the essay.

The essayists include Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, José Ortega y Gasset, Virginia Woolf, Theodor Adorno, Aldous Huxley, E. B. White, Elizabeth Hardwick, Scott Russell Sanders, Philip Lopate, Susan Sontag, Vivian Gornick, UI nonfiction faculty member John D’Agata, Ander Monson, and John Bresland.

Robert Atwan, the series editor of Best American Essays, commented, “Carl Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French are among the finest commentators of the genre today. Their presentation of the material will be extremely valuable to us all—we teachers, writers, critics, and educated readers who remain devoted to furthering the study of the essay.”

Klaus, who is now a UI professor emeritus, is co-editor of Sightline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction from the UI Press. His widely praised nonfiction includes The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay as well as My Vegetable Love and its companion, Weathering Winter .

Stuckey-French , a faculty member at Florida State University, is the author of The American Essay in the American Century , a study of personal essays, magazine culture and class construction. His reviews and critical work have appeared in many journals. He is the book review editor for Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction.

His articles and essays have appeared in journals and magazines such as In These Times , The Missouri Review , The Iowa Review , Walking Magazine , culturefront , Pinch, Guernica , and American Literature , and have been listed three times among the notable essays of the year in Best American Essays .

Stuckey-French has been in the national news recently as a leader in the attempts to reverse the University of Missouri’s decision to close the University of Missouri Press.

For accommodations at the live event, contact [email protected] . The English Department, which includes the Nonfiction Writing Program, is part of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

UI Center For Human Rights

Weston essay prize.

Burns H. Weston International Human Rights Essay Prize

The UICHR sponsors the annual Burns H. Weston International Human Rights Essay Prize. Each year, two awards are available: one to an undergraduate and another to a graduate or professional school student. The prizes honor the work of students from across the state of Iowa and the lifetime work of the late Burns H. Weston, Professor of Law and a founder of the UI Center for Human Rights. 

Awardees receive $750 (undergraduate) or $1000 (graduate or professional student). Federal financial aid regulations require that all financial aid, including awards and prizes, be included in total cost of attendance calculations. The Student Financial Aid Office will review each prize to determine any financial aid adjustments.

The spring 2024 deadline is Friday, May 11 (5:00 pm CT).  

Eligibility and Requirements:

Students at all colleges and universities in the State of Iowa are eligible to apply.  

Undergraduate essays should be 10-15 pages in length; graduate essays 20-40 pages in length. Papers should be double-spaced and use a standard 12 pt. Times New Roman font.

Essays may discuss current events, history, law, public policy, or the arts & humanities. The essay need not be produced exclusively for the competition; the essay may be a paper written for a class or conference within the previous 12-month period. The only topic requirement is that the essay address a human rights issue. Student co-authored papers will be accepted if submitted by both authors. Faculty co-authored submissions are not eligible.  

Essays must be accompanied by the application cover page . 

A faculty supervisor must recommend the submission of the essay by signing the application cover sheet or by emailing [email protected] by the deadline.  

Students should submit the application cover page and the paper in a single document to [email protected] by the deadline. In the subject line, please indicate Weston Prize: Your Last Name. 

A list of past winners is available here .

College of Law

Juris Doctor (JD) Apply

Why apply to iowa law.

Iowa Law is an ideal place to study law: small enough that your professors will know you well, yet large enough to be nationally renowned and a launchpad for opportunity. We have a reputation for producing lawyers who are highly skilled and successful—and who display an exemplary level of professionalism.  With an Iowa Law degree, you’ll be more than an advocate or attorney: you’ll be a trusted counselor at law for your clients, your colleagues, and your community.

Check out our viewbook

Courses & Curriculum

Writing Resource Center

Life at Iowa Law

Standards of admission.

Iowa Law reads every application for admission in its entirety to determine an applicant’s suitability for admission. Two criteria of primary importance are the Cumulative Undergraduate Grade Point Average, and performance on the standardized test (most commonly the LSAT). Iowa Law recognizes that these numbers do not always accurately reflect an applicant’s potential. Iowa Law assesses an applicant’s ability to succeed in the study of law, to develop skills as a leader, and to enrich the learning experience of fellow students by using a “numbers-plus” practice to evaluate an applicant’s suitability for admission.  Grades and test scores are not disregarded; they are considered along with other non-quantifiable factors that provide a complete picture of an applicant’s overall potential for the study and practice of law.

Additional factors that the Enrollment Management Committee may take into consideration include:  special academic or professional abilities not reflected in the undergraduate GPA; factors affecting academic performance; extracurricular activities; school-year work commitments; post-baccalaureate academic success, including graduate study; public service commitments; law-related employment experience; leadership experience; overcoming adversity; and any other relevant information concerning potential for law study brought to the attention of the Enrollment Management Committee that relates to either qualifications or academic potential. 

Iowa Law admissions works on a rolling admissions process, which means that applications are reviewed and considered throughout the year. Early applications are encouraged and can be submitted as early as September 1. Application review begins in November and generally decisions are completed three to six weeks after an application has been received. It is not uncommon for some applications to remain under review for more than six weeks or for applicants to be placed on a waitlist in the late spring and throughout the summer.

Note to international applicants regarding current U.S. work eligibility requirement:

• All applicants must be currently authorized to work in the U.S.  OR  be a current member of a U.S. state bar association.
• Student visas such as F-1 and J-1 do not meet the work eligibility requirement.
• Exceptions to the work eligibility requirement are rarely made. Those wishing to have an application reviewed who do not meet this requirement must include an addendum to their application providing relevant details.

Application Process for JD Applicants

1. register for credential assembly service (cas, lsac).

The College of Law participates in the  Credential Assembly Services (CAS)  and requires its prospective students to register for this service through the  Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) . LSAC exists to serve both the law schools and the candidates for admission.

2. Take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT)

Applicants to The College of Law are required to take a standardized test for admission consideration.  The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is the examination that most applicants take.  It is also the test that is preferred by the Enrollment Management Committee.  This test is offered at numerous times during the year and is sponsored by LSAC.  The LSAT should be taken no later than February of the year for which the applicant is seeking admission and enrollment.  Scores which are older than five years are not accepted.  Applications to take the LSAT may be accessed at LSAC .  The submission of the LSAT allows the applicant to be considered for both admission and scholarship support.

Applicants who are strong undergraduate students at the University of Iowa undergraduate program may apply to The College of Law by way of the Kinnick Law Program .  Kinnick applicants are allowed to take the GRE, GMAT, ACT or SAT in lieu of the LSAT.  However, applicants who choose to take these examinations, instead of the LSAT, will have more limited access to scholarship assistance.

The College of Law allows applicants who are not participating in the Kinnick Law Program to apply with a GRE score.  However, applicants who choose to take the GRE instead of the LSAT will have more limited access to scholarship assistance and possibly may not be eligible for any scholarship assistance.

3. Submit Letters of Recommendation

The College of Law requires applicants to submit at least two letters of recommendation. Recommendations from professors or others who can comment on your critical thinking, writing skills, and potential for success in law school are particularly welcome. The College participates in the letter of  recommendation service offered by LSAC as part of the CAS subscription .

4. Submit Transcripts

For the  CAS report , applicants are responsible for submitting an official transcript to  LSAC  from each college or university they have attended. In addition, every applicant who accepts admission to Iowa Law must file official transcripts showing conferral of a degree with the University's Office of Admissions.

5. Complete Personal Statement

The submission of a Personal Statement is required for all applicants to Iowa Law.  The Personal Statement is used by the Enrollment Management Committee to assess why the applicant needs a law degree.  The Personal Statement may also be used by the applicant to describe strengths in an application that may not be shown by way of a Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score, a Cumulative Undergraduate Grade Point Average (CUGPA) or Letters of Recommendation.  The Personal Statement may be used to describe significant experiences in the applicant’s background, and how those experiences, be they educational, professional, personal or while participating in activities, have shaped the applicant’s decision to pursue a law degree.

6. Review Character and Fitness Qualifications

In addition to a bar examination, there are character, fitness, and other qualifications for admission to the bar in every U.S. jurisdiction. Applicants are encouraged to determine the requirements for any jurisdiction in which they intend to seek admission by contacting the jurisdiction. Addresses for all relevant agencies are available through the  National Conference of Bar Examiners .

7. Apply Online

Apply online through your LSAC.org account.

Important Dates

• September 1: applications for admission open for the following fall
• October 1: Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) opens for the next academic year
• November: recommended last LSAT test for best scholarship opportunities
• January:  recommended last LSAT test for admission
• January 15: r ecommended last application submission date for scholarship opportunities
• April 1: $250 first deposit deadline for students accepted before March 15
• May 1: application deadline
• June 1: $250 second deposit deadline
• Mid-August: mandatory orientation program for new students (Dates listed on the Academic Calendar )
• Late August: opening of classes (Dates listed on the Academic Calendar )

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the timing of my application matter.

The timing of your application may make a difference. The College of Law has a rolling admissions process. Although the final deadline is not until May 1, we recommend that you submit your application as soon as possible. You may submit an application even if you have not yet taken the LSAT. Historically, the Admissions Committee  begins reviewing completed application files by December.

We encourage you to submit your application no later than January 15 for the following reasons:

-- There is still room in entering class

-- It allows time to resolve logistical issues

-- Gives you more time to consider your options

-- Scholarship money will likely be available

When is an application considered complete?

Please keep in mind that your application file is considered complete only after we have received all of the following: your application, your official CAS report (with transcripts and LSAT scores), résumé and your letters of recommendation. It may take a few days to process your application after we receive it.

What is the application fee?

In an effort to make the JD application process as easy as possible, we have waived the application fee this year for the three-year program.

Does other graduate work I've completed count towards my JD?

The Admissions Committee does take graduate work into account. Please note that the GPA that we will consider will be your undergraduate GPA. However, the committee does review graduate transcripts and weighs those courses and grades in the comprehensive review.

Previous graduate work will not count towards credits that lead to earning a JD. Graduate credits are only applicable to students in the  Advanced Standing JD Program  who have already earned their law degree from another country.

What is the selection process like?

All files are reviewed by our Admissions Committee. A percentage  of the first-year class is admitted primarily on the basis of the LSAT and GPA. The rest of the class is admitted on the basis of criteria in addition to those numbers in accord with our "numbers-plus" admissions policy.

How do I accept an offer of admission to Iowa Law?

If you wish to accept the offer and hold your place in the class, you must submit a $250 nonrefundable deposit  by the date set forth in your offer letter. Applicants accepted into the Fall class must pay a second non-refundable deposit of $150 by June 1. These payments are credited toward tuition and fees for those who enroll.

Are you able to defer admissions?

Under extraordinary circumstances, we may grant a request to defer. The request must be in writing, and must include the reasons for the request. Approvals to defer are left to the discretion of the Admissions Committee Chairperson and the Assistant Dean of Enrollment Management, and are granted under only extreme circumstances. If granted, an applicant can defer for one year only. Requests to defer should be sent to the Admissions Office.

What are the english requirements?

English requirements can be found here . 

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival

So you find yourself teaching writing: using personal essays to explore any subject and improve students’ writing (and your own).

This class is designed for teachers who find themselves teaching writing. Perhaps you’re teaching history, or the sociology of education, or physics, and you find yourself wringing your hands over your students’ prose and trying to figure out how to help them write more clearly. 

Or you’re teaching high school English and want to incorporate more first-person creative writing into your classes. Maybe you’re looking for new ways to help students connect to subject matter they find distant and abstract. In all these cases, personal essay assignments, if well designed, can help students think critically and express their ideas more clearly. (Dare we suggest they might even enjoy writing and editing personal essays?)

In this workshop, we’ll learn about writing short essays based on templates that provide structure but not the subject matter. First, we’ll write short personal essays ourselves using this approach. We'll examine what makes our essays work well, identifying the basic components of strong nonfiction prose. Then we will craft our own essay assignments using structural templates. And we’ll manage to cram in a bit of discussion about how to evaluate our students’ writing in ways that encourage and challenge them.

Since teachers work so hard the rest of the year, we'll aim to make this workshop one of experimentation, creativity, and encouragement—with lots of laughter mixed in. Nothing is required for this class except a desire to teach and a willingness to experiment. We will focus on generating ideas and learning new skills rather than critiquing our own writing. You will leave with new insights about personal essays, your own writing style, and how to design creative first-person assignments.

The Festival creates a marvelous ephemeral space for a very special community of writers to connect, write hard, share, think together, and inspire each other. Join us!

In this workshop, we will  generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

NOTICE: The University of Iowa Center for Advancement is an operational name for the State University of Iowa Foundation, an independent, Iowa nonprofit corporation organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, publicly supported charitable entity working to advance the University of Iowa. Please review its full disclosure statement.

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The Secret to Caitlin Clark’s Shooting Power

The University of Iowa basketball star has made one “logo” shot after another. Her coach and other fitness experts say it’s all in the physical and mental training.

