teethwax

Everybody's anxiety is different, so your mileage may vary, but when I applied to grad school I was recovering from PTSD and dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression. This year (I started my MFA in the fall) is the first year in a while where I've interacted with people normally -- making friends, hanging out -- and it's been really good for me. Getting a fresh start somewhere was a big help, and everyone's so busy that it's easy to say "Oh man, sorry, I can't tonight" when I need to be alone. I also don't know what kind of treatment you might be doing (and it's not my business), but getting therapy or medication through school can be very affordable, and any therapist you talk to also has a lot of experience helping people through high-stress academic situations. So what I'm saying is that it can be scary, but a residential program could also be more helpful than you expect. Good luck, whatever you decide.

Roguesenna, sorry you had such a shitty experience! I hope things go better for you this time. Looking back on the application process now, it's crazy what a huge shot in the dark it all is, and I feel very lucky that I found someplace great. Sarah Ruhl is so nice and so smart that she must have some kind of terrible secret, but she didn't let it slip in front of me, haha. What are you interested in doing your dissertation on? Proximity to New York and career-building/networking opportunities were the two big reasons I chose Rutgers, and so far I haven't been disappointed. Kathleen knows a ton of people (every person I have mentioned her to says "Oh, Kathleen Tolan! She's wonderful!") and is very interested in building Rutgers into another big name for playwriting MFAs, so she works very hard for us. Playbyplay, your list is very similar to mine from last year. Good luck!

Hi everybody, I wanted to post an update, since around this time last year I would have killed for some more information, haha. 1. I was contacted recently by a literary manager who read my play when I applied to Yale (he is not on their faculty, but Jeanie O'Hare apparently sent him the top 20 plays to get his thoughts). We had a meeting last week and he told me that he had really enjoyed the play and thought I should have been admitted (oh well). His company has actually nominated my play for this prize -- there's no way I'll win, but I've also never been nominated for something like that before, so I'm just enjoying that part. He also said that (assuming I don't win) he would like to send the play to some theaters, and that would be a huge help for me, since nobody knows who I am. (If I do win, his company will produce the play.) He's also expressed a lot of interest in a play I wrote a few years ago, and the one I'm working on now. So, my overarching point (which I think I have mentioned before): even if you don't get in, applying to an elite program can get you noticed. So you might as well. 2. I'm at Rutgers and I have to say I'm really enjoying it -- it wasn't on my original list at all last year (not even on my radar), but it turned out to be a great place for me. So I wanted to talk it up a little bit, haha. Some things: - We see plays for free in New York at least once a week -- sometimes four or five times -- and get to speak with playwrights and literary managers (and have personal, no-bullshit conversations, which is still exciting to me). Some people we've met this semester and the plays we saw: Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns), David Adjmi (Marie Antoinette), Lucy Thurber (The Hill Town Plays), Marlane Meyer (The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters), Sarah Ruhl (we're seeing Stage Kiss soon but in the meantime we had a writing workshop with her). I know we're also meeting Madeline George in the next few weeks. - There are currently four playwrights in the program (Kathleen Tolan, our program head, didn't take anyone last year), so we get a lot of individual attention but it's not such a small group that it feels stifling to me. The other first-year playwright was also a Yale finalist (we were both referred to Rutgers by Sarah Ruhl, who is good friends with Kathleen). - We also had screenwriting this semester with Jim Ryan, and I'm about at the treatment stage of a screenplay I feel really good about, which is exciting. He has been merciless on plotholes and weird spots, but it's made me figure out something pretty solid and compelling. Next semester we're taking TV, and one of the third-year playwrights is currently under contract to turn his pilot from last year into a screenplay. - I moved to NJ from Chicago, and I do miss being in a big interesting city all the time, but 1) things are waaaay cheaper here and 2) New York is super accessible (and I'm getting a lot of personal introductions to the community, which was what I wanted). Also 3) I don't have the free time to go out and do a bunch of shit every week anyway. - Current writing projects: new play (staged reading instead of production in April because my play has some major technical concerns), screenplay, bakeoff play, several ten-minute plays (the playwrights put on informal late-night showcases for the department), and more plays in the planning stages. Next semester: TV pilot, adaptation, collaboration with an MFA composer, documentary play. Also: career counseling with Kathleen and others about residencies and conferences to apply for, questions about agents and other business things, etc. So anyway, that is a long long post but I hope it had some useful info. I'm also happy to answer any questions about Rutgers here (or in person, frankly, if you live in NJ or in the city). The other first-year playwright actually commutes from Brooklyn and so do a lot of our professors.

