PsychPoet

For those of you who applied last cycle and re-applied to some of the same places were the specific SoP prompts and/or essay questions for schools the same, similar, or completely different? Still have quite a few pending apps, but at least two of those I'm now inclined to pass on should I get in, so I'm starting to think about and plan for next year? Anyway, thanks in advance. PS: I HATE writing SoPs. Writing about myself to explain and sell is bad medicine in every possible way.

Yep, just got my Dear John letter from them. After Syracuse this one doesn't really sting. Doesn't hurt that I judged them as my least likely application b/c of my history with them. Not 100% I'll reapply to them next year among my 25. Def will Syracuse (assuming it's a blanket of rejections this year).

THANK YOU!

This is pure conjecture, but is fueled by the fact that I have deep knowledge of how BU works as an institution as I've both gone to school there (PhD in a STEM field) and worked there. BU functions in almost every way as more of a corporation than a university. So, I feel like what's going on with the Feds regarding funding, grants, et al very likely put some real strain on the dept which may have caused some delays this year. I'm sure they're taking people, but they likely had some burden to speak about funding to the provost and president. So, I'm not at all surprised they're behind where they were last year. I'm waited with baited breath even though I estimate it's the program I have the least chance of getting into. How do you all feel about them being one of the rare one year programs. I consider it basically a wash. I love the idea of getting the credential next May, but also kind of like the idea of being immersed in this more than one year. The three year programs are less appealing to me than one or two years, though I did apply to at least one of those.

(I'm out of reactions today) After reading your posts these past few months I'm just over the moon happy for you.

Thanks! I wish I'd started so much earlier last year. There are so many schools I would have applied to if I knew then what I knew now. (See below) As it was, Dec 1 to Dec 15 (most of the ones I applied to had that as a deadline) was a total slog of being behind and stressed. I want to second this. Had I been properly prepared this year I'd have def applied there. I'm in love with that whole area. The snow bowl b/t Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon is awesome, and, well, yeah, Sedona is on a whole other level. Love Jerome as well. To say nothing of Phoenix and Scottsdale. AZ is perfect writing country.

HUGE congrats!!

I had a super-late decision to apply this year (around Dec 1st, LOL), so none of this was on my radar earlier in the season. Can someone let me know around when most application pages refresh and go live for the next cycle? Thanks in advance!

I've sat on PhD admission committees and I can tell you no one ever cared about that. I don't recall it even being in the applicant dossiers we received. The not waiving your right to see LoRs IMO is fully irrelevant to the committees. If it did matter, it would be a wild assumption in that you could have very well asked your recommenders for permission to view them and to not waive this right. Where it can impact you is with the letter writers themselves. It's considered rude to not waive unless you've asked them first. For all grad apps I always ask if my writers will send me a copy themselves, they've always agreed, and I have them all on file. As a recommender, I have occasionally run into requestors not waiving, and I don't really care, but in many instances would decline to write for them after this. That piece for me is really dependent on who they are. If I suspect they're the type that would come back to me saying my letter wasn't strong enough, I'd tend to decline to do a letter for them in subsequent years. I did have a colleague who a student threatened to litigate what she considered to be a malicious letter, though no one in our dept thought it was that. TL;DR - My opinion is that there is approx. a zero percent chance this would impact your application.

100% agreed. The use of my formal name instead of the preferred name they asked for annoyed me as well.

Agreed RE: feels like shit. It's funny, I knew how subjective anything with these odds are, and that they were only taking ~6 in fiction, but man did it land hard on me when I saw it in my inbox. This sounds weird saying out loud, but I kind of had a premonition (or some quasi-mystical experience) with this today. This, even though I'm not inclined to think in such ways. When I wake up the first thing I do is check my phone for emails or missed calls. Today, I sort of had a lucid dream that I woke, checked my email, and scrolling through "saw" an orange "S" from Syracuse in there, though upon actually waking up I could find no such thing. Later this afternoon, sitting down to read with a cup of coffee I suddenly had a strong urge from out of nowhere to check the Syracuse portal. (Only one I checked today). Nothing. I went straight from there to my email and there was my rejection, time-stamped exactly one minute prior. So odd. With an MA, a PhD, and an EdD I've been through this many times before. For PhD was rejected at some pretty underwhelming state schools, ultimately accepted into a top-tier elite where there were 850+ applications and I was one of two they took. But it's been a while and I was very curious how I'd respond to rejections. When I was MUCH younger, I took them pretty personally and always felt the need to wallow for a while. Happy to report that age is a great mediator of such things as after the initial sting, the self-soothing rationalizations, the absolute surety that this one rejection foretold across the board rejections, I feel totally fine now. But, maybe a little more than totally fine. I just feel this overwhelming desire/need to write, right now, and write hard. So, that's what I'm about to do. Also have a 7pm zoom with someone from one of my former workshop cohorts to discuss the writing we sent to each other this month. Life goes on. I'm 0a, 0w, 7p. If it's rejections across the board I'm applying to b/t 20-25 next year. Trust the path. We got this.

Same, Syracuse email rejection in fiction.

