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This was very helpful. Thank you for sharing that 🙏

Hey, y'all. Been a while since I last applied, better part of a decade now. Kinda kept my nose to the grindstone and was fortunate to experience cool things like Bread Loaf, a wild (and mostly wholesome) AWP Seattle, and publications in places like Pshares, APR, and Palette. And I was more or less content to keep on living as a "working" poet, making pretty good money in a career that afforded me stability, a decent quality of life, and an opportunity to cultivate my solitary writing life. But when, deep down, you really wanna teach something you're passionate about, and good at... Well, it's like Stephen King wrote in The Dark Tower: "Talent just wants to be used." But what I consider my biggest strength—my unconventional literary path—is also my biggest insecurity applying to MFA programs this time around. I have a BS and MS in Chemistry, and don't recall taking a single literature course in my post-secondary education. I've read a good deal, have attended a whole buncha workshops (BLEWR 🙏), and have some big name poets who have very generously offered to write on my behalf. But I def still feel like I'm a weak candidate because I am not straight out of an English/Lit undergrad or Masters program (among a few other reasons). I guess you just never really know, huh. Anyway, geography was really a top factor for me, as well as faculty (relationships), so I'm keeping the list very tight this year and applying to: Columbia, NYU, UMass Amherst (my alma mater), and Vanderbilt. If you're as prone to overthinking and spinning about this whole process as I am, then here's a little chant I created for myself, based on a Buddhist Equanimity chant: • Regardless of my wishes for them, my application decisions are not in my hands. • I alone am responsible for the contents of my applications. • May I accept my application decisions with equanimity. • May I find a true source of happiness. • May I find peace exactly where I am. Just trying to keep that in mind while still chipping away at obsessively crafted application materials 🙃👋

Congratulations! That's awesome!

Ugh, I feel your pain. It got so unbearable toward the end, getting my last rejection was more of a relief than it was a disappointment over not getting into any programs this year. Hang in there! There really is and end coming. Mine wasn't what I wanted, but it's all good still ?

Thanks! Now I just have to keep reinforcing and internalizing the above points... Why are you looking to escape NYC?

Hi, everybody. To update, this afternoon I received my final admissions decision: yet another rejection. Final tally: 0-for-4. I am not going to grad school this year. As I had hoped, the moment of serenity captured in this topic's initial post has surprisingly lasted. I feel more or less at peace with this outcome. It's not what I wanted, and it of course stings. But here's where I am finding hope, excitement, and motivation right now: I'm a damn good poet. (I don't need Iowa, NYU, Columbia, or Vanderbilt to validate this. I have publications for that! ) I love and look forward to continuing to write more damn good poetry. I am moving to NYC in a few months with my amazing girlfriend. I am now free to contact my career counselor and learn what amazing (and finally, fitting!) new opportunities are out there. I am now free to (somehow) earn a real paycheck! I have the incredible (if seriously daunting) opportunity to build an artistic network on my own terms, and not on an MFA's terms. I have generated some seriously good work in the last few weeks, which I am excited to see published (oh yeah, I'm calling it, right now!), and in next year's applications. So, that's where I am at the end of this application season. Is it where I wanted to be? Nope. Is it where I expected to be? Sorry to say, nope. But is it where I am, and where I am responsible for moving forward from? Yup. Not being admitted to any schools this year is not a failure on my part. To not accept and make the most of these circumstances, however; that would be a tremendous failure. Best of luck to everybody! If you fear the total rejection that I have found, may you in turn find peace and acceptance of your circumstances. If you are admitted, and will be attending school in the Fall: congratulations! Now leave this topic alone and stop wallowing in other people's misery!

Hey, while we're at it... what's with NYU Creative Writing MFA finishing with acceptances like 2 weeks ago and not sending their rejection letters out??? I'm on the edge of my seat, waiting for my official 0/4 final tally for the year. I JUST WANT IT TO END.

Amen. That's why I'm not calling my last school... don't want to incur WRATH.

Me too, man. Me too...

I turn 33 in a month. Have an MS in Chemistry, had an 8-year career that I just left, and applied to MFA programs in poetry. Definitely an unusual candidate, from what I understand. Not so nervous about being in a class of 23-year-olds, but pretty nervous about my chances of being accepted anywhere. On the bright side, if my concerns materialize and I don't get into a program, I do have some good transferable skills, so I can earn a decent paycheck.

WOW! CONGRATULATIONS! I guess that interview went pretty well, after all

Hey Ckoh, I wouldn't freak out just yet. Some schools accept in bursts and waves, sometimes with a week or two in between each. And anecdotally, my ex was accepted to Houston's MFA for fiction on April 6 a couple years ago, and not off the waitlist. So there's hope yet. Might be worth doubling down on some anti-freak activities, tho I say that as someone in exactly the same boat as you. 2r/0a/0w/2p... but getting late for the last two, and don't think they do waves or bursts! Best of luck!

Wow, I suppose a trip to Paris would certainly distract!

Thanks for sharing, and best of luck to you too! Fortunately, my field (poetry writing) is something I can practice and be a part of outside of an academic track, but it's just WAY harder to gain vital connections, community, and support. So if I'm truly devoted to it, I can succeed--as so many other writers have before--without a degree. The work required is just much greater, the odds and time stacked against slightly more against me, and the demands on internal motivation/prioritization paramount. At this point, I'd vastly prefer the MFA track to slugging it out alone... buy I've done it for 6 years, so I at least know I'm capable of it.

That's one of my new culinary fantasies. Perhaps I'll realize that in a few weeks, if I go 0-for-4...