Graceful Entropy

To all the peeps out there applying again next year or considering it, this was my second go-round, and I'm glad I didn't get in last year. Everything about my life is more settled, my writing and reading range continue to get honed and grow, and I'm better able to push forward in the path I want. So maybe that will be the same for you. 

Also Covid. Things prolly still won't be quite close to normal this fall, there will still be anxiety and things not really falling into place well, so you may be dodging it all to have a much more full three years than the rest.

Hope everything works out. Cheers

To all the peeps out there applying again next year or considering it, this was my second go-round, and I'm glad I didn't get in last year. Everything about my life is more settled, my writing and reading range continue to get honed and grow, and I'm better able to push forward in the path I want. So maybe that will be the same for you. 

Also Covid. Things prolly still won't be quite close to normal this fall, there will still be anxiety and things not really falling into place well, so you may be dodging it all to have a much more full three years than the rest.

Hope everything works out. Cheers

To all the peeps out there applying again next year or considering it, this was my second go-round, and I'm glad I didn't get in last year. Everything about my life is more settled, my writing and reading range continue to get honed and grow, and I'm better able to push forward in the path I want. So maybe that will be the same for you. 

Also Covid. Things prolly still won't be quite close to normal this fall, there will still be anxiety and things not really falling into place well, so you may be dodging it all to have a much more full three years than the rest.

Hope everything works out. Cheers

To all the peeps out there applying again next year or considering it, this was my second go-round, and I'm glad I didn't get in last year. Everything about my life is more settled, my writing and reading range continue to get honed and grow, and I'm better able to push forward in the path I want. So maybe that will be the same for you. 

Also Covid. Things prolly still won't be quite close to normal this fall, there will still be anxiety and things not really falling into place well, so you may be dodging it all to have a much more full three years than the rest.

Hope everything works out. Cheers

To all the peeps out there applying again next year or considering it, this was my second go-round, and I'm glad I didn't get in last year. Everything about my life is more settled, my writing and reading range continue to get honed and grow, and I'm better able to push forward in the path I want. So maybe that will be the same for you. 

Also Covid. Things prolly still won't be quite close to normal this fall, there will still be anxiety and things not really falling into place well, so you may be dodging it all to have a much more full three years than the rest.

Hope everything works out. Cheers

I'll be here too. I'm not taking it as a failure that I didn't get in anywhere this year (that's the assumption, I'm happy to be proven wrong by my 2 remaining schools, but I feel that rejection is a safe bet), and I hope you don't either. I haven't "failed" as a writer. All my experience, my practice, my study, and my work is not, and will never be, a failure. I have come so far, and all that this shows me is that I need to go even farther to hit my goal next year. 
I could be crazy, but that prospect excites me!  That I need to go even further to get in is a testament to the fact that when I do, I will be surrounded by people who are amazing. I am so thrilled to see how much better I will be and what lengths I will have taken my writing to in one year's time. 

Wanted to thank everyone for going through this together for the past months, it felt like forever! I'll be attending Brooklyn College in the fall. To those who are going to apply again next year, hats off to you -- you are some strong minds! To share another anecdote - I learned today that a writer was rejected by every school she applied but Iowa (not this year, a while ago). Just want to remind everyone again how subjective this application process can be. After all, what is good writing anyway? I will be on my way to figure that out, hope everyone here will, too, inside or outside the university system. Good luck to all of us!!! 

I cringe when I look at everything of mine. my sample has a million typos and hanging sentences and no plot. and my recommenders were people I love and they are great but I don't know if they know my writing. I learned a lot and I guess I can put together a better app next time. :)))))

I'm pretty sure I'll be accepting my offer from UVA!!! I've been hesitate to talk about it because things feel up in the air still in some ways. The faculty are so insanely talented and the faculty member I spoke to was very kind and happy to answer my questions. Honestly feel like this is the best fit for me. At this point I'm taking myself off a few waitlists, but I'm still waiting to hear back about my waitlist to University of Michigan, mostly because the funding is so great but also because I miss living near my family in the midwest. If I was fortunate enough to get accepted off the waitlist, I would at least consider it. I think what makes me anxious about UVA is the fact that I've never lived in the south east part of the US! But I think it would be pretty exciting, too. 