By Talya Minsberg

When Caitlin Clark, the 22-year-old University of Iowa point guard, lines up against the University of Connecticut team on Friday night, she will most likely shoot the ball from far past the 3-point line . Then, against all odds and all coaching philosophies, she is likely to do so again, and again, and again . Whoever is unlucky enough to try to defend her is left to do little but shrug .

How does she do it, beyond having a once-in-a-generation type of talent? She trains aggressively, and for endurance. Her muscles must be able to withstand quick bursts of speed and agility and have the power needed to propel her skyward for her signature logo, or close to half-court, shots. They also need to be strong enough to sustain those quick motions for the entirety of a high-stress game without growing too fatigued to function. And she needs mental resilience to maintain that level of play without losing confidence or focus when things aren’t going smoothly.

Many of those skills are built in the gym with Lindsay Alexander, the associate strength and conditioning coach for Iowa’s women’s basketball team. Ms. Alexander is focused on a single question: “How do we make a more durable athlete?”

The answer is a combination of conditioning, aerobic work and plyometrics, a group of exercises that use rapid movements to build muscle power. Players do squats and deadlifts, and use a bench press to improve their upper-body and core strength. Ms. Alexander focuses particularly on strengthening players’ legs, which are especially important for shooting.

She also works with Ms. Clark and other players to enhance their cardiovascular health by doing drills known as intervals or tempo runs: Players run at hard paces and then take short breaks to recover. Over time, this kind of training makes it easier for their bodies to recover quickly from high-intensity activity.

“You’ve got to practice how you play,” Ms. Alexander said. “We practice up-tempo, fast-paced, hard basketball, so that’s how I view the weight room and the conditioning piece. I use that space to make them ready for practice, ready to be able to do it over and over again.”

Last summer, a clip of Ms. Clark training in the off-season went viral. Her regimen included 300 shots: one hundred three-pointers, one hundred free throws and one hundred from midrange. Ms. Alexander recalled watching the footage and texting Ms. Clark: “I don’t think you were running fast enough.”

In an interview with ESPN, Clark said she had entered college with a long and lean physique, like “a little twig.”

“The strength and conditioning program was a big help for me,” she said. Her body “started coming into its own” during her sophomore year, she added, and her leg strength has helped propel those 3-pointers.

In training, Ms. Alexander has focused on the explosive fast-twitch muscle fibers that players use over and over again to sprint and jump. When those muscles are used for extended periods of time, like during a competitive basketball game, lactic acid can begin to build up, tiring the muscles out. Strengthening the muscles through varying types of squats in the gym can help players sustain that speed for longer.

Improving recovery time is also essential, Ms. Alexander said. When a timeout is called or there is a break between quarters, players need to be able to get themselves back to their base-line heart rate — calming their respiratory and nervous systems and flushing the lactic acid out of their legs — before being able to quickly hit the court again and play at their highest level.

In training, Ms. Alexander also regularly measures how players are jumping and loading their weight on their feet using force plate testing, which involves a machine that tests leg strength and fatigue. She may adapt individual training programs based on that data — for example, having a player work with a coach on leg strengthening exercises if it’s clear they are tiring out too quickly from shooting.

The combination of those training elements is critical for a player like Ms. Clark, said Toby Edwards, an exercise scientist who works with the Australian cycling team and who co-authored a 2018 study on fatigue and basketball. The study found that by monitoring and tracking both workload and fatigue, coaches can better prescribe workloads that make the most of training and decrease fatigue, allowing athletes to perform at a higher level.

All of these efforts also help build the confidence and mental resilience of the players. They know their bodies are conditioned for the physicality of high-level play, because they have exceeded those levels of exhaustion in practice, Ms. Alexander said: “Our practices are way harder than our games.”

Talya Minsberg is a reporter covering fitness and wellness for The Times. More about Talya Minsberg

Stanley Museum of Art

Welcome to hey, SMA! , my personal project for 2023-24, my second year as the museum programs intern at the Stanley. hey, SMA! is a video interview series with visiting artists designed to succinctly communicate their work and philosophies to a public audience.

If you know me, you know my Cinema major is a much stronger force in my life than my Journalism and Mass Comm one, but I decided it was time to face my fears and dig deep into interviewing for my project this year. I thought about what I would want to see as a patron of the museum, and a series of video interviews similar to the ones I’ve seen of my favorite musicians, artists, actors, and directors felt like something I would love to watch and something I knew I could produce myself.

As a non-art major working in an art museum, I know how hard it can be to understand some of the topics often discussed in museum settings. How many times have I heard the words “embodiment” or “ephemeral” and pretended to know what the speaker was talking about? This was my chance to have my own questions answered under the guise of “explaining complex art concepts to the public.” Surely, that’s what I’m doing in this project, but I consider myself part of the audience as well as the creator. In my upcoming interview with Grant Wood Fellow Jess Tucker, she spoke about embodiment. I asked her, “Can you explain that to me like I’m five years old?” It helped.

It’s been fun to relate topics of personal interest to the artists I’ve been meeting. As an ex-woman-in-STEM (I used to be a Sustainability Science major), it was super cool to discuss some of the art world’s sustainability issues with Nnenna Okore. What I’ve learned in sustainability courses has given me controversial opinions about some art practices, and it was gratifying to meet an artist who had a similar philosophy and uses her work to educate about eco-friendly art-making. We connected over my ever-present urge to touch art, something I constantly joke about at the SMA (please don’t touch the art at the SMA). Her work Spirit Dance , which hangs playfully in the lightwell of the museum, became so much more magical to me after our conversation.

Please enjoy the first installment of hey, SMA! with Nnenna Okore, out now on the Stanley’s YouTube channel, and keep your eyes out for more videos from my series in the coming weeks!

About Abbie McLaren

Abbie McLaren is a junior double majoring in Cinema and Journalism and Mass Communication on the production/design track. She is also an active member of the Presidential Scholars Program as an events co-chair and is on the marketing committee for SCOPE. She enjoys taking photos and making videos, going to movies and concerts, cooking, running, and watching too much TV.

As the museum programs intern, Abbie assists with all aspects of public programming: making scavenger hunts and self-guided tours, shooting and editing lecture videos, putting events on the calendar, and everything in between. Her favorite part of her job is attending events and learning new things from the wide variety of speakers the SMA hosts.

Become a member for free!

Division of Diversity Equity and Inclusion

Tiffini Stevenson Earl honored with the David J. Skorton Award for Staff Excellence in Service

The Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion congratulates Tiffini Stevenson Earl, director of equity investigations and ADA coordinator in the Office of Institutional Equity, as the recipient of the 2024 David J. Skorton Staff Excellence Award in Service to the University of Iowa.

The David J. Skorton Staff Excellence Award in Service to the University of Iowa is given annually to individuals who have made significant contributions and have shown exceptional imagination and dedication to improving the university community. Service must include activities of high quality in staff governance, committee work, policy improvement, program creation, and more, outside normal job responsibilities.

Tiffini earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, both from the University of Iowa. She earned her juris doctor from the University of Iowa College of Law. Earl has been conducting complaint investigations and designing and delivering educational programs since 2005, as well as ADA compliance since 2008.

“We could not be prouder of Tiffini as she is recognized as the David J. Skorton Staff Excellence Award honoree for 2024,” stated Liz Tovar, executive officer and associate vice president of the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. “Her dedication to our university is fueled by her passion to care for all our students, faculty, and staff.”

Tiffini’s work at the University of Iowa is as personal as it is professional. A mother of five children ( Kendra, Kenya, Keonna, Kacie, and Kareem) , it was Earl’s daughter, Keonna, who gave her a deeper insight into what it was like to attend the University of Iowa with a disability. Keonna was born with cerebral palsy and overcame cancer at age 14. 

From a recent Iowa Magazine article:

“Keonna’s disability has given me a new outlook,” says Stevenson Earl, who earned a law degree from Iowa as a young mother. “When individuals look at our campus and see an accessibility issue, it’s going to fall on my shoulders. I don’t want to be the barrier or the reason why someone couldn’t achieve something.”

School of Planning and Public Affairs

Students work with dubuque residents on affordable housing and transportation.

School of Planning and Public Affairs masters students recently held an open house in Dubuque, Iowa, to gain input from the city residents on the proposed plans from two capstone project teams. The students provided ideas and sought feedback on ways to increase affordable housing in Dubuque and suggestions for alternative transportation methods which are inclusive of those without personal vehicles. The year-long capstone projects are coordinated through the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities.

See more about the public’s feedback on their proposals in the Telegraph Herald article, “ Accessibility, land use top citizens’ housing, transportation concerns .”

Caitlin Clark and Iowa find peace in the process

An Iowa associate professor breaks down the numbers to display Caitlin Clark's incredible impact on women's college basketball. (2:08)

ON A COLD, snowy Monday night in January, Caitlin Clark walked into a dimly lit restaurant in Iowa City and looked around the room for her parents. They smiled from a back table and waved her over. It was her 22nd birthday. Three teammates and the head Iowa Hawkeyes manager were with her, and soon everyone settled in and stories started to fly -- senior year energy, still in college and nostalgic for it, too.

That meant, of course, tales of The Great Croatian Booze Cruise.

In summer 2023, as a reward for their Final Four season, the Iowa coaches arranged a boondoggle of an international preseason run through Italy and Croatia, grown-ass women, pockets thick with NIL money to burn. They saw places they'd never seen, spoke strange languages and walked narrow cobblestone streets. "One of the best nights was when we got bottles of wine and just sat on the rooftop of the hotel," Caitlin said.

On the last free day of the trip, they proposed a vitally important mission to head manager Will McIntire, who now sat at the birthday table next to me.

They needed a yacht.

Like a real one, the kind of boat where Pat Riley and Jay-Z might be drinking mojitos on a summer Sunday. So McIntire found himself with the hotel concierge looking at photographs of boats. He asked Caitlin about the price of one that looked perfect.

"Book it right now," she said.

They climbed aboard to find a stocked bar and an eager crew. The captain motored them out to nearby caves off the coast of Dubrovnik where the players could snorkel and float on their backs and stare up at the towering sky. They held their breath and swam into caves. They looked out for one another underwater. When stories of the Caitlin Clark Hawkeyes are told years from now, fans will remember logo 3s, blowout wins and the worldwide circus of attention, but players on the team will remember a glorious preseason yacht day on crystal blue waters, a time when they were young, strong and queens of all they beheld. They'll talk about the color and clarity of the sea. A color that doesn't exist in Iowa. Or didn't until Caitlin Clark came along.

The Booze Cruise lived up to its name. After the stress of a Final Four run and the sudden rise of Caitlin's star, it was a chance to be a team and have nobody care and to care about nobody else. Many of their coaches didn't even find out about the yacht until the team got home.

"It was just what we needed," McIntire said at the birthday dinner table. It was the kind of night parents dream of having with their grown children. Often three conversations were going at once. Caitlin's dad, Brent, was telling McIntire about the wild screams and curses that come from their basement when one of their two sons is playing Fortnite.

"You should hear her play Fortnite," McIntire said, pointing to Caitlin.

"Is she good?" Brent asked.

"No," he laughed.

Caitlin told a story about her freshman year roommate almost burning the dorm down trying to make mac and cheese without water. She and Kate Martin told one about both of them oversleeping the bus at an away game -- they awoke to both their phones ringing and someone knocking on the door as they made eye contact and shouted "S---!" in unison.

There was one about Caitlin in full conspiracy-theory rage, too, convinced that Ohio State had falsified her COVID-19 test result to keep her out of a game.

"This is rigged!" she told her mom on the phone. "They're trying to hold me out!"

Anne took over the narration.

"Call the AD!" she said, imitating her daughter.

"I did not say that!" Caitlin said.

There was the time Caitlin needed to pass a COVID-19 test for games in Mexico. She showed up in the practice gym, throwing her mask on the ground while waving her phone and crowing, "I'm negative, bitches!" ... until one of her teammates looked at the email and realized Caitlin had read it wrong, so she quickly grabbed her mask and bolted. As the stories flew, Caitlin smiled, loving to hear her teammates, happy to be with them.

We raised glasses again and again, and her dad beamed. Her mom kept thanking her teammates for taking such good care of her. They toasted to Caitlin, to CC, to 22 and to Deuce-Deuce. The waitress brought over a framed collage she had made, along with a note thanking Caitlin for inspiring "girl power."

Caitlin's mom made a final toast.

"Happy birthday," she said.

"Happy birthday, Caitlin," Kate Martin said, turning to her left and asking her, "What was the best thing that happened in Year 21?"

Caitlin thought about it for a second.

"Final Four," she said.

Everyone clinked their glasses.

"Not even the booze cruise?" one of them asked.

They all laughed.

"Booze cruise!" everyone shouted.

MY INTRODUCTION TO Caitlin Clark's world began in September over breakfast with Hawkeyes associate head coach Jan Jensen, who grew up on an Iowa farm before building a basketball legend of her own.