Rutgers. I had a great conversation with Kathleen Tolan, who's heading the program now, and am pretty excited. They don't have a ton of funding, but they have solid New York connections and some great career-building help, and since they're a state school, tuition is a lot lower than it is elsewhere. I don't think they took on any new students last year (Kathleen had just taken over and spent that time working with the current students), so this fall there will be five writers total. Hopefully I can come back in a few months able to report that the program is great and everyone should apply!

Hi goodbreakfast. Iowa, Yale, and Brown are fully funded; Yale also gives its writers a solid stipend that actually increases during the summer. (The other programs may have something similar, but I got the most detail from Yale.) Julliard's program is free, but doesn't provide a stipend and technically isn't an MFA, so I don't know if you'd be interested in it. I didn't major in theatre, but took some playwriting classes and spent a semester at the National Theater Institute. In 2008, I had a play in two fringe festivals, where it was well-received, but I actually have never had a full-fledged production as part of a season. My writing sample and SOP got me pretty far by themselves, but maybe the difference between waitlist and acceptance could have been another few productions. (I got waitlisted at NYU, Columbia, Iowa, was a finalist at Yale, was admitted to Northwestern and Rutgers, and got a request from Julliard for recs.) In an ideal world, I would have had a fuller resume, but it wasn't in the cards. Some of the other finalists with me at Yale were brand-new playwrights, though -- as has been said on this forum before, they're looking at your writing above all else. Your plans to move and get more involved in theatre sound like the right thing to do, but definitely also make some actor friends and get your work read out loud. Reading plays is important, but hearing your words in actors' mouths will teach you just as much. Good luck with your move and your applications!

I got an email from Juilliard a little while ago asking me to submit three letters of recommendation, which is awesome, but I need to tell them I've accepted a place elsewhere. If I remember right, the email said they were still reading through plays and hadn't contacted everyone yet.

Thank you! It's certainly been crazy and weird, but I'm hoping it'll all be worth it.

Congrats on your acceptances, mirandatragedy! That's awesome. I wanted to check in and say that, despite being rejected from Yale, they passed my info on to another program looking to raise its profile and attract strong writers, and I will probably be going there. (Don't want to jinx it until I get the official letter, but the program director says I'm in.) I emailed one of my recommenders to let him know, and he said that some of his closest friends now are people he wasn't able to hire or accept for his program, so I wanted to let you guys know that a rejection doesn't mean those opportunities are over. I figured those guys were too busy to expend energy on people who aren't their students, but apparently that's not true at all -- someone who really wanted you for their program, but didn't get you, may be someone who fights for you in other arenas.

I got an email from NYU today requesting more info about my undergrad years (I had to take a leave of absence due to illness and kind of cobbled together a BA over several years), so that's a good sign, but how many people do those guys even take? EccentricDreamer and failsafe, sorry you guys are having a tough time. It's a huge accomplishment in itself, though, to be working and to have theaters interested in your stuff -- and I do want to say that I only met six out of the nine finalists at Yale, so the three New Yorkers could definitely have been older, and at least three of the current playwrights I met were in their thirties when they started.

