immanentfields

Yep--accepted the offer at Penn! Made things official last night, which also means there might be waitlist movement at Harvard, Princeton, and Northwestern. Hope that helps someone!

Posting for next year's applicants sense of timeline and possibility (as I'm probably declining it) but I just got in off the waitlist at Princeton.

Northwestern has a heavy theory focus, and Penn's program is literally called "Comparative Literature and Literary Theory," so think about those too.

Yeah it's been really great here, actually. I'm deciding between Penn, NW, and Harvard. All pretty similar on the basics but a different feel for each.

Congrats on deciding! Emory sounds like a great program.

Awesome! I'm not sure yet myself (I'm literally at Penn right now) but based on teaching load and location I knew it wasn't going to be Michigan, so I went ahead and passed so that someone on the waitlist could move up. The rest of this decision, though, is... difficult.

Just declined a very generous offer from Michigan (areas: poetry, Latin American studies, translation)--hope this becomes good news for someone else!

Lol yes

Good call--specific details rather than "gimme more money!" is probably the right idea.

Yeah, exactly (and in a more articulate way). Basically, @defmaybe, I would think about it this way: the MFA isn't necessarily a job-market degree even though it's a co-terminal degree--it's really more of an opportunity (in terms of time, space, and community) to develop as a writer. The PhD is going to give you the....opposite of that. Obviously they will try to help you develop as a scholar, but it's less about time and space and more about rigor and preparation. I have a lot of friends doing PhDs--even creative writing PhDs!--who say that they don't have as much writing time as they thought (and some at lit PhDs even say that they have no creative writing time). I think going into that experience before having done your MFA might put a big halt on your development as a creative writer even as I simultaneously believe that lit scholarship is really good for creative writers, simply because of this issue of time--whereas, if you go to Iowa and maybe grow a bit as a writer (and develop routines), you would be more equipped to handle long periods of creative inactivity. Also, for what it's worth, I do think it is statistically harder to get into Iowa's MFA program than it is to get into a PhD program. And I also think that my MFA years (tho not at Iowa) were so important to my personal development and sense of the world, and I can't imagine a more perfect post-BA experience. So congrats and uhhh...go do that.

I feel very strongly about this, having done an MFA before my PhD: do the MFA first. It will only make you a better applicant for PhD later on (whereas having a PhD doesn't necessarily help get into MFA school) and it would be better to be in the creative community before trying to write a dissertation (when your creative output will definitely cease for a bit) than trying to re-enter that headspace afterwards.

This might have been asked in the thread already, but how do you go about asking for additional travel funding? One program is giving me $300 for the flight and putting me up with current students, but flights to the east coast from Nevada are easily $500....

Hell yeah! I hope something opens up for you.

Congrats to everyone who has decided already! I'm trying to narrow down between Harvard, Penn, and Northwestern for comp lit. Hopefully will have a decision soon...

Thanks! We may still run into each other yet...