We met at an old-guard Jewish deli while Jensen was on a brief Los Angeles recruiting trip, flying in from Alaska that morning and flying back home that night. We ogled the cake case with the towering meringue pompadours but settled on something healthy, along with about a million refills of coffee. Jensen held a cup in her hands and summed up the challenge now of being Caitlin Clark.

"She's figuring out how to really live with getting what she's always wanted," she said.

Jensen smiled before she continued.

"She wants to be the greatest that ever was."

She pointed at me as if to underline her meaning.

"I believe that in my heart," she said.

Jensen averaged 66 points a game in high school in the days when girls played 6-on-6. She is in Iowa's girls high school basketball Hall of Fame. Her grandmother, Dorcas Andersen Randolph, who went by "Lottie" because she scored a lot of points, is too. Jensen still has her uniform. She sees Caitlin standing on the shoulders of generations of women like Lottie.

She also understands Caitlin is standing on no one's shoulders.

"She's uncensored," Jensen said. "So many times women have to be censored."

Jensen leaned across the table again.

"There is something in her," she said. "Unapologetic."

To Jensen, Caitlin seems immortal; young, talented, dedicated, rich, famous and on the rise.

"She's 21," she said.

A magic age, her confidence and talent startling to older people like me and Jensen.

"Don't ever let anyone steal that from her," Jensen said. "Protecting that is the coach's job."

Jensen spoke with pride of Caitlin's 15 national awards, but she also said she is so talented, and driven, that she sometimes struggles to trust her teammates. This would be the work of this season and the epic battle of Caitlin's athletic life. She sees things other people do not see, including her teammates. She imagines what other people even in her close orbit cannot imagine, has achieved what none of them have achieved and has done so because she listens to the singular voice in her head and her heart. She must protect that and nurture it. At the same time, she is learning that her power grows exponentially when it lives in concert with other people. A great team multiplies her. A bad team diminishes her. The trust her coaches ask her to have in her teammates, especially new ones, comes with great personal risk. Believing in her coaches requires faith and courage. For their part, the Iowa coaches know that they are holding a rare diamond and are constantly reminding themselves their job is to polish, not to ask her to cut to their precise specifications. It's an effort, possession by possession, game by game, practice by practice, to meld two truths, to find the right balance, to elevate.

"It's a work in progress," Jensen said.

After last season's run to the NCAA title game, the Hawkeyes lost their star center, Monika Czinano, who's now playing pro ball in Hungary. She started every game Caitlin had ever played except one, and her dominance in the post taught Caitlin how successful teammates created space and opportunities at other spots on the floor. She still talks to Monika. Her trust in Monika's replacements is the Hawkeyes' most fragile place this year and will say a lot about whether this team can return to the Final Four.

"That's gonna be the struggle for her," Jensen said.

This idea would, in the coming five months, create two narratives for me, one public, one private, one about a superstar standing on center stage surrounded by an ever-growing mania, and another about a young woman trying to find herself, trying to decide how and who she wanted to be , in the center of that madness.

The waitress warmed up our coffee.

Jensen said she'd introduce me to Caitlin as soon as there was time in her schedule. Then she slipped out of our booth and headed out for a scouting visit at a nearby high school. I had a meeting with Priscilla Presley for another project later that day across town. We talked about life in the fishbowl with Elvis. She told me about how only a handful of memories remained hers alone even all these years later. I thought about Caitlin somewhere 30,000 feet in the air on a plane home from New York City after she received her final award of the 2023 season.

THIS IS A STORY about being 21. Do you remember turning 21?

At 18 you feel immortal but just three years later, a crack has opened in that immortality. You feel the gap between ambitions held and realized. You're aware that wanting things badly enough won't always be enough. You guard against bad energy and thoughts and hold fast to every ounce of confidence. That's when life really begins.

The size of Caitlin Clark's stage and the scale of her dreams and the reach of her talent leave little margin for error. She is chasing being the best of all time, which is an isolating thing. She isn't scared to voice her ambitions even when they separate her from the people she loves. Her teammates dream of merely making a WNBA roster. Kate Martin did the math for me one evening. There are 12 teams. Each team has 12 roster spots. College basketball might be a bigger public stage than the professional league, but it is much easier. The normal dream of a 21-year-old women's college basketball player, then, is the nearly impossible task of finding just one of 144 spots on a WNBA team, which has nothing to do with normal. A lofty dream might be to win one national award, not 15. When Caitlin gave her Associated Press Player of the Year trophy to her parents, her mom looked inside and gasped -- some of the metal on the inside was already peeling and rusting.

"What happened?" she asked Caitlin.

Caitlin shrugged sheepishly.

"The managers got it," she said.

It turns out the trophy, her mom said with a shake of the head, holds two beers. (Actually, the managers fact-checked -- it's two hard seltzers.) Caitlin is grateful for the awards but got tired of traveling around to get them, not because she didn't appreciate the attention but because she seemed to sense that her survival and continued success would depend in part on her closing the book on last season. The past is dangerous to an ambitious 21-year-old. It was a struggle to get her on the plane to New York City to accept the AAU's prestigious Sullivan Award. She asked whether it couldn't simply be mailed to her instead. In the end, she and her family had 12 hours in the city so she wouldn't miss any class. Michael Jordan talks about this -- the speed at which things come at you, the way, when you look back, it becomes hard to remember what happened where and when. That's Caitlin Clark's world right now, and inside she feels both like a superstar and like the little girl begging her father to expand the driveway concrete so she'd have a full 3-point line to shoot from. She references her childhood a lot in public, revealing comments hiding in the plain sight of news conferences and one-on-one interviews.

"I feel like I was just that little girl playing outside with my brother," she says.

The Clarks landed in New York and went straight to their hotel. Thirty minutes later, Caitlin hit the lobby dressed for the show. She signed autographs, posed for pictures, received the Sullivan Award, took more pictures, gave a speech and took more pictures. The family had just a few hours to sleep before heading to the airport for the flight home. But it was her first trip to New York City, and Caitlin said she wanted to see Times Square and get a slice of pizza. They went out and took a photograph, everyone together, then watched as Caitlin ordered a pepperoni slice, which arrived greasy on a stack of cheap paper plates. She folded it like a veteran. In the morning, they flew home. Caitlin rode with her headphones on. She likes Luke Combs. Turned up. Hearts on fire and crazy dreams. The next day she'd be at morning practice and then take her usual seat in Professor Walsh's product and pricing class.

IN MID-OCTOBER, I got to Iowa City in time for the second practice of the year. I ran into head coach Lisa Bluder in the elevator down to the Carver-Hawkeye practice gym, and she laughed about how two fans from Indiana just showed up at the first practice and were walking onto the court taking selfies. Bluder had to stop practice and politely ask, you know, what the hell? They explained they had traveled far to see Caitlin Clark in person.

At 8 a.m., practice began, and almost immediately Caitlin was vibrating with anger at the referees, who were actually team managers with whistles. The whole team looked out of sorts -- "little sh--s," one of their assistants called them during a water break -- and Caitlin fought her temper as several of her young teammates made mistakes. The main object of her scorn was a sophomore named Addison O'Grady , No. 44, who had become a bit of a punching bag. And all the while she raged at what she thought was the terrible job being done calling fouls and traveling.

"Stop letting him ref!" she barked to Jensen about a manager on the baseline. "He's not calling anything!"

She jacked up a 3.

"I don't love that 3," Bluder told her. "You were in range, no doubt. But you were not in rhythm and were contested."

Now Caitlin started talking to herself. What is the offense right now? This is a pretty regular thing, Caitlin Clark talking to Caitlin Clark, scolding her, cursing her, complaining to her, because who else could understand?

"Call screens," she muttered.

"We must call screens," Bluder yelled. "Somebody's gonna get hurt. Somebody's gonna get rocked."

Then Caitlin touched her leg gingerly, which set off a chain reaction of anxiety and hushed attention. She took herself out of an end-of-game drill to rest it. Then, unable to resist, ended up in the drill anyway.

At the end of practice, Bluder described the long road awaiting them if they wanted a return to the Final Four. The promised land, she called it. Everyone on the team knows that Caitlin has given all of them a challenge, yes, but also a gift. An opportunity to breathe rare air. Caitlin's best requires their best, and if they give it, they might just be able to beat anyone.

"Caitlin's got a hell of a lot of pressure," Bluder told them. "I get it."

But it was more than that.

"We are her," she said.

I MET WITH CAITLIN a few minutes later. We found some chairs in the Iowa film room.

"I'm trying to learn about myself as a 21-year-old," she said. "About how I react to situations, what I want in my life, what's good for me, what's bad for me."

The back wall of the film room featured larger-than-life portraits of the Hawkeyes, with Caitlin dominating the center of the collage. She gets the absurdity. Most every person walking around on the planet is a watcher. A consumer of the lives and adventures of others. Caitlin was like that, standing in line as a little girl to meet a hero like Maya Moore. In her bathroom at home in Des Moines she kept a caricature she got at an amusement park that shows her wearing a UConn uniform. But during last year's NCAA tournament, when she averaged 31.8 points and 10.0 assists in leading Iowa to the championship game, she became one of the watched .

"... and I'm 21 years old!" she said, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders with a grin, as if to say: Buy the ticket, take the ride.

"I don't f---ing know."

She's a household name now. Nike puts her on billboards like Tiger or Serena. She is the best women's college basketball player in the country, and one of the best college basketball players period . She has designs on best ever, a fraught thing to want. She admires Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, apex predators, and her ambition and talent live within her in equal measure alongside her youth and inexperience. She is striving for agency and intent in the glare of a white-hot spotlight. Luke Combs commented on her social media a few hours ago. She got free tickets and backstage passes to see him over the summer and also got tickets to Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour." She invited the biggest Swifties on the team, trying to use her new superpowers for good. The Hawkeyes are forever asking her to DM their celebrity crushes and invite them to games. She laughs and tries to explain why she can't get Drake to Iowa City. A local newspaper reporter recently asked her about LSU's Angel Reese being in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit spread, a trap question asking her to comment on the marketability of their bodies.

She earns seven figures and has deals with Bose, Nike and State Farm. The Iowa grocery store chain Hy-Vee, another corporate partner, sometimes pays for her private security at public events.

Meanwhile, her mother still does her laundry.

"I'm trying to learn about myself," Caitlin repeated.

"At the same time I have to be the best version of myself. I have to be the best version of myself for my teammates, and for the fans, and for my family ... "

She laughed again.

"Yeah," she said, pausing to find the right words, feeling the weight of the coming season.

"Yeah," she said again.

Having been to the Final Four last year doesn't make another Final Four easier. It makes it harder. Fame is a warm saccharine glow that obscures the terminal velocity of expectation. "That adds to the tension," she said. "Every failure feels that much more intense. And every success also feels that much more intense. So it's about finding balance."

She sounded like an old soul, knowing how precious these days of glory are and how they are already slipping between her fingers. But that might just be because a middle-aged man was the one doing the listening. Most likely she is experiencing time in an altogether different way, so that right now, all at once, she is living with last year's almost , with this season's grind and hope, and with the knowledge that if everything goes right there is a future in which every year will be harder than the one before, and every season the watchers will be ready to replace last year's model with some newer, shinier object.

"When I leave this place, I don't want people to forget about me," she said.

THAT SAME MONTH, Brent and Anne Clark, who could only look at each other in wonder, parked in the West 43 lot next to the football stadium, where that afternoon their little girl would be playing an exhibition outdoors at Kinnick Stadium in front of the largest audience to ever watch a women's college basketball game.

"It's wild," they kept saying over and over.

"This is all she ever wanted!" Anne said as we set up the food and drinks. "She's asked for years: 'Can we please do a tailgate?'"

Brent stopped and listened to the band practicing inside the stadium. They played "Wagon Wheel." He found a spot where the sun felt warm on his face.

"So what's up with these sandwiches?" asked Caitlin's older brother Blake.

Her younger brother Colin hooked up the portable speaker. He's a freshman at Creighton, where he has found a community of his own. He and his sister adore each other. When he was a baby, the family called her "Caitie Mommy" because she took such good care of him, and now Brent and Anne love to see him celebrate her success. The first track he played was AC/DC's "Back in Black," the Hawks' football walkout song. Anne reached for a cardboard cutout of Caitlin's beloved golden retriever, Bella, a leftover from her freshman season when COVID-19 meant no fans in the seats.

Brent threw a football with one of the young family friends. Around him other fathers did the same with their sons and daughters, many of them wearing No. 22 jerseys, girls and boys.

"Look at all these little girls going in," Anne said.

Some football players walked through the parking lot, and nobody paid them much mind. Former Iowa and NFL star Marv Cook stood talking with Brent about Caitlin and her teammates when the football guys went past.

"They're not the only show in town anymore," Cook said.

The Clark car was packed with Hy-Vee fried chicken sandwiches, cookies, a cooler of beer and soda, these strange pickle-ham-cream cheese concoctions, the most Midwestern thing you've ever seen in your whole life -- "soooo gross!" Caitlin said later.

The lieutenant governor of Iowa stopped by to pay his respects.

"Hawk Walk!" he said.

