There are lots of people vying for graduate school. My own roommate has recently finished her application process for her graduate program (not in writing, but in psychology).
Through high school, I didn't even know the difference between undergraduate and graduate and it made me anxious about college as a whole. I was, after all, the first in my family to attend college. I had no one to guide me, so all I knew about higher learning was through my own personal research and (as of the last three years) personal experience. Graduate school did cross my mind a few times. And I'd considered it for different reasons, one being that I knew my parents would want me to continue my education. Another was that there was a point in my life where I didn't want to leave the "school world" for the "real world".
But now I know that I won't be going to graduate school, at least not in my immediate future.
To be a fiction novelist, you don't even need to get a standard B.A. Heck, publishers barely care if you're out of high school (the famous YA novelist, S.E. Hinton was 16 when she finished The Outsiders). What matters in the world of published authors is your ability to write a damn good story and be able to sell it. So that's what I've been focusing on.
I've even considered dropping out of college, but if it weren't for the fact that my family has already spent so much money on my tuition and that I have become a much better writer when attending workshops, has nipped that idea in the bud.
I know, at least at the time of writing this post, that I don't want to go to grad school for a multitude of reasons. One of the biggest factors is the lack of money. I'm broke and my family has never been full of money. My parents, both immigrants, have had to make do with what they got, and they didn't get a lot. My younger sister is starting to apply to colleges and it wouldn't be fair of me to want to take what little we have and spend it on my own schooling. She is, after all, the smarter one and planning on becoming an engineer. (So I'll be living in her basement while she's raking in the big money.)
I'm also, frankly, quite done with the whole business of school. I'm finished taking exams, worrying about papers on a subject I'm not even remotely interested in and in-class assignments. I'm tired of forcing myself into a schedule that's not of my own making and I just want to be able to work on what I want to work on (be it my writing or not) and make decisions in my life that don't have to revolve around school.
Maybe, sometime in the future, I'll change my mind. But as it stands, my reasons for stopping at a B.A