I just had a Zoom call with Maryland about the waitlist. Apparently, they are only accepting 2 this year (which I had heard previously), and both encouragingly and tragically I was told that in a previous year when they had 4 spots open they would've accepted me. So now I just have to hope someone declines their fiction offer from Maryland so I can go!

Hey just wanted to let you know that this thread has a tireless troll that's been around the whole season. Don't mind them! 
Best of luck with your negotiations! 

Most likely yes - pretty typical admissions tactic. At the school I worked at for example, we'd run a query to pull names of anyone who got rejected from one of our more exclusive tech programs and invite them to reuse their application to be considered for a more general degree. I got a similar referral from one of the MFAs that rejected me this year.

Nope. Rejected. The email I got said I just had to submit a new cover letter. No fee and they would use my MFA submission to evaluate. I’m not interested but found this bizarre. Does NYU have some kind of algo or AI going through rejected apps to try to fill spaces in undersubscribed programs? Like an airline seat allocator? That’s kind of the vibe I get from this. 

Just got accepted to Idaho for poetry off the waitlist! Pretty stoked. Still waitlisted at Houston. Anyone have thoughts on Idaho? I know it's not the most prestigious program, but the profs are super accomplished and it seems like they have a top ten pedigree in terms of poets getting published in Best American poetry and getting Pushcart Prizes. I know that only tells part of the story, but it's an encouraging part. 

My two cents on why people should think hard before attending Columbia for grad school:
I am a current 2nd year PhD student at Columbia. The majority of grad students are currently on strike for a living wage, better healthcare, and protection from harassment and discrimination. I have been watching the process of our new graduate union try to bargain for our first contract for over two years. In these sessions, I have seen admin (and their sleazy lawyer, who charges $1,500/hr) do everything possible to stall negotiations, belittle us, and play down heartfelt testimonials that make clear why our demands are reasonable and necessary. Every time we've gotten a raise in the past, our Columbia rent magically goes up by a higher percentage. Our wages are not enough to live in NYC. There is no dental or vision coverage, and they recently removed the better health insurance plan option. The school has a terrible history with harassment and discrimination cases brought by both undergrads and grads (Google it), and at the moment they are doing everything possible to avoid meeting our contract demand about changing the investigation process to give more rights to the complainant (see link below).
We're entering the 3rd week of the strike, and Columbia has made very clear that they plan to not only doc our bi-weekly pay (which we receive for TA/RA work), but our academic stipends--yep, they are going to debit our student accounts, thereby jeopardizing course registration, degree progress, visas, and health insurance. We have a legal right to strike, but this later action constitutes illegal academic retaliation.
Long story short: I'm sure a lot of schools are as corrupt as Columbia, but I've just seen first hand how rotten this place is to the core. They only care about profit (their endowment grew $300 million during the pandemic alone), squeezing as much our of grad workers and adjuncts for as little pay as possible, sweeping bad press under the rug, and gentrifying Harlem with multi-million dollar campus expansions.
I encourage folks thinking about attending/applying to Columbia to express concerns to department chairs and administrators, and ask them why they insist on denying grad workers a fair contract: 
President Lee Bollinger officeofthepresident@columbia.edu, Phone: (212) 854-9970 Provost Ira Katznelson provost@columbia.edu,  +1 212 854 2404 GSAS Grad Admissions: gsas-admissions@columbia.edu  
https://gothamist.com/news/columbia-grad-students-strike-over-wages-and-harassment-policies-nyu-counterparts-vote-similar-actions

I actually did. Waitlisted. Guess you just have to yell into the void long enough and a small echo will bounce back.
Thanks for thinking of me!

Denied at CU. No word yet from BU. I saw some rejections and a poetry acceptance. Any one know if there have been any BU acceptances or waitlists on Draft for fiction?
Anyways, this looks like a wrap for me, apart from a waitlist that I'll probably decline. Have to mull my meagre choices while I hit up my opiate rod tonight. Don't think I want to go through this again.
 