Everyone went to form a line of cheering fans as the Iowa bus parked and the players went into the stadium. Anne Clark worked herself close holding up the cutout of Bella so Caitlin could see. One of the little girls next to Anne treated her like a Mama Swift sighting at a show.

"She touched me!" she screamed to her friends.

Caitlin went into the football locker room to get ready. Outside, the stadium pulsed with energy. Walter the Hawk swooped down from the press box. Then the dozens of speakers ringing the main bowl started thumping. "Back in Black" again. The whole place shook. Caitlin stepped into the light pouring into the mouth of the tunnel.

"I-O-W-A!" the crowd chanted.

"Let's hear it for No. 22, Caitlin Clark!" the announcer called.

Someone started an M-V-P chant.

The wind blew across the court. Caitlin even air-balled a free throw. Nobody cared. She got a triple-double. Stayed focused. With a minute left she threw a pass that center Addi O'Grady fumbled. Caitlin twirled around and hung her head but went back to her on the next possession.

The game ended in a blowout, and then Caitlin started working her way down the front row of the sideline, more than 50 yards of little girls and boys. They took selfies and asked her to sign their shirts. One young boy held a sign that said, "Met you at Hy-Vee."

"Thank you for coming!" Caitlin yelled.

As she finally ran into the tunnel, she jumped up and high-fived a young girl.

"No way!" the girl said.

Caitlin made it to the locker room, where she had stored a gift a very sick child had given her. The kid was a patient at the children's cancer ward across the street and was serving as an honorary captain. She'd had her own baseball card made, and on the back she'd been asked to name her favorite Hawkeye. Caitlin Clark, she said.

"I'll keep that forever," Caitlin said.

She left the stadium through a side door, got on the back of a golf cart with her boyfriend and headed to the basketball arena, where her parents waited with an enormous bag of freshly washed and folded clothes.

ONE MORNING LAST YEAR I drove across Des Moines to see where all this began. Although Caitlin hasn't been a student at Dowling Catholic for almost four years, her presence -- and her family's presence -- remains palpable in the halls. Her older brother won two state titles in football. Her younger brother won a state title in track. Caitlin's grandfather, her mom's dad, was the beloved football coach there for years. Once after an emotional game he gathered his team at midfield and burned Des Moines Register articles about his team he didn't like.

Caitlin comes by her fire honestly.

I parked and met the basketball coach, Kristin Meyer, in the lobby adjacent to the chapel. We walked through the library to her office. She told me a story that stuck with me. In 10th grade, Caitlin got a reading assignment about empathy. She didn't know what the word meant. Meyer tried and failed to explain. She realized then that she had a team of girls who wanted to enjoy playing sports -- "for fun," Caitlin would tell me later -- and one ponytailed Kobe Bryant.

The summer before her freshman season, the team went to a camp at Creighton. Caitlin threw a three-quarter-court bounce pass that hit a teammate in the hands. That same game, she bopped down the court and threw a perfect behind-the-back pass. Also in rhythm and on the money.

"I would go back and watch film and just rewind and watch again and watch again," Meyer said.

When Caitlin saw a player come open, or more often realized that a player would be coming open momentarily, look out! The ball was in the air and flying at their heads. This made her teammates nervous, and they'd shut down, which Caitlin didn't understand. Soon she just stopped passing.

"It was hard for her to understand what other people would feel," Meyer said.

Caitlin was, in real time, learning how to use her gift. This is an old story among basketball greats. Magic Johnson threw passes that even James Worthy couldn't catch. Caitlin's task was to see the gulf between her potential and her reality and close that distance. Often she got impatient. With herself and others. When someone made a mistake, or if she thought a referee or a coach was being unfair, she'd have tantrums. Mostly she seemed unaware of how her body language and mood impacted the people around her. She'd throw her arms in the air in disgust, or clap loudly, and waves of nervousness would pass through the team. Of course that cut both ways. When she praised a teammate, the coaches would see that player swell with pride. "If Caitlin gave me a compliment," one of her teammates said, "I felt like I was the best player in the gym."

Meyer started showing her film of her body language, something the Iowa coaches still do. They'd sit down and watch in silence as Caitlin stomped and gestured.

"High school basketball was honestly harder for me than college," Caitlin told me. "I mean that in the most positive, respectful way to my teammates. The basketball IQ wasn't there. At the end of the day they didn't care if we won or lost, really. It wasn't gonna affect their life that much. They just didn't get it on the same level."

Meyer watched a Bobby Knight video in which he called the bench the greatest motivator. That resonated. So when Caitlin would fire some wild shot she could see in her mind but not quite execute with her body, Meyer would sit her. Three times in high school Caitlin got technical fouls and she'd immediately come out, once for an entire quarter. As soon as she hit the chair she'd start agitating -- "Can I go back in?" "Can I go back in?!" "CAN I GO BACK IN?" -- until Meyer relented.

"When I used to get technical fouls in high school," Caitlin said, "I did not want to come out of the locker room after the game because I know my mom would be mad. But if I got one during an AAU tournament, I don't think my dad would tell my mom. He knew my mom would not be happy, but he understood it from a competitive standpoint."

Her dad played basketball and baseball in college. He sees a lot of himself in her.

"To her everything is a competition," Brent Clark said. "I was that way when I was her age. I was really ..."

He thought for a moment.

"Emotional," he said finally.

He wishes his own parents would have punished him more for his outbursts in youth sports. He remembers with shame crying in a dugout.

"I get her," he said. "I can relate. I see a lot of that fire. She's just much better at controlling it than I ever was."

Brent and Anne want most of all for Caitlin's spirit to never be squashed. Her grandfather the Dowling Catholic football coach used to say, "It's a lot easier to tame a tiger than it is to raise the dead."

Brent and I sat at a little sandwich place near his office, where he is a senior executive at an agricultural industrial parts company. He laughed talking about the Dowling Catholic Powder Puff girls' football game.

"What did she play?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

"Quarterback."

He laughed at the memory of taking Caitlin out in the back yard and watching her throw a perfect pass, a dart, 20 yards on the fly.

"You couldn't have thrown a better spiral."

Caitlin, like most children, watched her parents much more closely than they realized. "They balance each other really well," she said. "The biggest thing is he's always been a constant. I literally cannot say one time my dad has raised his voice at me. My mom is somebody I talk to every single day. My life would be a mess if it weren't for her. She's one of my best friends."

Caitlin led the state in scoring a couple of times, but Dowling never won a state title during her career. Her senior year the team didn't even make the state tournament. She could shoot the Maroons into games and sometimes out of them. But nobody worked harder in the gym. She wanted to be great. When someone got in the way of that, even if that someone was her, she struggled to manage her emotions. An engine as rare as hers threw out a ton of exhaust.

Caitlin and I talked about high school one morning. Both Jensen and Kate Martin told me they didn't think she had any true friends outside her tight-knit family before she got to Iowa. They didn't mean she wasn't popular, or didn't have a group to hang with, only that there was no one in her orbit who was wired like her. Legends like Tiger Woods and Joe DiMaggio often seemed alone too, even surrounded by huge crowds, solitary citizens living in a world of their own ambitions and fears.

"Were you lonely?" I asked.

She thought about it.

"I would say I was lonely in the aspect of no one understood how I was thinking," she said. "I wasn't surrounded by people who wanted to achieve the same things as me."

Letters from college coaches stacked up at her house in those days. Her parents kept them from her until late in the process, trying instinctively to protect as much of her childhood as they could. I think they knew even then. Her dream school was, like everyone else, UConn. She was growing up and learning for the first time about being watched, about reputation. A lot of college coaches watched the same body language sequences Meyer did. Most didn't mind. Dowling's open gyms filled with the best of the best coaches in the country. One absence was conspicuous, though.

"Geno never came," Meyer said.

CAITLIN'S FAMILY, IT'S important to note here, is quite Catholic. She went to Catholic school from kindergarten through graduation. Anne comes from a big, loud, fun Italian family, and if you look in Caitlin's fridge at the apartment she shares with teammate Kylie Feuerbach , you'll almost certainly find some frozen red sauce meals made by her mom or grandma.

Her brother Blake is always texting her reminders to say her rosary and go to the church near campus, conveniently located across the street from Iowa City's great dive bar, George's -- which is where Coach Bluder and her staff go to celebrate big wins. My friend Annie Gavin, whose father is the famous wrestling coach Dan Gable, goes to that church and reports that more Sundays than not, she sees Caitlin in the pews. Blake wore his St. Benedict bracelet to the Final Four last year and did four decades of his rosary at the hotel and the last round in the arena just before tipoff.

You see where this is going.

Anne Clark grew up the daughter of a Catholic high school football coach. What do you imagine she thinks is the greatest, most magical university in the world?

"For a while I thought she was gonna end up at Notre Dame," Meyer said.

Meyer told me that Caitlin remained pretty calm during her recruitment -- except when Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw came to town.

Her list of choices winnowed to two. The Hawkeyes and the Fighting Irish. She'd also looked at Iowa State, Texas and both Oregon schools. The lack of interest from UConn stung. "Honestly," she said, "it was more I wanted them to recruit me to say I got recruited. I loved UConn. I think they're the coolest place on Earth, and I wanted to say I got recruited by them. They called my AAU coach a few times, but they never talked to my family and never talked to me."

Bluder and Jensen had been worried about the Irish from the beginning. Jensen got to Brent Clark when Caitlin was in the seventh grade and told him they'd offer her a scholarship right now. Then she promised to stay away until he was ready to talk. She also predicted exactly how the rest of the nation would awake to the magic of his daughter, which gave her credibility as the years went on.

When Caitlin was playing in Bangkok with Team USA in 2019, Jensen and Bluder flew to games around the world so Caitlin could see they made the effort.

"My family wanted me to go to Notre Dame," Caitlin said. "At the end of the day they were like, you make the decision for yourself. But it's NOTRE DAME! 'Rudy' was one of my favorite movies. How could you not pick Notre Dame?"

Everyone in her high school wanted her to choose Notre Dame. Every year the top two or three students went to South Bend. It was ingrained in the culture. When she went on a campus visit, she wanted to love it. In fact, she got frustrated with herself for not loving it.

Notre Dame it would be. She called McGraw. It was the "smart" choice.

Next she called Bluder to break the bad news.

Bluder was at a field hockey game.

She stepped away from the field and called her staff.

"We're not gonna get her," she said.

Then the Iowa coaches waited for the dagger of an official announcement. For some reason it never came. Jensen had seen second-guessing before. She texted Caitlin's assistant AAU coach to see if it would be appropriate for her to reach out.

"I think I'd call her if I were you," the coach told Jensen.

So she did.

"What's up?"

"I haven't seen anything."

"Yeah, I've changed my mind."

Caitlin wanted to come to Iowa but thought her mom didn't want her to turn down Notre Dame. The AAU coach called Bluder and asked if Caitlin were to change her mind, would there be a spot for her. Three or so days later Caitlin again faced two phone calls. The first was terrifying. She needed to tell McGraw she had changed her mind.

"I'm 17 years old," she said, "and I'm sitting in my room and I'm sweating my ass off. I'm about to call her. She is an intimidating individual. She was really understanding. She kinda knew. She was great. Then I called Coach Bluder."

Dave and Lisa Bluder sat in the cozy basement of a fancy local restaurant. A fireplace warmed the room. They'd just sat down and ordered a drink.

"I can remember the exact table," Bluder said.

Her phone rang.

"Do you have a few minutes to talk?" Caitlin asked.

She committed on the spot. Bluder went back inside and ordered a bottle of champagne. Then she and Dave got another bottle and caught a ride to Jensen's house to celebrate some more. Caitlin remained in her bedroom, still nervous. She had made her two calls, but there was one more person who needed to know the news.

"Caitlin commits to us but didn't tell her mom," Jensen said laughing.

Her parents both call the family meeting that followed "emotional" and say they realized, truly in that moment, that their daughter had a vision for herself more ambitious and nuanced than any they could conjure. She seemed vulnerable and brave, and they deferred to her judgment.

Caitlin Clark was going to be a Hawkeye, and she told reporters her goal was to take Iowa to the Final Four. Some people rolled their eyes, but a bar had been set. Caitlin and I talked about this moment, the way that it felt like part of her search was to find other young women who cared about the game as much as she did. I asked her if this moment felt like the first decision she'd made completely herself.

"For sure," she said.

I asked if this was also the first time she had ever defied her mother, whom she adores -- a critical step on the path from childhood to adulthood. She stopped cold. It seemed like she'd never really thought about it before but now saw it clearly, from the high ground of the life she has built from talent and desire.

"Probably," she said finally.

THESE DAYS CAITLIN and her teammates travel around Iowa City in a pack, a tight-knit crew, as her celebrity pushes them further and further into their insular little world, which revolves around the riverside apartment complex where most of them live. They know everything about each other -- such as, say, that Caitlin's fake name for orders and hotel rooms is Hallie Parker from "The Parent Trap" -- and this past Halloween, they dressed in costumes and climbed up balconies to sneak into teammates' apartments to scare each other. Sydney Affolter nearly had a heart attack when she approached her sliding balcony door to find, staring at her, a full gorilla costume with a giddy Kate Martin inside.

