Leeannitha

If anyone wants to keep up with decisions posted on gradcafe they are listed separately:
https://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/?per_page=20&q=Creative+writing&institution=&program=&degree=MFA&season=F23

Just got an email acceptance to UNCW for fiction!

Waitlisted by Michener. Understand it's competitive, but a little bummed since it's been my top choice since I started this process! 

Rejected from Oregon State for Poetry. Currently 0a // 0wl // 3r // 1p. This week has been brutal. Keeping my fingers crossed for WVU but it looks like I'd better start prepping for applications next season (that is, if I'm able to afford to apply. Even sending out four applications this season ate up my savings, and I can't afford to keep going at this unfortunately).
Did want to share on behalf of one of my friends // classmates who just got waitlisted at UF!

Wow! After a couple of agonizing weeks hearing nothing from any of my programs (except a rejection from Pittsburgh), good news has been trickling in since Friday – I'm on a "very short" waitlist at Arkansas (fiction), I've been waitlisted at Rutgers-Camden (fiction), and I have an interview with LSU in a couple of days. I've pretty much stopped obsessively refreshing my email and Draft altogether now... the prospect of me leaving my unbearable day job to pursue something I actually care about feels very real now, and not pie-in-the-sky. Good luck to everybody holding out for good news this week. 
 

hey all! i was recently accepted to the cornell fiction MFA. i got notified first by phone on saturday afternoon and received an official email alerting me to check the web portal about 24 hours later, on sunday. i was also accepted to guelph, waitlisted for michigan, and rejected by ubc. i hope this is helpful info on the process to people still waiting! good luck to everybody! ❤️ 

It's ultimately up to you to decide, but I just want to share my own experience. I was accepted in 2020 to two fully funded programs, and I turned both of them down for another opportunity. I communicated my reasoning clearly and openly with the faculty, who seemed very accommodating and understanding and told me I'd most likely get in if I reapplied. I applied again two years later to one of those programs along with a handful of other top tier places, and I got rejections across the board. This year, I've been waitlisted at a few places and accepted to one, none of them being the programs that initially accepted me back in 2020. I really feel like MFA admissions are a lottery in the way they can be "once in a lifetime" opportunities that you can't necessarily guarantee will ever happen again. Your writing sample and the cohort they wanted to create plus the competition for the year along with whatever personal reasons afflicted the reader that day all aligned perfectly to be in your favor this time. How likely is that to happen again? omg not to sound doom and gloom, but I feel like I was so ignorant of how *hard* it is to get accepted when I first did in 2020 and assumed I would just get in again, which I didn't that first reapplication cycle, even with an objectively stronger writing sample and more work and life experience. Sometimes, you're dealt cards you'll never be dealt again, and I think that's an important thing to note!! Congrats on NYU, especially being completely funded! Your writing abilities are clearly up to par, so don't worry about that

Fully funded from NYU!!! That's HARD. This whole process is a real crapshoot and I really would not presume that this is going to happen again if you were to apply next year. I agree with earlier opinions of people saying that the main question you should be asking is if you can see yourself at NYU. However, you just got handed a pretty wildly great hand–– not just academically but networking wise too. On a personal level, I'm in the same position as you with no family support and nothing but my savings–– so do know I say this next part understanding the fears every life decision brings with it–– I dunno, maybe I'm naive, but the idea of working a mind-numbing job for the end of my days because it provides me "security" sounds kind of like what I imagine hell to be like. From what it sounds like, you've been living your life without security as is and you've been doing a pretty fucking stellar job both career wise and creatively. Furthermore, is working the job you said you hate for the end of time really the clear "smart move?" No offense, but who says that's even secure? People get fired from their "safe choice" everyday! What's another leap of faith in a life full of 'em? Congrats! Either way, know you're a writer through and through, no matter what NYU–– or anyone for that matter–– says.

I forgot to post it here but I was accepted into Arizona State University for poetry yesterday!

Let’s all remember that a lot of these places have incredibly low acceptance rates.. Harvard Law School has an acceptance rate of 7-10%, Harvard undergrad has 3-4% — nearly all fully funded (or even partially funded) programs that I know of are more selective than that. Less than 1%, in the cases of the programs that have like 5 seats (Vandy, Cornell, etc.) 
So rejection is definitely not a totally negative referendum on your writing! It ‘is’ however a reality check, reminding us that our cultural environment does not allow for the support of that many full-time studying/working creative writers. So we do have to dig in if we want to be one of those, and continue to improve via workshops and other community collaborations while we can. 
 
i know someone who applied to MFAs three times without any success, then got into Michener on the fourth try. I know a novelist who runs a selective workshop program who finally was able to publish their first novel a couple of decades into their writing career. So, these things are possible. But they take work and time. 
 
signed - someone on their third application cycle who is also definitely feeling the lows right now lol

i didn't get news from south carolina for over a month after they sent out initial acceptances and then i was notified that i was waitlisted. yeah, it's not a good sign overall, but truly anything could happen
edit: i also know someone who ended up getting waitlisted at 4 schools and had to decide where they were going to go on april 14th. there are a lot of last min decisions that get made and many things shift! it's not over til it's over

I am also waiting on a bunch of schools (10!) and the limbo state of not knowing is stressing me out hardcore 

Got a call from Iowa nonfiction! I'm in!

