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GUYS I GOT INTO MICHIGAN FOR POETRY OMFG

got the call from rutgers-camden, i'm in. 😎

woah i got into Iowa for poetry badaboom badabing

Ok minor (unrelated) writing success today! I've submitted stories to the New Yorker before, and never heard back on any of them. (From their website: We regret that, owing to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to call or e-mail unless a story is accepted for publication.) In January, I submitted one of the pieces I used for my grad application and THEY REPLIED! They still said it wasn't a fit for their magazine, but they said THERE WAS MUCH TO ADMIRE ABOUT IT! This may be the most excited I've ever been about a rejection 😆 I feel like being a writer is so much about finding ways forward through rejection. Especially waiting on grad school admissions, it's nice to get something that encourages me to keep writing, and to try again.

I GOT MY FIRST ACCEPTANCE! In for Poetry at Bowling Green State University! Guys I’m so happy 😭 it’s my first notification of the season!!! 1a/0w/0r/16p

I'm an Iowa waitlist! Just got the email, am losing my shit.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT I JUST GOT INTO CSU I'M SCREAMING AND CRYING OH MY GOD

Y'all crazy news: CSU called and offered me a GTA position last night!!! A whole 10 days after I declined my acceptance because they told me all the GTAships had been claimed. I already accepted at NAU so I just withdrew and accepted my offer at CSU because HOLY FUCKING SHIT are you KIDDING me!!! I know I haven't been active lately, I've just been lurking with nothing new to add but I had to update y'all because y'all listened to me be neurotic about this for months.

I just got offered a spot at Irvine!!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I GOT INTO UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON OMG

Ok had the NYU call! Full tuition funding + fellowship! Highest level of funding they offer!

Can we manifest "everybody gets good news this week"?

Guys --- I just got the call. Full funding at Northern Arizona. I'm in complete shock. edit: AND I WAS SO AWKWARD ON THE PHONE OH MY GOD lmao

I just got the call from Brown- for fiction!

GUYS I GOT WAITLISTED AT OSU! 😭🥹

YALL I GOT A TASHIP AT NAU LETS GOOOOO

I just got an email where I got waitlisted. For Vanderbilt. I am too stunned to speak. Are my chances real?

got accepted to UW-Madison!! my first acceptance and one of my top programs I’ve only heard back from IU so far (waitlist) so I feel like I can finally calm down now.

Got accepted into ASU last night! Yippee!!!

YALL I JUST GOT A CALL FROM NATALIE FUCKING SHAPERO AT UC IRVINE I was such an idiot on the phone but she was soooo nice about it 😭😭😭😭😭 I'm just screaming over here. Baby's first acceptance

I've been accepted to Alabama for fiction! So unreal. Cannot function. This is my second round of apps and I was feeling super pessimistic these past few days. 1A/0W/1R/18P

I got waitlisted at UVA for fiction!!! I'm over the moon. Just goes to show you shouldn't count yourself out until you hear from every school. We'll see if it turns into an acceptance, fingers crossed! The faculty are incredible and I'd love the chance to work with them.

After completely giving up this cycle (got into columbia but it was literally Completely Unfunded so impossible) because of soft rs and previous rs, I got the call for Iowa for poetry. NEVER LOSE HOPE, CHAT.

I’m in shock. I got the call.

I just got accepted in to Naropa! No word on funding but I’ve got my fingers crossed! And regardless it’s nice to kick off the season with an acceptance! ❤️

It is!!! I'm actually pinching myself, I'm so incredibly grateful and happy. It's a dream program. I love every little detail about it and couldn't imagine myself in a better place this fall. @P i e r r o t You might actually be magic because your prayers worked!!! 🕯️ What a rollercoaster of an application season. I want to thank everyone here for being the supportive, lovely people you are. You made this stressful process feel downright enjoyable and I've loved getting to know you these past few months. I’ll still be on the forum for the next couple weeks. I want to see how the season goes for those of you on waitlists. I’m rooting so hard for you! Remember, anything can happen between now and the end of April.