These women are Caitlin's tribe, and they have been since she arrived on campus in fall 2020. The starting five for the first game of her career was the same as the starting five in the national championship game three years later. Monika Czinano, the center, a dominant force on the court, with a quirky Zen off it. "Well, I live on a floating rock," she'd say with a shrug after a tough loss. McKenna Warnock holding down the 4 with physicality and smarts, and Gabbie Marshall playing alongside with power and finesse. Caitlin ran point from her very first practice, while Martin began to shape the whole team in her competitive image, the daughter of a high school football coach who brought intensity to every part of the game.

"What she found is people who also put their entire life into basketball," Martin said.

Caitlin's teammates meanwhile discovered her talent came with impatience and temper. She blew up at practice. A lot of throwing her hands up in the air, stomping off the court and simply refusing to pass the ball to an open teammate if she didn't believe they'd deliver. It was the first time in her life she'd had to play with teammates who would not simply be run over. Warnock got in her face. So did Martin. The coaches pulled her aside. She's open. You have got to pass her the ball. Caitlin's answer, like a logical toddler, left them stuttering to find a response. Why would I pass her the ball when I'm taking more shots in the practice gym?

"I had expectations of them and they weren't meeting them," Caitlin said.

Because of COVID-19, all this occurred in private in the early days. A lot of the freshman year dust-ups happened in empty arenas. Her teammates came to understand that they were dealing with someone like Mozart. She wasn't rude, nor necessarily nice, just a different species. At one point that year a sports psychologist came in to work with the team. She started going around the room and asking the players when they felt stressed and anxious and how they reacted to those feelings. One by one, the young women described familiar symptoms and scenarios: sweaty hands, a fear of the free throw line, struggling with breathing, anxiety about the last possession.

Finally it was Caitlin's turn. She seemed a little embarrassed.

"I never am," she said.

Everyone in the room somehow understood she was being more vulnerable than cocky.

"Stone cold," one witness told me. "It was so cool."

I pressed her once on how she must have seemed to her teammates that first year. "People know I'll have their backs and I'll ride for them every single day," she said. "Obviously there is a switch that flips when I step on the court like I want to kill someone. I'm here to cause havoc. Some of the biggest challenges are I have all this emotion, I'm a freshman and I'm starting and how do I channel this? At times they were definitely like, 'Why is this girl a psycho?'"

The Hawkeyes lost games they should have won that year, still figuring out a way to have both a team and a superstar. The coaches put together video sessions completely devoted to her reactions. They had few notes about her actual play. She simply moved at warp speed, and even her most gifted teammates needed time to adjust. To learn how to breathe her air, to speak her language, to cross dimensions from their old world into the new one she was creating.

"If you see a practice, you might figure that out," Jensen told me once. "You gotta have whatever that is. You gotta be playing the game at Caitlin's pace. It's all processing. She's a half-second ahead."

The coaches saw her learning, too, looking to pass out of double- and triple-teams. Bluder kept telling them to give her latitude. Their main job, as she saw it, was to make sure they never put "her light under a bushel."

One day last year I sat down with Jensen to watch film of Caitlin's outbursts, which they had put together in reels.

"She does a lot of twirling," Jensen said with a sigh.

A twirl, a stomp off the court, slamming her hands into a wall. A reaction when the mistake was someone else's and not often enough a "my bad" when it was hers.

"She's not touchy-feely," Jensen said. "You're gonna meet her where she is."

The Iowa coaches didn't baby their prodigy. After one particularly bad performance, Caitlin caught a full barrage of anger and blame in the postgame locker room. She took it in public, but when she got into the car with her mom, she burst into tears. Not because of the yelling but because she wondered if she wanted something different than everyone else around her.

"Our goals are not aligned," she told her mom.

The Hawkeyes won 20 games and lost 10 her freshman year. They got beat in overtime at home by Ohio State. They beat No. 7 Michigan State in the Big Ten tournament. Caitlin won national co-freshman of the year. That helped with credibility.

"I want her in my foxhole," Martin said. "That's the type of player you want at the end of a game in a battle."

Maybe earlier than anyone, Martin realized that Caitlin's emotional outbursts were a byproduct of a young woman trying to marshal forces too powerful to fully control. Caitlin could take them to glory if they could help her be her best self. They all needed one another. Her teammates' understanding grew. They saw her get the blame for all the losses and knew the ball would always be in her hands with the game on the line. At a team meeting that season, when hurt feelings over Caitlin's lack of trust had come to the surface, it was Martin who rose to speak.

"I got something," she said.

The team fell silent.

"Everybody thinks they want to be Caitlin," she said. "I don't know if you want to be Caitlin."

The women knew immediately what she meant.

"The crown she wears is heavy."

The other four starters slowly accepted their role as The Caitlinettes. They won two games in the NCAA tournament before getting beat in the Sweet 16 by UConn. The headlines the next day back in Iowa would ratchet up the pressure -- Are the Hawks Ahead of Schedule? -- but in the postgame chaos Caitlin saw a familiar face approaching. It was Geno Auriemma. He told her how great she'd played and thanked her for her contribution to their sport. It felt like a victory. He finally saw what Bluder had seen all along. "He could see the greatness in me when I was a freshman," she said, "before everything unfolded when I was a junior."

That offseason Caitlin tried out for Team USA. Possession to possession, shot to shot, she played free and bold. Head coach Cori Close, whose day job was coaching the UCLA Bruins , saw the confidence immediately. "Women have been socialized to not want to take all the shine," she said. "She is an elite competitor who isn't scared to step into the moment."

But every team Caitlin had been on during the tryouts had lost its scrimmage, and after tryouts Close pulled her aside and put a question to her simply: "Do you want to be a really talented player who gets a lot of stats, or do you want to win?"

Caitlin made the roster, led the team to gold and was named MVP. "To Caitlin's credit, she really bought into that," Close said. "She went from being a really, really talented competitor to a winner."

WITHIN DAYS OF my arrival inside the Iowa basketball program, I started hearing stories about The Scrimmage. It seemed mythical the way the managers talked about it, but it really happened, on Oct. 20, 2021, just 15 days before the start of Caitlin's sophomore season.

"I watched it with my own two eyes!" former manager Spencer Touro said.

"The one where I went insane?" Caitlin asked.

"I think she made like five 3s in a row," Bluder said.

"I remember the scrimmage," Kate Martin said.

"How'd you hear about that?" Caitlin asked.

"I would get caught just watching her," Martin said.

"Down 25 with four minutes left," Jensen said.

"I had 22 points in less than two minutes," Caitlin said.

"She had seven 3s and a floater to tie at the buzzer," Jensen said.

"That's when I think she started to expand her game to the deep logos," Bluder said.

"There are clips," Caitlin said.

"It's a video game when she's on," Jensen said as she cued up silent footage from the actual scrimmage.

"I just start launching," Caitlin said.

"This is ... ," and Jensen starts laughing and can't stop.

"Trading 3 for 2," Caitlin said. "They're missing everything."

"... it's crazy," Jensen said, regaining her composure, watching Caitlin hit a 2, a 3, a 2 with an and-1, then another 3.

"I am making one-legged floaters," Caitlin said.

"Another off-balance 3," Jensen said, watching Caitlin grin on the film.

"She would take a couple of dribbles from half court," manager Isaac Prewitt said at a local campus restaurant over a plate of boneless wings.

"Everyone was freaking out," manager Will McIntire said, before taking a bite of his buffalo chicken wrap.

"They're going full tilt on her," Prewitt said. "They're not holding back."

"After I made my fifth 3 in a row, I ran to the bench," Caitlin said.

"You just have to let your jaw hit the floor," McIntire said.

"She's smiling now," Jensen said. "She knows."

"What is happening?" Caitlin screamed to her teammates on the bench.

"Look at the bench," Jensen said as she watched Caitlin scream at them and her teammates screaming back.

"I rarely do that," Caitlin said a little sheepishly.

"Now we're down three with 16 seconds left," Jensen said.

"Coach Abby was dying laughing," Caitlin said.

"So that tied it," Jensen said and the film finally ended, evidence that the birth of the legend really happened, was an actual thing, that none of the people in the gym that day will ever forget. Including a team of young girls who'd been invited to see a practice and happened upon the wildest one ever.

"They were going insane," Caitlin said.

"We're on the other side," McIntire said. "We are all like, oh my god."

"The coaches were just like, what the f---," Caitlin said.

Those few minutes changed the Iowa program forever. These Hawkeyes had been picked by the basketball gods to take part in something rare, something that would define them, that would be a legacy. That season they trailed by 25 points late in the third quarter against Michigan. Iowa dressed only seven players because of injuries.

Then Caitlin started firing wild, fearless 3-pointers. She made one from the logo, and during a subsequent timeout the team gathered in an excited circle around Bluder. Sharon Goodman leaned in.

"It's just like that scrimmage!" she said.

In the final six minutes, Caitlin hit four 3-pointers, scored 21 points and pulled the No. 21 Hawkeyes within five with 1:05 to go. The run stalled and the No. 6 Wolverines escaped with a win, but Iowa headed home in a kind of euphoria. The team could see the future. Weather delayed the team's flight and the players spread out around Signature Flight Service at the Willow Run private airport as highlights from the game played on every screen. Social media exploded. Caitlin Clark had just taken over a game, turning a Big Ten hostile arena into her cul-de-sac back in Des Moines.

The secret was out.

The Hawkeyes sat, just them, in a little pilot's waiting room with big recliners. Everyone groaned when ESPN aired her lone air ball. Caitlin sank into the cushions. She felt it, too. Friends and family kept sending her clips from the game as those same clips played on the three screens on the wall. She'd watched the "SportsCenter" top 10 her whole life and now she was on it. It felt like a moment. Not a mountaintop but proof to each of them that the ascent was real, that Caitlin really was stretching the canvas, exploding the usual logic about what was possible on a court and what was not. Maybe everything they thought they knew about basketball and the confines of 94 feet by 50 feet was wrong. Maybe the sophomore sitting in the oversized recliner was simultaneously breaking and remaking it.

THAT BRINGS ME to the other, inevitable remaking of her world that happened during her sophomore year. Talent like hers comes with a cost and, in our culture currently, that cost is fame. One night Iowa played a home game. Caitlin's parents, like always, drove over and cheered from the stands -- and nervously said rosaries, and screamed at officials, and paced, and switched seats if some bad energy had somehow infected their previous seating pattern -- and when the game ended, they rushed to the car to get home. Caitlin showered and changed and, close to 11 p.m., finally headed from the arena to her car. She was by herself. Two strange men approached through the shadows. Her pulse quickened.

They wanted her to sign some memorabilia.

The encounter freaked her out a little but freaked her parents out a lot, so they got with the university to work out a security plan. Looking back, Brent Clark said, they didn't understand at all what was about to happen. A legend was being born, one of those folk heroes who can only really exist in college sports: Steve McNair, Marcus Dupree, Tim Tebow, Caitlin Clark.

Fans around the conference loved to heckle her. She secretly loved the hostility because it made her games feel like the ones she'd watched on television as a child with her parents and brothers. Bluder said one Big Ten coach shouted at Caitlin during a game, "You're not as good as you think you are!"

"Were you nuclear?" I asked.

"I still am."

The Iowa coaches made progress with the body language in practice, and even if she couldn't exactly control her fiery side, Caitlin did know enough to recognize it in herself. She was becoming self-aware, learning how to maximize her unique combination of skill and drive. One day Jensen pulled up a body language clip that showed her simmering, clearly frustrated, but managing not to explode. There were victories to celebrate. The Hawkeyes won the 2022 Big Ten title and went into the tournament with high hopes, but in the second round they lost to Creighton. Blake Clark texted a photograph of the scoreboard to his sister. Motivation. All offseason, at random moments, he'd send the picture again.

"She eats that stuff up," Blake said.

LAST SEASON, CAITLIN'S junior year, arrived with enormous expectations, and she felt them. The starting five had started two full years of games together, two years of practices and team parties and late-night flights and bus rides. This was their last year together. Monika Czinano would head to the WNBA or overseas to continue her career, and McKenna Warnock was about to graduate on her pre-dentistry path and start applying to dental schools. This was Caitlin's best shot to deliver on her bold claim that they would reach the Final Four.

Before the season began, the Iowa coaches reached out to a performance consultant and author whom Caitlin had studied in high school. Brett Ledbetter first Zoomed with her on a Monday, the last week of July, and they started with the idea that the search for approval can get supercharged by her growing fame and success. Praise is a gateway drug, he told her. She talked about how she'd become addicted without even realizing what was happening.

"It really is a drug," she told him. "You're always craving it."

"How do you process what you just said?" he asked.

"I think it's scary to think about," she said.

"I think it's sad."