Echoing what others have said--don't feel too hard on yourself!! I applied to ten schools and also haven't heard anything from a single one yet, which seems to indicate at least a few rejections. Our worth as writers (and certainly as people) isn't defined by this process!

I have not gotten a result for any of my schools.🙃🙃🙃🙃 Not one. 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃I think I must be 🙃🙃🙃🙃the worst writer alive. Or my applications just went into the ether and never got read 🙃🙃🙃🙃
 

I have not gotten a result for any of my schools.🙃🙃🙃🙃 Not one. 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃I think I must be 🙃🙃🙃🙃the worst writer alive. Or my applications just went into the ether and never got read 🙃🙃🙃🙃
 

Really completely totally freaking out in all aspects across all dimensions 

I’ve had a weird but delightful day.  Friendly reminder for everyone to double check their emails.  I got an email about a prospective student day so I (with a healthy dose of confusion) searched my emails and it turns out I was waitlisted (!!!) for a program I had chalked up to a rejection (the email had been misrouted out of my inbox).

Hi everyone,
My name is Manny and I was accepted into my MFA program here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in my second year of applications.
The first year I applied to 4 Hoop Dreams: Boston University, Brown, Iowa, and Syracuse. Of course they all rejected me, but I'll get to that in a little bit. I did what we all do: ask for rec letters from our professors, fine-tune the writing, send it out for feedback, then spend an agonizing eternity contemplating how-in-the-fuck a statement of purpose will ever get written that can faithfully show who is the person behind the syntax.
Halfway through my rejections on my first year, I noticed someone in an old thread cataloged a bunch of grad programs/locations by film directors (lol), and found that such a delightfully absurd idea that I went with it--sort of. I decided, for my second year, I'd choose 6 (8? I can't even remember...) schools, well-established mixed in with lesser known, from as many corners of the US as I could. It was surprisingly easy, so I stretched my hands out and began the cycle once more. It was much easier this time, because the rejections had already come in, and having even less vanity than I already do about what I am producing, and having no set dream--I could finally write the statement of purpose with actual purpose, with an actual me embedded in it.
Cue the waitin', and the sweatin', and the heart attacks every time the 1 popped under the Gmail 'M' on my Chrome tab. Fast forward to February of last year, and I had been rejected from UCSD, then Washington, then McNeese. Maybe another, too, it's not important. Sometime in December, my gut instinct decided that the University of Alaska Fairbanks was the right choice for me, so that was the candle I lit in secret, and kept it from myself so my anxiety wouldn't blow it out. But it was there, kindling.
I did not hear from another school until March 2. I'll never forget stepping out of my shower, butt-naked, and deciding it was time to check my email (haha). What was there to greet me but an email with a document attached informing me of my acceptance into the Creative Writing program as a poet for the 2022-2025 cohort. I am a concrastinator, so I got to work quickly to make sure the TA waitlist would eventually change (it did, right before my April birthday, and as a TA, my tuition is covered along with health insurance--happy to answer specific questions about UAF if anyone is interested).
Later in March, the University of New Orleans would also accept me, but offer less information about funding and making no promises in that regard. I love New Orleans, but it was my second choice, so it was okay to let go (they, however, had some issues on that front--I still receive emails from UNO about my username being created for me, hehe; McNeese also sends me FAFSA emails from time to time, they really need to step up their app game).
Cue to my first spring semester here and the end of my first year as a grad student, and I cannot love it more. It is precisely where I needed to be, and where I intended to be. That mix is a gift all on its own, and never guaranteed, and I have no reassurances except to say that I have literally been where you are, life's shit and warts and hemorrhoids galore. But you can't let that stomp on your dream--the one thing we can offer to ourselves for free, even if only in the first instance of dreaming it, and the one thing that, for me, fuels this entire enterprise of writing.
Do not despair, just open a fresh page-- You might be surprised at how easy you will fill it up. And if good news is around the corner, laugh! This is one of the most arbitrary and most absurd cycles one can experience as a human being. Isn't experience everything? Every thing?
 
All the best to you all, and cheers!
Manny
 
P.S. Those Hoop Dreams, as it turns out, weren't my dreams at all, just the imaginary successes of a me that was never going to go to any of them. I am living my dream now.

i got waitlisted for OSU! i'm absolutely ecstatic, and it's my top choice for grad school. if anyone got an acceptance and plans to go somewhere else, please reach out to the department quickly! it's my dream school and i'm shaking with excitement right now!!! omg

anyone else too nervous to actually, y'know, write? lol
I finished my applications and dove straight into my undergraduate thesis and now that that's done I haven't been able to write a single word. Please tell me I'm not alone in this. My daily word count goal is giving the the side eye.

Really completely totally freaking out in all aspects across all dimensions 

WHOA, NWP acceptance up on the results board. Is it typical for schools to notify over the weekend? And a holiday weekend, no less…

Someone in results got a call from UMichigan Ann Arbor for poetry!!!!!!  Yesterday!!!! I’m freaking out!!!!!!!!!!! ?

Someone in results got a call from UMichigan Ann Arbor for poetry!!!!!!  Yesterday!!!! I’m freaking out!!!!!!!!!!! ?