Story time! In 2014, coming off my first nonfiction book, which was a labor of necessity (a topic I felt needed to be discussed, though I took limited joy in it), and feeling the urgent need to pursue fiction (My True Love^TM), I applied to 9 programs and a fellowship. 0a. For ten years thereafter, I studied craft on my own time, wrote stories, then a novella, then a novel, and then sections of two more--none of which I attempted to publish. I was learning and honing my practice. I knew I wasn't ready. I took workshops, and joined a writers group, and then a second; meanwhile, I worked in publishing to support my writing habit (lol), and of course, I continued to learn a great deal from editing and from reading voraciously. I did hella community work related to the stories I want to tell and the folks whose voices I want to champion, and I put out another nonfiction project. The whole time, I knew I wanted to try again, but it was never the RIGHT time. Plus, my work is genre fiction, and niche, and tricky to pitch to literary fiction programs, so I knew the material had to be EPIC to land me a spot. This season, I applied to 9 schools, and got One. Beautiful. Shining. Fully-funded. Offer. It wasn't the school I had initially expected to wind up at. But a funny thing happened that changed my feeling on that, and I am so INCREDIBLY grateful it did. One night, I was sweating the rejections and whether this school was right for me, and totally having an conniption over it, let's be real, and then I went to sleep and had a dream about [author who is head of a major department]. In it, we had lunch, and he extended his considerable wisdom and advice, and when I woke up, I felt weirdly peaceful. I remembered that this was about MENTORSHIP for me, and time to write, and I decided that if this school extended those things, then I was going to accept. LO AND BEHOLD: That morning, I shit you not, the director of the program began to text me. They invited me to lunch. They, in fact, offered me a place to live near their own home, and the possibility of carpooling and gardening together. We talked about common interests and politics--of which we shared many--and in the end, I felt a sense of built-in community. I visited the school shortly thereafter, and let me tell you, that vibe was EVERYWHERE. The faculty spoke of my protagonist by name. They were excited to show me around, to work with me, to answer any question I had, to handle any administrative hurdle that might come my way. The first-years took me to lunch, told me where to hang out, texted me literary jokes, shared my aesthetic. Today, I was waiting to hear from Brown, like fucking everyone here (hug), and I decided I no longer needed to know. Though it's a dream school to basically everyone, there was no way they could offer me what the other school had: A feeling that I was going home to write. May everyone here hold out for that. I really hope you get to go home. ❤️

Hey guys, mopey ass bummer of a post coming through so if you're feeling fragile like me please ignore lol. I'm just having such a hard time today. Having done this whole shebang last year I knew how competitive it is and I applied to so many programs hoping I would at least end up with a few options. I feel like I don't really have a right to complain since I have a funded offer at NAU, but the stipend simply isn't livable on its own and if I haven't been able to get a job in my current city (I've been unemployed for 5 months) I don't see why it would be easier to get one in flagstaff which is a fraction of the size. I'm just so, so tired of being broke all the time. All I do is apply to jobs and all I hear back, if I'm lucky, is no. My ego is sooo bruised from these applications. I was finally getting to a point in my life/career where I felt like I had a wee bit of credibility as a writer; I finished an mfa in screenwriting, did a cool residency, got some short stories published, etc. But now it's all evaporated and I just feel like I'm in a never ending flop era. On top of all this my cat, my best friend in the world, died unexpectedly on Sunday night. He was kind of all I had going for me and now I'm just sitting here in my empty apartment feeling lost. Sorry to trauma dump, I just don't have anybody irl who really gets how taxing this process is and how it seeps into every other aspect of your life.

Y'ALL I JUST GOT ACCEPTED TO NYU FOR POETRY ANYTHING IS POSSIBLLLLLEEEEE

Hi y'all - got my first bit of news yesterday, and it was an acceptance at one of my top choices (UNR)! Good luck to everyone else going through it right now - I wasn't all that anxious before yesterday because I assumed that news would not come until March (did not know about this place before today), but being caught by surprise has shown me the true meaning of anxiety. Y'all live like this???

screw brown, I just won a $1000 prize for my writing!!! freaking out rn

ACCEPTED TO WASHU FOR POETRY!!