Two weeks later they Zoomed again. The topic was "unconditional peace," and she talked about her desire to be calm. She wanted to know which external forces made her feel full and which made her feel empty. Later she'd watch that video back with Ledbetter and find herself second-guessing her answers.

"Because?" he asked.

"I don't want to say the wrong thing," she told him. "And maybe I don't even really understand yet."

"Understand what?"

"What I'm chasing after."

There was a preseason practice on Oct. 15 when she pouted and raged. That went into the clip file. The coaches still prepared video packages of her body language and reactions. But these moments had softened, and slowed, and when confronted with them, her answers showed her growing ability to harness her gift. Bluder showed her one moment from practice when she just walked off the court into the tunnel and vanished.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" the coaches asked.

"It's good," Caitlin told them.

She told her coaches that she'd felt herself about to explode and decided to have a second alone, so that she didn't negatively impact her teammates.

"I didn't slam the chair," she told them.

They liked that. She liked that they liked it.

"I didn't throw my water bottle," she told them.

They liked that, too.

"I walked away," she said, and then smiled and added, "I didn't even scream in there."

THE SEASON BEGAN and Iowa got upset on the road at K-State, then lost to UConn at a tournament in Oregon and to NC State at home. The previous year's NCAA loss to Creighton weighed heavy and all she could think about was the specter of failure hanging over this season, and her career, and over the success of her decision to choose Iowa over Notre Dame, and just a lot of other unfocused, swirling anxiety.

"What if we get upset again?" Caitlin thought.

She needed help with the chaos of living in multiple dimensions of time, juggling past, present and future all at once, with tomorrow offering the circle's second chance but also arrows from the battlement walls.

"I'm almost playing this game because I have this expectation of all I want to accomplish," she'd say later, "but I'm missing the moments in between. I've got to find peace in my life."

The Iowa coaches encouraged her to "take off her cape" in front of her teammates. That would deepen their connection, which they'd need to win the close, fierce games that loomed for the Hawkeyes. Once a week, the players met to talk honestly about their hopes and fears. "Those were highly classified conversations," Ledbetter said, "and nothing was off the table. It was remarkable where they went as a group together. One of the things she embraced is vulnerability. The way she viewed vulnerability changed in the course of the season."

He asked her to smile at people first and see how that changed the energy in the room. She did and reported back. Everyone seemed happier and friendlier and more secure. These moments weren't tied to what she could accomplish but to how she showed up in the world with and for others. The rest of the country would discover Caitlin in the coming months, seeing her emerge almost fully formed as a superstar, but her teammates were watching from the front row as she built an interior mental warrior strong enough to support the weight of her talent and the expectations it brought.

Internal motivations to be the best and external motivations to reach records and milestones, to win, to earn praise and approval, overlapped for Caitlin. Each one feeding the other. She'd trapped herself in a perpetual state of chasing, where achievements brought no peace. Her coaches and mentors helped her see the lie in those dreams. The numbers, great as they were, fun as they have been to chase, weren't speaking to her soul, weren't why she played. The encouragement and praise, from fans, coaches, teammates, friends and her parents, were a sign she was doing something at a very high level but were never enough for her to feel as if she had arrived.

"You just want more of it," she said.

"That's not going to make me feel full at the end of the day," she said during another session. "In 20 years, banners and rings just collect dust. It's more the memories."

Caitlin settled on a mantra: Find peace in the quest.

IN THE FINAL regular-season game of the 2023 season, No. 2-ranked Indiana came to Carver-Hawkeye Arena. This night would let Iowa know if it'd come together in time to make a run, and would let Caitlin know if all the hard mental and emotional work she'd put in -- in addition to all the hours in the gym and weight room, where she complained to the strength coaches that they had made her thighs get too big for all her jeans -- would result in a player and a team functioning at the same frequency. She'd worked to find peace, and tonight that meant peace inside an arena that experienced Hawk fans insist they've never heard louder.

Iowa jumped out to a 10-2 lead with a 3-pointer by Kate Martin that ripped through the net so clean and so hard the television audience could hear the popping strings. Indiana fought back. Caitlin hit a big shot and pounded her chest and she stomped to her own bench and bellowed. Her teammates shouted back. The game was tied late when the Hoosiers went to the line with less than a second left and two foul shots to take the lead. Caitlin started yelling at the officials to review the clock.

"Time! Time! Time!"

She alone realized that the officials had messed up the clock. That's the basketball IQ coaches are forever talking about. She stayed calm and the officials went to check the replay monitors and sure enough, she was right.

The referees fixed the clock. Indiana made both free throws to take a two-point lead. The Hawkeyes had a full second and a half to get off a buzzer-beater.

The No. 2 team in the country got in its defensive set.

It was time.

Caitlin rushed toward a screen at the top of the key, the clock almost out, and every one of the 15,000 people in this storied old arena knew she was taking the last shot. Her opponents knew it, too. The pass came in. The clock started: 1.5 seconds, 1.4, 1.3. Off balance but with a smooth flick of the wrist, fingers pointed toward the floor, she fired the last shot of the game. The ball dropped and the arena exploded with sound. The noise overwhelmed the television microphones into a slush of feedback. Kate Martin doubled over in awe and jubilation and Caitlin took off sprinting for the baseline just like in practice.

Iowa won three straight games to win the Big Ten tournament, beating Ohio State in the final by 33 points. Caitlin felt invincible. Her brother Blake told me one night, almost in awe, that his sister has the rare thing that powered Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. "One of her superpowers is taking things personally," he said. "The fact that you're on a basketball court with her, that's a challenge. 'You should leave this court knowing you have no right to be on it. You need to go home and go work if you want to share the court with me and my team.' That's why you see her smiling as she is absolutely dismantling Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game, just cackling as she's coming up the floor with the ball. Because it's so easy and it's just basketball."

The next morning, back in Iowa City, Caitlin got up early and decided to attend her 8 a.m. class. She'd missed a few. Once all the students had taken their seats, the professor looked out into the crowd.

"Is Caitlin Clark here?"

She was sitting in the back row. The students turned to look her way. They started clapping, the room soon echoing with cheers.

The NCAA committee gave the Hawkeyes a No. 2 seed.

THREE YEARS OF WORK with her Iowa teammates, and a lifetime of dreaming before arriving on campus, had placed Caitlin Clark on the biggest stage in her sport with the exact right combination of ruthlessness, talent and desire to make that stage her own. Athletes dream of peaking at the perfect moment and soon the entire country would know what the Hawkeyes first learned in that long ago scrimmage. She wanted her moment. She made her intentions for March known when Bluder subbed her out of the first-round blowout win against Southeastern Louisiana. Furious, she stomped past her coach on the way to the bench.

"Forty minutes, six games," she barked.

That was it: 40 minutes in a game, six games for the championship.

The second round scared them all. The Georgia Bulldogs were coming to Carver-Hawkeye. They played physical SEC basketball. Caitlin told me she hadn't felt this much pressure all season. They'd lost the year before in the round of 32 to Creighton. Blake had been sending Caitlin the scoreboard picture for a whole year. The Bulldogs played a funky matchup zone that caused problems for opponents. Iowa got off to a slow start but found its rhythm. The game stayed close, as close as four points in the final minute. The Bulldogs kept fouling hard, playing with intensity, trying to stay in the game. During a television timeout, Caitlin stood next to the referee waiting to restart play. The ref held the ball, and a Georgia defender stood next to them.

"You're not as good as you think," the Bulldogs player said.

Caitlin smiled and turned to the ref.

"Do you think I'm a good basketball player?"

The referee started laughing. The Iowa coaches knew, in that moment, that she had entered chrysalis stage. She'd become the player she had always had the potential to be. Calm, ruthless. A winner. She simply would not engage with the negativity. She hit two foul shots with a second left and the game was over.

Bluder told her team to pack for two games in Seattle, and then for two games in Dallas at the Final Four. The Hawkeyes were not going home. They flew into Seattle and walked into the hotel where the players saw a DJ booth set up in the lobby. Caitlin pulled her hood up and went up and pretended to be spinning records in a club and everyone laughed.

"Oh my god, this kid," Iowa staff member Kathryn Reynolds said with a wistful laugh. "We were on the ride of our lives."

She grinned on the bus to and from practice and scrolled through pictures of her dog, Bella. In the Sweet 16, she scored 31 in an easy win against Colorado. The managers still talk about that game, which is often overlooked in the run of clutch performances that would follow.

"She just took it over," manager Prewitt said. "It was nuts. She has that ability to flip that switch."

"Can you tell when it's coming?" I asked.

McIntire just nodded.

"Honestly as someone who guards her," he said, "it's the look she gets and the way she starts dribbling the ball. Her mojo. Her body language."

"If someone gets up on her and talks s---," Prewitt said.

"You just get a tingle," McIntire said. "OK. Some s--- is about to go down."

He laughed.

"Usually it's against us during practice," he said.

The morning of the Elite Eight, facing fifth-seeded Louisville, Reynolds, who was basically Caitlin's chief of staff to help her navigate stardom, ran into her after the morning shootaround.

"How do you feel?" Reynolds asked.

Caitlin just shrugged her shoulders.

"I feel good," she said.

Reynolds said she knew then that Iowa would win.

"You can read her eyes really well," she said. "She has it all in her face. She was just in this different space. I remember the peace during shootaround, goofy then focused. It was almost bizarre to watch how comfortable she seemed."

Caitlin believed it was the biggest game of her life.

She walked onto the court and felt no nerves or anxiety.

I must've raised an eyebrow or something when she told me that because she smiled and said, "I swear to God I would tell you."

She walked up to Reynolds.

"This is gonna be a great game," she told her. "This is gonna be awesome."

Caitlin stepped into the spotlight, famous for the first time from coast to coast, drawing record audiences to the broadcasts. In the first quarter of the Elite Eight game against Louisville, she went on fire. Hit a 3. Iowa got a stop. Hit another 3. After a turnover Caitlin pushed a 2-on-1 fast break across the center line. Once there would have been no scenario in which she didn't try to score. But she'd been trying to listen to her coaches telling her that real life cannot be lived in a total isolation. She needed to share. The defender closed, perfectly lured to get left flat-footed by a patented Caitlin juke, but instead she threw a long bounce pass that hit McKenna Warnock perfectly in stride but bounced off her hands and out of bounds. The roof would have lifted off the building had the pass led to an easy bucket. It looked, honest to goodness, like a pass Magic Johnson might have thrown in the early summer of 1988, but it earned the Hawkeyes no points. The cameras focused on Caitlin, who did not react at all. Her coaches all noticed.

During a run in the next quarter she attracted a double-team and dished to a wide-open Warnock for 3 on two consecutive game-busting possessions. Iowa never trailed again. Warnock pointed at Caitlin as they turned and ran back on defense. During the timeout that followed, Louisville coach Jeff Walz ranted and raved and screamed in the face of one of his guards like a toddler, and that's what a confident Caitlin Clark can do to a grown man: turn him into a joke of a child, red-faced, all screams and no plan to make the bleeding stop. The Hawkeyes took the lead and then went on a 9-0 run in the second quarter. Caitlin scored or assisted on every one of the points. When Iowa won she ran to Bluder and wrapped her up in a hug.

"We did it," Caitlin said.

She finished with 41 points. She had 12 assists and 10 rebounds, a triple-double, just owning the game and the vibrating electrons that created the spaces in it. The Hawkeyes were going to the Final Four.

ON THE DAY of the national semifinal against South Carolina, Caitlin watched some video of her pouting through a practice back on Oct.15. She didn't recognize that old version of herself and felt like she'd braved the storms of the season and postseason and had emerged stronger. She walked onto the court and heard the 19,288 fans screaming, faced into that noise. Something almost metaphysical happened to her. Even six months later she still struggled to believe it happened. But when she first stepped onto the court before that South Carolina game, she felt like she left one dimension behind and moved into another. She told herself that she'd worked so hard for this moment and it was now hers to own. Most of all she felt peace in the quest. Only a few rhythm masters ever reach that state of elevated consciousness. Everyone who tastes it wants more, their eyes opened to new worlds of color.

Iowa upset the undefeated, top-seeded and defending champion Gamecocks 77-73. Caitlin scored 41 points including five 3-pointers. She showed heart in the tense moments. Afterward, in a room waiting on the press to come ask her questions, she shared a private moment with Bailey Turner, the sports information director. He described her later as completely calm, empty and peaceful.

The Hawkeyes lost in the title game to LSU.

The LSU coaches had given the Tigers a devastatingly accurate scouting report on the Hawkeyes. Associate head coach Bob Starkey wrote that Caitlin would score her points and there was nothing they could do to stop her. The key was to manage how she scored those points. She averaged 27 in the Iowa wins and 30 in the losses. The key to beating the Hawkeyes, Starkey argued, was stopping Monika Czinano, who scored 19 when her team won but only 11 when they lost.

Against LSU she scored 13 and fouled out. McKenna Warnock fouled out, too. Caitlin scored 30 in the defeat.

She went to a little room beneath the arena for a news conference.

Someone asked her, "What's next for this team?"

