M(allthevowels)H

OMG holy crap! Way to keep hope alive! Congratulations!!

Preach! How much of their time and our money would it save if they just posted a note when they opened admissions, "We have enough X scholars and cannot bring in any more. Also Professors X, X, and X are retiring so if you build your SoP around them you've got no shot."

Yay!! Congratulations!

Thanks so much for calling! I guess it will be at least another week of endless pacing. Sigh.

You are totally within your rights to visit informally! Every single one of my schools but one decided it'd be cool to have a visit on the same weekend, one when I have immovable obligations, so I am going to one formal event and visiting informally the others. No one has acted like it was an issue, and they've even still used the funding that would have been set aside for that time period for the alternate time instead. Honestly, I say this as someone with only mild social anxiety, it may be a better choice for you anyway. It's just you rather than a group, which means you won't run the risk of sharing a hotel room and will have more moments alone to kind of decompress. You can arrange to sit in on a class and have a meeting with a POI (I approached this by saying I would email X for permission to sit in on their Title class during the time period, and most of the organizers have just told me not to worry and set it up instead) and possibly a current student, so you may not get the full benefit of the events planned but you can certainly learn a lot about the program. I mean, honestly, I expected to kind of be left to my own devices because I was going on an off time period and didn't want to disrupt anything, but the schools have been so, so great about making sure I'll still have every opportunity to get a feel for the campus. Maaaaybe they're just afraid there'd be this weird girl wandering around eavesdropping on people and so they wanted to make sure I had an itinerary, but in any case, so far it has really worked out.

I'm sure plenty of people will arrive shortly to tell you how difficult the literature job market is regardless of what institution grants your degree, but Indiana-Bloomington is a great program. It's currently ranked top 20 for English, (for whatever that's worth). I'm not sure what your emphasis is, but I'm obsessed with Ross Gay who teaches poetry there. The University of Houston has a similar program and so does Cornell, but Cornell only takes two or three people into theirs each cycle. I've also heard of students at universities with MFA and PHD programs applying to both after clearing it with the departments, even where there isn't a stated hybrid degree. (In those cases I'm not sure if they were already there in one department when they decided to do both, or if they applied to both initially.) As far as teaching positions you will be technically qualified to teach creative writing with an MFA from anywhere, but you wouldn't be considered until after you published extensively. Where a PhD is more production oriented and aims to have you academically hireable upon graduation, an MFA is a different monster. The MFA aims to equip you make the best art you can, and while there is some professional development, the time between MFA and publication can be long (read: years), so you would not be immediately competitive for creative writing positions upon graduation.* *I feel like I should note that some people publish their novels, memoirs, or poetry collections during or very shortly after their MFA and those make enough of a splash that they secure creative writing positions soon thereafter...but we can't all be Justin Torres, to my eternal lament. Most of the MFA grads I know adjunct, freelance, or work non-academic jobs while finishing the projects they initially conceived during the MFA. Sorry, looking back that all seems like an unhelpful ramble. Feel free to message me if you have MFA vs PhD questions. I have my MFA (Fiction) and will be beginning my PhD this fall.

Welcome! I also haven't officially heard from Colorado. She's a choosy mistress, and she likes to make us wait. Congrats on Duke and Indiana!!

Hey Zaq, If you have a significant number of credits in English/Literature classes, it might balance out your major - particularly if you're applying to Masters not PhD programs. I would get your former English professors to write about your ability to do critical work in their rec letters. If you have a strong a writing sample, GRE score, and SoP, I think it's totally possible (I'm not coming from a strictly critical background myself). You may have better luck checking under the Literature, Rhetoric and Comp section of GradCafe, if you're leaning more toward critical work rather than creative writing. I found this thread with some funded MAs, but I am sure there are more if you poke around.

This is exactly how I feel about my shiny-new Rochester rejection. I was really enamored with the idea of it and had heard such great things about living in the city, I tried to force a fit where there maybe wasn't one.

Congratulations! I'm amazed at anyone who has managed to pull off landing two people at one institution. OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!! I know I don't actually know you, but I'm freaking out for you anyway! I am so happy for you! You (both) worked so hard and so deserve this!!

Hey fellow CUNY waitlister! Good luck to us.

Congrats on getting an offer at one of your top choices! Fingers crossed that funding gets cleared up.

Thanks @Melvillage_Idiot @punctilious that's my gut instinct, but I waver. I'll definitely poke around more for placement info when I visit. @FreakyFoucault Thanks! I'll give it a scroll.

I think I've been associating this with jobs that seem more like consistent employment, like adjuncting for another school or a 9-5. It seems strange that this would apply to something like freelance writing, particularly since publishing is somewhat the goal in the program. I'm trying to parse out that delineation where getting into a journal gets a gold star, but meeting a deadline for Salon gets you in trouble.

I like the cut of your jib.

Congratulations!! I hope your username is sincere, because I remember seeing the words "most snow on earth" in a news report this year.

Holy cow, wait. This applies to freelancing/writing/editing gigs as well, you think? I mean, there is no ambiguous wording, so of course it does, I just don't know why I didn't think of that. Thank you for posting this. I'm going to need to look through handbooks too, I guess.

I got an acceptance at the University of Mississippi! This is super early, even given the last timeline I was told, but my acceptance was attached to a different fellowship so that may be why. Did we ever get that "How important are rankings anyway?" thread up and running? Because I love Ole Miss so much and everything about their program just gels with me...but I feel like I should probably defer to more experienced voices in regards to how much weight I should give that.

Congratulations @jpbends @WildeThing @mads47 @Akillesheel and @Cormacc on your NYU MA acceptances! There seem to be a lot of gradcafe success stories from people who are very glad they did they accepted the MA option (though I know this is touchy because of funding). Congratulations, whatever you decide :-)

Are you...me? Are we...the same? This is exactly my experience/fear. When I was interloping in English classes during my MFA I could speak about the works we were studying in nonspecific terms, but then someone would say, "Oh yeah, like [insert name]'s theory of [word]" and I would nod and say "yeah, totally" and then google the reference as soon as I got home. If anyone sent you books/youtube videos to buff up theory pass them along. (Also, you name-dropping Saussure to make your point about imposter syndrome gave me imposter syndrome.)

"Hi. I'm in...Delaware." If you guys don't say that as soon as you cross state lines, in exactly that way, I may never forgive you.

Ah! I totally missed Newark and mentally put in Wilmington. And this is actually me being better at geography. When I came to Philadelphia I thought Delaware was just the capital of Maryland.

The Regional Rail's Northeast line has a Delaware Station. It's more expensive than normal Septa (for that distance I think it's like eight dollars a person) and you just pay in cash after you get on. Here's the schedule for the Wilmington train: http://www.septa.org/schedules/rail/h/WIL_0.html

Congrats! Funding is nothing to sneeze at, plus they have easily they best/weirdest mascot in the game.

That's just cruel.