Y'all I just got a call from NAU, I'm accepted and 1st on the waitlist for funding!!!! (I'm on an insane killstreak so far all acceptances and simultaneously no guaranteed funding but I trust the process ❤️)

Just got waitlisted for UC Davis Fiction, if anyone's waiting for news from there - we keep it rolling

Well, it's a bust. I cried for a while, including a fair bit in public while eating breakfast, but I'm feeling fine now. Just glad to have the closure. See you all next year for the arc where I get accepted to every program : )

just got waitlisted at u of florida !! for fiction !! first (probably only!) non-rejection !! email says they accept 6 people in fiction per year and also waitlist 6.

If I ever feel like time is moving too fast and life is passing me by, I'll just apply for an MFA again. The past 4 months have dragged on like nothing else.

I got into Iowa for fiction over the weekend. Hi everyone! I have not posted at all but I've read everyone's posts. I got an acceptance call from Iowa over the weekend and wanted to let you guys know what Sam Chang said she's going to be making calls for probably this whole week. So if you haven't heard anything, it's still possible! also, for those of you getting discouraged, I reapplied. It's so random and crazy. Last year I was waitlisted at five programs and this year I was rejected from all five of those same programs. I thought, Jesus, I guess I got worse in the last year. And right when I was feeling down, I got the phone call. Keep goiiiiiiinnnnngggggg!!!!

Hey everyone! Out of reactions for today so thank you for all the congrats! But I just wanted to respond to the general things I’ve been seeing lately and recent posts. This was my second time applying. Last year I applied to 9 programs and was waitlisted at the NWP at the University of Texas at Austin. I was rejected from the 8 other programs. I never made it off the waitlist at NWP. But I turned my frustration into motivation. This was not the first time in my life when people doubted me, and I knew it was because they could not see the potential I saw in myself. So I decided to show them. I read through my application again. I wrote about a project I would do if I go into an MFA program. So I just did the project on my own. I went through archives, read books on my topics, spent months researching and writing. I started writing the poems I vowed to write in my application. At the same time, I went to a summer writing workshop at one of the programs I hoped to attend. I took in every ounce of feedback. I sought out other writers to give me feedback on my SOP essay and my writing sample. I listened and changed and became a better writer. Today, as I mentioned, I got into Michigan!! I was rejected by them last year. I have 2 acceptances until my belt this season, 3 rejections, and I think 12 pending. This season is going great for me, but it’s my second try at it. It’s not the end of the world to try again. Please have hope. Please keep writing. Whatever happens, let it motivate you to try harder, be better. There’s always room to improve. And nobody can take writing away from you. ❤️

If you're anything like me, you need reminders from time to time of the Great Subjectivity of all this--all this being not only acceptance to MFA programs but also publication and literary ""success"" in general--because it's easy to get discouraged. So, here's another reminder: today, I received an acceptance to Indiana for poetry. Up to this point, I've been rejected by three so-called lesser programs (though, due to the Great Subjectivity, I don't think the 'prestige' of programs matters much...). So, obvious lesson though it may be, there's another reminder of its truth. THIS IS SO SUBJECTIVE! Even if you're rejected at such-and-such school, assume nothing about other schools. Don't write yourself off. And, regardless, keep writing!

First time poster - despite the rejections, the angst, all the stress, I think this is sort of beautiful and honorable for us all to collectively be fighting for spots to make the world more aware, more conscious, more interesting, and more unique. Cheers to us.

I got into Yale!

I got into Columbia for poetry this morning! 40k scholarship per year! 3a/3r/0w/11p

I got my first good news of the season! Moved on to round 2 at Ole Miss. Although, I'm not sure what the chances are of it turning into an acceptance since there aren't as many schools that do phases. but I'm very thankful and excited either way!

i’ve moved on to round 2 at ole miss!

Guys I just heard from IU Bloomington - I'm on the waitlist for fiction!!!!

AHHH thank you so much!!!! Got the call for Florida today (accepted for poetry) for those not on draft! I’ve been sick for the past few days so this jolted me out of delirium 😭 8a/2w/4r/3p right now! what a change up from last year!! Also, I really hope you get funding from CSU! Crossing my fingers for you 🤞 sounds like a fantastic program!

waitlisted at syracuse.........

I was too nervous to open the Yale notification last night… I opened this morning and got invited for an interview!

Fiction wait lists are out for UIUC, so I'd assume all acceptances are out as well. I picked up a wait list spot, which feels nice as my first result! of course it's so subjective i could still get 16 rejections lol, but it gives me a glimmer of hope for this round.