She tried not to laugh. This question landed in her deepest anxieties. She'd been trying to face down the fear that nothing she ever did would be good enough and now here was proof that someone else thought that, too. She wanted to make time stop. Tomorrow, with its hope and danger, loomed always. Peace felt more and more like the ability to keep tomorrow out of today.

"I don't want to think about what's next," she said once. "I don't want to feel like I always have to do more and be more."

Months later, as we talked about the Final Four, I asked her if she felt like she knew herself.

"That's a journey I'm still on," she said.

She smiled.

"I'm only 21," she said.

This is a story about being 21.

"You're trying to know yourself," she said, "while you're trying to become this great person."

MODERN FAME IS a radioactive thing that corrodes everything it touches and consumes some people completely. Human beings are designed to live in small tribes, where the most important part of everyday life revolves around direct interactions. That vital way of being is undercut again and again by fame. It really messes some people up. Caitlin has been fighting to feel and be and be seen as human since high school, even as she has strived for things that can only be described as superhuman.

After Georgia and Colorado got chippy, especially when Caitlin would go on a run of logo 3s, her confidant Kathryn Reynolds told her that only she had control of her mind and that nobody could break through that barrier without her permission. She had the power to keep them at bay.

Against Louisville in the Elite Eight, Caitlin hit her sixth 3-pointer and then waved her hand in front of her face, an imitation of wrestler John Cena's can't-see-me move. It was a spontaneous nod to Reynolds' advice. Cena almost immediately tweeted at her. So did LeBron James, who called Caitlin "so COLD!" More people tuned in to ESPN to see Iowa play Louisville than had watched any regular-season NBA game on the network all season.

When LSU beat Iowa in the title game, star center Angel Reese, an intense, talented player who had 15 points and 10 rebounds in the win, made the can't-see-me gesture back at Caitlin as the clock wound down. Postgame social media lit up, some criticizing Reese for showing up an opponent, others saying that kind of criticism showed a racial double standard.

Earlier on Final Four weekend, Lisa Bluder had spoken of the competitiveness she anticipated in the semifinal against South Carolina by saying the game would be a bar fight. After the loss, Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley objected to ways she said her team had been characterized all season.

"We're not bar fighters. We're not thugs. We're not monkeys. We're not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball."

The moments all intersected in the days after the tournament ended. The semiotics of race and the fires of fighting to win fueled each other. Tough talk between two elite head coaches opened onto difficult public conversations about the consequences of language. And on-court gestures from one superstar to another were interpreted by some as clashes between identities that extended beyond the game.

Even if they could see you...they couldn't guard you! Congrats on the historic performance @CaitlinClark22 and to @IowaWBB on advancing to the Final Four! @MarchMadnessWBB #WFinalFour https://t.co/QvpYDTESwb — John Cena (@JohnCena) March 28, 2023

In her postgame news conference, Reese said: "All year I was critiqued about who I was. I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit in the box that you all want me to be in. I'm too hood. I'm too ghetto. You all told me that all year. But when other people do it, you all don't say nothing."

When Iowa got home from the Final Four, Turner, the sports information director, arranged an interview for Caitlin with ESPN. Caitlin thought the questions would focus on the Wooden Award, which she had just won, but they were mostly about the end of the championship game.

"Angel is a tremendous, tremendous player," she said. "I have nothing but respect for her. I love her game.

"I think everybody knew there was going to be a little trash talk the entire tournament. It's not just me and Angel. I don't think she should be criticized."

The stakes of playing on the stage Caitlin and Angel play on are high, and they know it. "Facts," Caitlin told me later.

When the TV interview ended, she started shaking uncontrollably.

"I'm doing this in my apartment bedroom," she said.

She texted her mom and Bluder and asked how she'd done. Both told her she'd done great.

"If you do one wrong thing your life can really end," she said.

AFTER LOSING TO LSU the Hawkeyes cried in the locker room. "Bawled," Caitlin said. She and Kate Martin hugged McKenna Warnock and Monika Czinano. They'd become sisters. Two weeks of adrenaline ran out, and they awakened to lives that had changed in ways they never could have imagined on the flight out to Seattle. Now they just wanted to go home.

Everyone headed back to the team hotel to meet their families and friends. Caitlin hadn't even taken off her uniform.

She kept it together until she saw her father.

He waited for her in the lobby.

She burst into tears and buried her head in his shoulder.

"You have so much to be proud of," he told her.

"I know but still it's sad, Dad," she said.

She went upstairs and stood in the shower for a long time and let the adrenaline and stress run out with the draining water. Is this real life? She tried to understand what was different. Then she led her teammates three blocks away from the hotel to toast their season. The name of the bar was Happiest Hour, and the staff didn't seem prepared for two dozen very tired, very nostalgic, very thirsty women.

"I don't think you should write about any of this," Caitlin said with a smile, "but I'm gonna tell you anyway."

An Iowa fan asked Caitlin if he could buy the team a drink.

"Twenty-two shots!" she said.

Soon a tray showed up. Twenty-two. That night might end up being Caitlin's favorite memory from college. This group of women truly loved one another and for the rest of their lives when they looked at their Final Four rings, or came to some anniversary and saw the banner hanging in the rafters, it is that love they would remember. And evenings like the one in Dallas after they lost the biggest game of their lives but still had one another. She changed her mind about wanting people to know about that night.

"You can write about that," she said. "I don't really care."

They stayed out all night, sad, yes, but sad together, which was its own kind of joy. They told stories, about being stuck in traffic at Maryland or the shot Caitlin hit against Indiana. They all dragged themselves out of bed in time to catch an afternoon flight back to Iowa, and the team leaders kept doing head counts and asking if everyone was present and accounted for and if everyone was OK. They wore hoodies and sunglasses. Kate Martin cradled a Jimmy John's submarine sandwich in the lobby. No. 5, the Vito -- salami, capocollo and provolone. Caitlin gloated because she'd had the foresight to pack before the game. The players shared pictures and retold the stories. They limped to the plane and flew back home.

THEY WENT THEIR separate ways, and Caitlin sank into her summer. She signed millions of dollars of contracts and flew to Los Angeles to shoot big-budget commercials where a grip held an umbrella over her head to block the sun.

She tried to hold it for herself.

She couldn't believe how much free stuff she got.

"This is why the rich are so rich," she said. "They get things for free. It's so weird."

McKenna Warnock started dental school. Monika Czinano tried and failed to land one of those 144 WNBA roster spots. Kathryn Reynolds got a job offer she couldn't refuse, running a new women's softball league.

Caitlin got gifts for her teammates from her sponsors. Huge loads of free Nike gear including these rare Dunks. Bose headphones. She went to big corporate meetings with her parents following along stunned, proud, bewildered. The PGA Tour swung through Iowa, and she played with Masters champion (and native Iowan) Zach Johnson in front of packed galleries. She practiced for days before her first tee shot, not wanting to embarrass herself. The next morning, she came to an Iowa workout and, as the managers said, "torched everyone."

"It was unbelievable," Prewitt told me.

McIntire just shook his head.

"Hadn't shot a basketball in four days," he said.

"I think she does as good a job of balancing it as she can," Prewitt said.

The Iowa women's season tickets sold out for the first time ever on Aug. 2. Lisa Bluder and Jan Jensen were sitting together when they got the call from the ticket office and both women cried. They'd never ridden a wave like this one, after a lifetime dedicated to furthering their sport. They also worried about the toll all this exponentially growing attention was having on their young phenom.

I asked Jensen once how she could tell when Caitlin felt overwhelmed.

Easy, she told me.

She always hits the practice gym with a bounce, with a smile and an inner ferocity, and when she is drained, it's immediately obvious.

"When was the last time you saw her like that?" I asked.

There was a long pause.

"This summer she was really busy," Jensen said finally.

The Iowa coaches found themselves organizing the entire team practice calendar around Caitlin's travel schedule. They wanted her to be able to go receive awards and soak up the glory. But it all got to be a lot.

"She wants to be a kid, too," Jensen said. "It's summer, you know? This summer was taxing on her."

I ARRIVED A MONTH later to find Caitlin Clark trying to be all things to all people, feeling the expectations of what's next while raging at the inexperience of her new forwards and centers. She always seemed to know when I was at practice and would thank me for coming. I sense she does that with every visitor. I have written about athletes for two decades but I've never, until now, watched someone change from a solid into a liquid and a liquid into a gas. That knowledge made the whole industry of profiling great athletes seem almost silly, because whatever "makes her tick" is deeply internal and unknown, even to her. She was leaving an old life behind and learning how to fit comfortably in a new one. I found myself texting with her father all the time, and he found comfort in his own mantra. Stay hungry and humble. I began to watch her play like the Iowa coaches did, focusing on the moments during practice and games when she faced frustration, to see how she would react.

The coaches and players saw everything. Caitlin getting furious about no-calls in practice. With success has come a raised metabolism. There haven't been any fist fights inside the team but there has been a lot of preamble. Screaming and cursing. This is a championship-caliber team trying to reclaim the form that earned it that status, so that the reality inside the basement of Carver-Hawkeye often differs dramatically from the exterior reputation. The rankings all season called Iowa a top-five team, but Caitlin Clark knew better. Therefore everyone else knew, too. At one scrimmage, Caitlin's anger at the no-calls translated into bad shots -- she often fires up wilder and wilder attempts when she's mad, even now -- and she missed two-thirds of them. Nobody is harder on Caitlin Clark than Caitlin Clark.

"I suck!" she'll bark at herself on the bench.

During the scrimmage she threw a pass that bounced off Gabbie Marshall's hands. She looked over at the coaches in disgust, and they could see the fit coming. Everyone worried that they'd gone back in time to her freshman year. This again? became a refrain.

The season went on, with the public accolades growing, and I kept calling people inside the program and showing up when I could.

"What is the Caitlin patience meter currently?" I'd often ask.

"Decent," I was told once.

At that day's practice, assistant Abby Stamp told Caitlin there would be no March magic without her teammates.

"You're gonna need her," Stamp said.

"Yeah but she missed me on the cut," she replied.

A few days before, Jensen had stood up for one of her bigs. Caitlin had been barking orders, and the coach told her to settle down.

"But ..." Caitlin started.

"Stop butting me," Jensen said. "Throw her the ball."

"Throw it to her."

Caitlin wanted more than anything to go back to the Final Four, because she'd tasted the glory but also the calm and focus of stepping onto the court against South Carolina.

I asked her about the drama at practice.

"I have these new players and I'm not comfortable and they're not comfortable," she told me. "How do I navigate having patience? Giving them confidence? They don't have the confidence of minutes."

She and her crew -- Kate, McKenna, Mon, Gabbie -- had been to war together.

"The amount of huge games we were in last year," she said, starting to visibly percolate at the memory of such beautiful intensity. "WAKE UP! We're here. We're playing Louisville in the Elite Eight. We're playing Georgia in the round of 32 and it's a four-point game with 30 seconds to go!"

Her great flaw in the context of the team, she has learned, is her complete lack of a poker face. If she feels it, she wears it.

"Your one compliment to somebody can give them so much confidence," she said. "It's scary almost how much power ... Because it goes both ways. You get upset with them, they're crumbling."

She switched to third person to mock herself and rolled her eyes as she talked.

"Caitlin Clark believes in them, what more do they need?"

She snapped her fingers.

"I can never have a bad reaction," she said.

She worked hard to get better, to relearn the lessons of the past, which seemed like new problems because of her new and growing fame and the expectations that came with it, both the external ones put on her by the world and the internal ones put on her by herself. There's a John Updike quote I love about the mask eating the face that seemed to apply to what Caitlin was experiencing. The Iowa coaches were hyper aware of that possibility, that the famous Caitlin Clark would swallow the goofy girl they'd known, and they believed at the end that they had all mostly succeeded. Caitlin had managed to protect herself. Her real self.

There were positive moments that reflected all her hard work. Great moments that allowed everyone to dream of March. Once at practice Caitlin came flying down the court in transition. Addi O'Grady was wide open around the free throw line. Caitlin got to the logo and jacked up a 3-pointer, which went in. O'Grady never once yelled for the ball.

Jensen threw up her hands in disgust and yelled, "Ugh!"

Caitlin came right to her.

"The reason I didn't throw it ..." she began to explain.

Jensen cut her off and said that it was Addi's fault for not screaming for the ball and that the coaches were annoyed about that. Bluder and Jensen wanted all the centers to act like Monika Czinano and expect the ball every single trip down the court, to call for it, to deliver once she received the pass. To them Caitlin didn't do anything wrong. The center needs to demand respect. "She can detect weakness," Bluder told me. "I think she likes strong people. People that are good leaders. People who will use their voice."

The coaches also believed Caitlin taking it on herself to explain what she was seeing meant that all their messages were getting through and she was paying attention. During a later practice she threw an errant entry pass to O'Grady. The ball fell uselessly away. All the coaches turned to see what would happen next. They held their breath.

Caitlin made eye contact with Addi.

"My bad," Caitlin said.