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Reading Portait of the Artist as a Young Man and the latest Ploughshares while recovering from my root canal this past am. The root canal wasn't exactly fun, but it did give me a few hours of not thinking about MFA stuff.

Was going to say the same thing. I've only seen Poetry from BU. I'm hoping there's some movement from them next week.

Wow, yeah I feel this all the time - mostly at night. I'm in Boston now and applied to programs here, but same as you also Syracuse, Iowa, etc. In the morning I just want full funding at the top programs. At night, I'm more likely to realize that getting into one of the ones further away will immediately upend my equilibrium, spending the next month agonizing over details, trying to work my way up to moving again. And same, I worry how this will impact my girlfriend and I. Her job is full remote, so she could come anywhere with me if she wanted to, but her father is in dialysis and while she'll still be employed anywhere, the company does adjust salary when you move to a less expensive place - or more expensive if the move were to NYC or say Tokyo. Even NYC carries a lot of strife for me. I've already lived there after undergrad, but I was in my early to mid-twenties and nothing really bothered me then. Thinking of moving back to that behemoth is daunting to say the least. This, even though I'm still there once a month or so, and even though it's one of a very few places (Varanasi India, Rome, London and a few others) that I absolutely love. So yeah, there are times when I hope to just get into BU and don't have to make any further decisions. But then I wake up and it's daylight out and I'm full of energy and fully want Iowa or Syracuse, or NYU, or Columbia. Everything has it's rub. So, I just give in and open myself to the process and try to remain determined to let the winds of magic and change blow me where they will. Good luck to ya!

Wow, good to know! Love that they've been starting earlier than I expected. Thanks!

Is that true? They call for acceptances? I was under the understanding all notifications with them came via snail mail. Speaking of Iowa I almost had a heart attack yesterday. Saw an email from Iowa, and even though I know they absolutely don't email, and it's way too early, but seeing it still made my heart jump anyway. Was just them letting me know they'd received my FAFSA info.

Ugh, yeah. My office isn't far from Emerson and I had to walk past all that craziness every day. Are you at Emerson now? I'm mostly WFH/or over in Longwood now so hardly ever there, has that all died down at this point? I know they shut down the stuff in the City Place alley, but just the vibe internally? I'm not so interested in trying to write in an environment of constant strife. Gives me some small measure of pause RE: Columbia as well.

Ah, don't let that discourage you! The advantage Boston has over most expensive cities is the sheer number of college students here. There are 64 colleges here (not in state, just the Boston area itself). So many students that many parts of the city feel almost empty when schools aren't in session. While the media and others tend to hype the price, that's for standard housing types. But if you're willing to bounce around to sublets (which are as thick as mosquitos under a sodium light in the summer) or have roommates in a huge old house you can easily rent for $750/mo or less. I did some combination of those all through my unfunded MA and my doc which was funded, but I worked (TA/RA) so much I should have just lived in one of the classrooms. Haha/ugh. I get where you're coming from though. I'm heavily invested in wanting to get into one of the NYC schools (Columbia, NYU, Hunter) and am absolutely tripped out at the thought of moving back to that monster as a student. Lived there after undergrad, and man can housing be daunting there. I'm sure I'll make it work (if I get funded), but the anxiety is real. But wow do I love that city.

No, I absolutely believe them. Saw a screenshot of an email on Reddit. I just think if you have both a priority deadline and a regular deadline, accepting people before you even see the full applicant pool suggests to me that they're more concerned with filling all their available slots, than getting the best applicants. Having sat on admissions committees at both Harvard Med and a generic SW Directional State type school I can tell you the latter had similar tactics and that, well, Harvard Med didn't. And to triangulate that data further I'd say Emerson isn't exactly Iowa. I thought all my apps were in, but was thinking of applying to Emerson as the ultimate safety just because I'm already in Boston, but having seen these come through I may not bother even though I have all their essays done and ready to go. I absolutely do not want to start an MFA thinking it's not a good enough program.

Very odd especially since even their priority deadline hasn't passed. Smacks of desperation to me, frankly.

I don't get it. How can that possibly be fun for anyone? Yes! Haha!

This made me chuckle! For some more comic relief have a look at the draft spreadsheet. Some clown posted he was notified by Emerson 1/9 via phone. I happen to know no decisions have been made let alone notification sent out - via phone. Can you imagine being "that" guy? Why even do this?

I'm personally not sweating it. I put out the best application I could at the time whenever a deadline came up. Some are better than others, but it was the best I could do at that exact moment. So, the stress for me was getting everything ready. Once I've submitted and it's out of my hands I'm pretty chill about it. I know my stress won't up my chances, so no reason to punish myself with stress. However, I stress about the group I ultimately applied to. If I had it to do over again (and I may well next year), I'd have applied a little more widely. Probably should have done Notre Dame and Ohio State (yes, the game last night may be impacting my thinking), but the reason I ultimately didn't was that at the time I felt like neither had the faculty I was looking for so why mess with two places I don't really want to live. Also probably should have done Johns Hopkins, but I do understand why I didn't. Still, if I could change one thing that'd be it.