Congratulations, longwalk and onemanarmy! I got waitlisted at Columbia, but I was expecting a rejection, so it's kind of nice, actually. I haven't had time to sit down and write back until now, but failsafe, thanks for your awesome comment. (I think I'm better than some of the people I know in great programs too, haha.) I'm definitely going to keep that David Lindsay-Abaire story close to my heart, and that note about the top section of the admissions queue is also a big help. And thank you as well, janesays -- I have no idea how talented I am, but I hope I do have a lot to offer. I did have a great time talking to the professors at Northwestern, and Sarah Ruhl told me she thought Thomas Bradshaw was wonderful. I'm going to speak with him sometime next week and see if there's anything else I can be doing for financial aid -- if so, I'll let you know! Do you have any more info on what that alumna meant by "cushy"? Thanks for your comment too, puttputt -- that stuff about your friend is good to hear, and you make a good point about the MFA just being two years. I do need to sack up and keep going, and I do want to make a life writing, however that happens. I'm not usually someone who posts unhappy flaily comments on message boards, and I feel kind of embarrassed now, especially since I know I'm lucky to have been accepted anywhere. My play isn't autobiographical, but it draws heavily from some ugly and traumatic experiences, and I struggled a lot to get it down. It was shocking and great to get such a warm initial reaction from so many places, and then rejection/waitlisting felt very personal, I guess.

Twlk, thanks -- that's good to know. Hotspur, congratulations! I haven't heard anything back yet.

Thanks for your kind words, everybody. They mean a lot. I'm having some trouble figuring out what to do now -- I got into Northwestern, but as somebody noted a few pages back, the funding isn't good, and I don't have much money. I'm waitlisted at Iowa, but I don't even know how many people they take, much less what my chances are. Still haven't heard from NYU, Columbia, or Juilliard, but I'm not holding my breath. And I agree with you, k-hotspur -- it's so hard not to take it personally. Maybe it's Groucho Marx syndrome, but I don't feel that excited about Northwestern right now. But I'm also really sick of holding two to three shitty jobs and writing at night, and it's been a hard couple of years. I don't know whether I have the stomach to wait another year and try again. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances in excellent programs, and I don't think my work is markedly inferior to theirs. I'm just at a loss.

Well, I got rejected from Yale late last night, after a long shitty day at work. Hope you guys are having better luck than me.

Thanks, failsafe -- I'm keeping my fingers crossed! I hope you get good news this year, too. k-hotspur, if it makes you feel better, I've had an insane chest cold for a couple of weeks now and spent all of my free time at Yale in bed, drinking water and freebasing cough drops. So it was awesome, but also very boogery. At this point, I kind of feel like cat butts should be a unit of awkwardness. "Oh god, I sneezed in my date's mouth! It was at LEAST two butts."

Thanks, EccentricDreamer and tjack! I have a very New Englandy hangup where my brain insists that thinking positively about things means they won't ever happen, so I'm trying not to believe I'm in, but I really want to go, and I think I did as well as I could. And that's comforting. tjack, I think you're probably crazy to be worried about Iowa, if that helps. I checked the results page from previous years (I applied there too) and it does look like they take ages to get back to people. Don't have any info on Indiana, though -- have you gotten in touch with anybody? I could give them a call and ask, haha -- I could use some good karma.

I got back yesterday super late -- they flew me out on the 10th, and I interviewed with Jeanie O'Hare on the 11th and Sarah Ruhl on the 12th. It was pretty incredible -- I was really nervous, but they were lovely and easy to talk to, and so were the nine current students who showed us around. We weren't booked with things around the clock; we had interviews, and a tour of some of the buildings, and then drinks/dinner with the playwrights both evenings. Otherwise, we were mostly left to our own devices. Some demographic things: - there were nine finalists, but I didn't meet everyone -- New York finalists had their interviews in the city instead of on campus. - I was one of the older finalists, if not the oldest, and I'm 26; there were two undergrads, I think. The current playwrights were in their twenties and thirties. - I met one Canadian finalist, but I think everyone else was American. One of the current playwrights spoke English as a second language (very well). - one other candidate and I came from Chicago, someone came from Montana, someone came from Atlanta, someone came from western Massachusetts, etc. - we were pretty evenly divided between women and men, I think. Some things I was nervous about: - nobody was snobby or standoffish. - I wore a sweater/button-down/nice pants combo for my interviews, but I know at least one of the other playwrights wore jeans. - nobody quizzed me on my knowledge of plays or how many I had read (they really just care about what you wrote). - people had very different levels of experience (nearly all my friends are working theatre artists and I often feel inexperienced in comparison, but Yale doesn't seem to have any expectations about that). - people had different numbers of productions -- some people hadn't had any, I think. It sounds like Jeanie O'Hare is interested in giving the playwrights some more structure and finished products, while Paula Vogel's approach was often about generating pages and ideas, and then having a lot of starter material to draw from when you graduate. I prefer more structure, so I was glad to hear about some of the changes; I also saw Jeanie being very responsive to feedback from the current playwrights about their workload and goals. She seems awesome and I had a great time speaking with her. Sarah Ruhl told me that she would like the program to feel a lot like a residency, where there's a lot of time to write and reflect and figure things out. There is ample opportunity for the playwrights to go to New York, and Lynn Nottage's class is held in the city. Overall, I felt like the program was a great fit for me, and I told them it was my first choice. I don't really know how I stack up against the other playwrights, so I don't know what my chances are, but here's hoping!