THE HAWKEYES EXPERIENCED incredible highs and lows together.

They beat Virginia Tech.

Caitlin appeared on the ManningCast for "Monday Night Football."

They lost to K-State.

Jason Sudeikis and Sue Bird came to sit courtside. During a television timeout, Sudeikis did his Ted Lasso dance on the jumbotron and Carver-Hawkeye rocked in the reflected celebrity. Afterward Caitlin and her family took Jason out to dinner. They sat in the window at Basta on Iowa Avenue.

"He talks just like he does in the show!" Caitlin gushed to her mom after.

One night in February, forward Hannah Stuelke scored 47 points against Penn State on a night Caitlin had 15 assists. "I think our connection is amazing. I love playing with her," Stuelke said.

Three days later, Caitlin went scoreless in the fourth quarter and the Hawkeyes blew a 14-point lead in a loss to Nebraska.

Her coaches worried and hoped.

"I want her to learn how to manage all this," Jensen told me. "The NIL stuff. The popularity. The stardom. I want her to manage that and still love the game, you know?"

Everyone looked to make sure Caitlin didn't lose her sense of wonder.

"She seems like a child when we bring dogs into the facility and she gets on the floor and is rolling around with them and being a kid and screaming," Jensen said. "She goes from one extreme to the other so quickly: 'I'm this unbelievable athlete' to 'I'm this little kid.'"

They experienced success, celebrity, frustration and failure. I met the team in Columbus, Ohio, in late January. Nothing went right for the Hawkeyes. Kate Martin raged at the officials and her opponents and Caitlin ended up in the rare position of being the voice of reason, urging calm and moderation. None of their shots fell. If Iowa gets beat in March, it will be because of an afternoon like the one they had in Columbus. With a minute left I went down into the narrow hallway outside the visitors locker room. I heard a commotion but didn't see what happened. Suddenly the campus police officer who travels with the team helped a slumping Caitlin past me, her head thrown back in pain. An Ohio State student storming the court had collided with her. Caitlin's mom was on a rampage in the bowels of the arena, furious about the lack of security. We all went to the airport and flew back to Cedar Rapids, where university charter buses picked us up to drive back to campus. We parked outside the garage where the players keep their cars for away games. Everyone climbed off the bus -- except Caitlin. She was in the little bathroom in the way back throwing her guts up.

I left her and went to the garage. The first person I saw was Kate Martin. I asked what was wrong.

"Migraines," Martin said. "She gets 'em really bad."

THE NEXT DAY Caitlin and a group of teammates got ready at their off-campus apartments. They changed into fancy clothes and called an Uber and were pulling out of the complex when they saw a whole bunch of flashing lights. As they got closer they realized it was their teammate Ava Jones who'd been in the wreck. Ava hasn't played a minute for the Hawkeyes; two days after she committed, she and her family were at a basketball tournament in Louisville when a drug-addled driver ran them down on the sidewalk. Ava suffered a traumatic brain injury and devastating knee and shoulder injuries. Her father died. The Iowa coaches honored their commitment and she is an emotional member of the team even if she can't play. Her teammates worry over her all the time. Now she'd been in a fender bender.

"Just cancel the ride," Caitlin said. "That's our teammate, can you just stop?"

The cops working the accident tried to keep the young women away but stood little chance of stopping them.

"We're her teammates!" Caitlin said.

Molly Davis pulled up, on her way back to the apartments from a massage. Soon coach Raina Harmon showed up, too. Before too long half the team was standing in the middle of the street. They all stayed with Ava until it was clear she was OK. Some of the Hawkeyes talked to her, while others talked to the police and paramedics. Caitlin kept texting her mother, who was waiting with Brent and me for her 22nd birthday dinner.

Finally they made it. Caitlin's migraine, which she always suffers through without complaint, had blessedly vanished. We sat down and they recounted what had happened with Ava. For the next few hours everyone laughed and told stories. We finished our meals, and the restaurant brought over a riff on a chocolate chip cookie. Caitlin loves chocolate chip cookies. The teammates told Anne what they saw of the incident after the game in Columbus. Kate Martin, they said gleefully, threatened to fight the Ohio State student section. She'd be Charles Oakley to Caitlin's Michael Jordan. Everyone laughed. Caitlin the loudest.

"I see Caitlin on the ground and I just start seeing red," Martin explained.

When the game ended Caitlin looked to find the Buckeyes to shake their hands when all the fans rushed the court. The Iowa coaches started urgently telling the Iowa players to get to the locker room. Caitlin took off at a dead sprint -- "which was problem number one," she said -- and never saw the Ohio State student until they collided. When she picked up her phone, she saw a text from her former football player brother: "Next time explode through their sternum."

Everyone at the dinner table laughed about that.

Martin ran up right after the collision to see her best friend on the ground.

"What happened?"

"I got drilled," Caitlin said.

"A fan ran into her," said Jada Gyamfi , a forward who wears No. 23.

Around 4 a.m., once they got home from the game, Caitlin got a text from Monika Czinano asking if she needed to hire a hit man. Martin sounded embarrassed as she described to all of us at dinner how she stalked around cursing at people and trying to find someone to fight. She was repeating the wilder things she said and then Caitlin started doing her impression of Martin.

"Whatever," Kate said. "I'm ride or die for my ladies."

Caitlin's parents paid. This was their treat. Then Kate sheepishly revealed she'd had a bit of parking trouble when she'd pulled up outside earlier. Her car was, she admitted, parked on top of a curb and a snowdrift. She needed help pushing it out. Jada, Will McIntire and I got low and started to push. Martin sat behind the wheel. We all made sure not to let Caitlin anywhere near the operation. None of us wanted to be responsible for a tire rolling over her foot and ending the greatest college basketball season anyone has ever had.

"Twenty-two is not touching this car!" I said.

Gyamfi laughed.

"This is a job for two-three," she said.

"I gotta get this on video!" Caitlin said.

We all pushed, then leaned in and pushed harder, as Kate spun her tires then caught a little traction and lurched to safety. Everyone cheered, me included, and Caitlin was part of the action, but also separate from it, her life pulling her in one direction and her teammates in another. Finally, she stopped recording and I watched them all go out into the night, still celebrating.

THIS IS A STORY about being 22. Do you remember when you first started on the road to your dreams? That's where Caitlin Clark finds herself in March 2024. She has announced her intention to enter the WNBA draft. Her future has begun, the world she built during four life-changing years in Iowa City. All the things she wants to be are there to be grasped. Her games draw bigger audiences than many NBA games. She is at the epicenter of sports -- a superstar without caveats or adjectives. She isn't important because of symbolic broken barriers but because she steps onto a 94-foot-long rectangle and dominates it. In the month after her birthday, Caitlin Clark kept rising to the occasion. She broke the NCAA women's career scoring record -- the record-breaking shot came from 30 feet, three of her career-high 49 -- then the actual women's scoring record held by Lynette Woodard, who got invited to Iowa for the event and revelled in the standing ovation she received from Carver-Hawkeye. Then on senior night she broke Pete Maravich's men's career scoring record. No human being playing Division I basketball has ever scored more. The rapper Travis Scott came to see her break Pistol Pete's record and posed for pictures with the whole team. Jake from State Farm came. He wore a designer jacket made from Caitlin's jersey. Nolan Ryan snuck in beneath a baseball cap with his granddaughters. It was important to him that they witness Caitlin. The television ratings shattered records. Patrick Mahomes praised her. So did LeBron James. These moments, and so many others, happened in public. Her brother and I texted back and forth during these incredible few weeks when it seemed like the entire country had turned its attention to her greatness.

Everyone around her seemed happy. Not because of records. Not because of what excited the rest of the basketball world but because of something that happened offstage just eight days before she broke the NCAA's women's record. Opponents, beware. On Feb. 7, the Hawkeyes held a practice before Penn State came to Iowa City. The season's metabolism had started to peak. Kate Martin stopped practice to preach about the importance of knowing the scouting report, and the whole team hung on her every word, and Jensen looked over to catch Bluder staring with admiration and joy at Martin's command of the room.

A bit later, during a scrimmage, Addi O'Grady, who had at one point retreated into an introverted shell in response to the barrage of pressure from Caitlin, got down on the post and just knocked one of the team managers on his ass.

This was everything Caitlin Clark loved about basketball. The competition, the aggression, the way that every moment produced a winner and a loser, the willingness to go hard, to risk. O'Grady had won the moment. She'd know what that felt like now. She could do it again. Caitlin ran to her. She jumped up and down and screamed and praised and threw around joyous curses and exaltations. The coaches beamed. This was a team. Jan Jensen cried about it later, she said. They'd traveled the road. They'd put last season in its place and made this one its own. It was February. The doors were closed and there were no cameras. Nobody sat courtside or wanted autographs. Caitlin was at the center of it but not hitting 3s or firing passes behind her back. She was all out in praise of a teammate. She believed.

"YES!" she screamed. "ADDI!!"

These are the moments the team will remember decades from now, when they gather as middle-aged women. Renting yachts and pushing cars out of the snow. Posting up on the block. This is a story about being 21, yes, and 22, but also about being 41, and 52, and older than that. The Iowa Hawkeyes of the Caitlin Clark years will stand one day at center court beneath their banners, with husbands and wives and partners, with kids and grandkids. They know this. And they know they will find themselves unable to describe how it felt all those years ago, when they were young and magic and ready for March.

The Daily Iowan

Rates of postpartum, mental health stressors during pregnancy high in Iowa

Sheala Been, a staff nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, found the unknowns that came with being a first-time mother more stressful than she imagined.

Been, the mother of 9-month-old Mabel, was constantly worried about whether her baby was okay and focused on personal health by eating well and staying fit to ensure she had a safe pregnancy. Between her scans during the early stages of pregnancy, Been and her husband would wait anxiously.

Feeling anxious and stressed during pregnancy and postpartum is common. Nichole Nidey, assistant professor of epidemiology at the UI, focuses on substance abuse, anxiety, and depression in pregnant women and the factors that play into these stressors.

Despite the link between mental health concerns and pregnancy, services in Iowa are limited. According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, about 26 percent of mothers in Iowa diagnosed with depression received counseling during their pregnancy.

Nidey said Iowa currently ranks 44th out of 50 states in access to mental health professionals. During pregnancy, Nidey said one of the primary stressors is having enough paid time off to attend prenatal visits, which is a vital part of ensuring a baby’s health and safety.

“Sometimes you have to go every week, and for those women with high-risk pregnancy, you have to go even more frequently,” Nidey said.

With Iowa being a rural state, Nidey said access to proper health care can be difficult to come by. According to a report from the Iowa Department of Public Health in 2020, there were 4.5 OB-GYNs per 10,000 women in the U.S. In Iowa, that number was as low as 3.3.

“We have a lot of patients who will travel three, four, five hours to come to UIHC, for example,” Nidey said. “Not having enough maternal health care providers in the state of Iowa adds additional stress.”

For Been, having enough maternity leave after delivering her baby was also a significant postpartum stressor. Under the Family Medical Leave Act, Been was eligible for six weeks of maternity leave postpartum. Been had accrued six weeks of sick and vacation leave, meaning she had 12 weeks off to care for her baby.

“I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like to go back after six weeks because even after 12 weeks, I wasn’t ready to leave my baby, but I had a job that I needed to go back to,” Been said.

Nidey said another barrier for women postpartum was access to insurance. The rules for Medicaid eligibility, for example, change during pregnancy. Nidey said women who may have been ineligible for Medicaid before pregnancy can become eligible during pregnancy as the requirements change. In Iowa, pregnant people are eligible for Medicaid with a family income of 380 percent of the Federal Poverty Line.

Under Iowa Law, postpartum mothers and their babies are eligible for Medicaid for 60 days after delivery. Once those 60 days have ended, many women lose access to the health care benefits they had received under Medicaid. Some Iowa legislators are currently working to expand eligibility to a year under Senate File 2251. The bill has passed both the House and Senate.

Alex Murphy, director of communications at the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, said maternal mental health is addressed by the Iowa Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and its Mental Health and Substance Abuse Subcommittee, which work to develop strategies to improve maternal mental health and provide additional services mothers may need.

Been said breastfeeding was her biggest stressor postpartum, as her baby would be unable to latch on, which made feeding times difficult.

“It took a lot of time, patience, learning, and grace,” Been said.

Nidey said finding adequate child care postpartum continues to be a stressor for many women as well. According to Nidey, waitlists can be up to 18 months long, and it can be especially difficult to find a spot for newborns.

Been worried about what she would do once her daughter was born, as she didn’t want to send her daughter to daycare. Been only works weekends now, allowing her to spend more time with her child.

“I am grateful that everything worked itself out and that I had the support of my husband and family,” Been said.

During delivery, Been remembers the stress that came with childbirth.

“When it was finally time to push, I was overwhelmed with emotion. You can truly do everything you can to prepare, but nothing prepares you for that moment,” Been said. “Motherhood can be really scary, especially with your first child, but trying to live in the moment is so important because that time will be gone really quickly.”

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