I haven't heard from NYU either, but I didn't feel that great about my app when I turned it in, so I'm not super torn up about it. Congratulations to everybody with good news! And thanks for your empathy, hotspur -- that helps. Were you able to see Kelly and Chuck during the interview? I was just looking at a still photo of Kelly, which made things feel more awkward. I don't know if it was a Skype problem or if that's just how they do it, but my cat was on my lap and I kept thinking that the video would start working mid-interview and all they were going to see of me was cat butt. Just cat butt.

I have no idea how it went, really. I spoke with Chuck Mee and Kelly Stuart, and they were both very nice -- they said that they enjoyed my play, and that they mostly wanted to know what questions I had. I did have some questions, but I don't think I said anything particularly brilliant or exciting, so I'm kind of second-guessing myself now.

I saw a new play by a playwright a few years younger than me, and it was kind of a mixed bag (it was so topical that it was already sort of dated, and it was relentlessly despairing), so I'm not going to name it. But I really liked the core group of characters, who were awkward teenage boys who played basketball together -- I thought it was a great example of how you can end up with a jumble of acquaintances/friends/enemies in high school. So different from each other that if they didn't live in a small town, they'd never hang out, but there aren't enough kids to be picky.

NYU is mid-March, right? I'm on my phone, so it's difficult to check. I'm pretty disappointed, but the form email I just got says they're only taking two people this year (!), and that makes me feel somewhat better.

I woke up to a Brown rejection. Blech!

Holy shit. I'm pretty nervous, but I'll try to do you guys proud! Failsafe, I know what you mean about having to recover from some plays. The one I submitted to schools was incredibly tough to write, and there were long stretches of time when I couldn't work on it. I think those are the ones that are the most important to write. Hope you can take some time for yourself and relax. Congratulations, Longwalk and Misssharai! I got an email about a Columbia interview yesterday -- mine is on March 7, so I'll report back. And welcome to the forum, Reds. I don't have too many playwright friends in real life (mostly actors and directors), so this is a great place to have, especially when we can all freak out together. I was also wondering -- what kind of writers are you guys? What do you think characterizes your style? Do you return to certain subjects or themes? I always like to know that stuff. My style tends to be pretty spare -- if a character says more than twelve or fifteen words at a time, something is probably wrong. I mostly write things that are sad, although I tried to make sure there were some solid funny bits in my latest play because its subject was so painful (the aftermath of child sexual abuse). For a long time, I wrote about families and how tough it can be to love your family, but recently I've been focusing a lot more on the body and how we relate to our physical selves.

I just got an interview invite at one of my dream programs (playwriting MFA), and I have no idea what to wear. It's an Ivy, and I've never been to one before, so I'm pretty confused/nervous about what is appropriate. I'm going to have two interviews over two days, so that makes things more complicated, too. I'm a guy, and I own exactly one suit (dark gray), but looking at some of the threads about women's attire, I'm wondering now if a suit will be too stuffy or odd. Would something like a sweater/button-down/wool pants work better? Should I wear a tie also? Help!

Thanks, everybody! And congratulations, longwalk. I've never been to that conference, but it sounds pretty cool. Do you still have time to fix your gun-battle-buildings play??

March 11 and 12. She didn't mention other interviewees either way, so I don't know much about other calls. ETA: Also, thank you! I can't believe I forgot that, sorry.