Still waiting on my last two rejections (curse you UNLV!) 
But anyway, another random question for people here. Has anyone had any "writer-ish" careers that they've had a great experience with coming out of undergrad? I've got some pretty decent ideas of what I'd like to do this year for a career while I wait to try again, but I'd love to hear about some of you folks' experiences

Just my two cents-- but I did a ton of copywriting after I graduated which then gradually shifted into PR. I did write alot, as I was promised by well meaning advice givers in my family, but it was all marketing copy/bylines & I absolutely hated PR. I have so much more brainspace for my own writing when I'm working jobs that are totally unrelated-- I got a lot done when I quit and worked at a factory packing candles into boxes lol! But it definitely is a choice I've made that has influenced how much $$ I make and my level of comfort in other parts of my life. TLDR-- you can write a ton in a nonwriting related field, or write very little in a field seemingly more connected....Or you may not find this to be true. It ultimately depends on how you personally work best, ya know!
Also-- @Cecsav, library life sounds so nice!!!

Did you ever hear anything? 

Holy crap y'all...I just got accepted at New Orleans. Literal crickets from them and then boom. (Ydrl...omg) and all my oldies and besties on here...Hell yeah they take us! NEVER quit. 

Libraries are beautiful, amazing organizations that allow you to take books home with you for FREE! And often, they have a process for patrons to request books that are not yet in their system. I regularly request poetry books for my library to purchase, and my requests are almost always approved. 

Hey guys, chiming in to give my two cents, for whatever its worth. I'm not on an admissions committee. This is just 100% my perspective, much of it subjective and based off of my last year of personal research. Take what's helpful, disregard what isn't. 
*don't publish your creative materials on a public forum. You might wish to revise and send to lit mags, contests, etc. and it's a great way to make a piece essentially unusable. While not everything is publishing material, why take the chance? There are folks who have had materials from their applications published in top tier magazines after the fact
*I don't know if adcoms are ageist, and anything we say is speculation at best (or as one person said, it's hard to prove either way). However, I think some folks in their 20's have an advantage in the sense that they often still have fresh contacts, mentors, counselors, letters of rec, etc... academic resources that are arguably much harder to gather when you've been out of school for awhile. Not saying it's always like this, or that it's fair, but it seems like an advantage. Ex: I considered reaching out to a professor I had a decade ago for a letter of rec, but there's no way it would have gone as far as a more recent writing mentor who could speak to what I was doing presently. That said, I think that older applicants have other advantages too, such as possibly more experiences to draw from, maybe more experience presenting themselves professionally, any number of things, really. Again, this is speculation. We're all on different paths, w/e age we're at. For reference, I'm 28 and have had a very unconventional education and been working in the service industry for many years. Not exactly "academic" material by pretentious standards. But hey, I was accepted to a "top five" program (if you believe in ranking) and I'm waitlisted at four fully funded programs, so I'd like to think this door is open for all sorts of writers. I do wish there was more transparency, but whatcanyado
*there are going to be bougie folks wherever you go--the fact that any of us can even consider getting this degree is, arguably, privilege. I say this as someone who until this year didn't even have a savings account. But for real, there will be problematic dynamics at all of these places... that said, I wouldn't ignore red flags. 
*Maybe there are literary geniuses who get into their dream school on the first try without doing ANY workshops, research, and without reading widely but it's the exception and not the rule. Try again!! Don't give up!! Unless it's making you miserable, or you realize it's just not for you, of course. I talked with so many folks this cycle, some who applied 4 (FOUR!!) times over the years, and one of whom got multiple offers from prestigious programs this cycle. It's okay to go back to the drawing board. Don't internalize the rejection, just learn from it. This was apparently a brutal year. And anyway, if we want to be writers, rejection is just a part of the deal. It sucks, but there it is. I cried over a lit mag rejection last week, but I'm already submitting other things... am I crazy? Probably. But if you really want to be a writer, you'll get through it and try again, because you *have* to... you gotta want this really bad. Hang in there!  
*edited for general wordiness and a typo. Also I accidentally said I was 27 and I'm actually 28 lmao

Shit let's do it guys.  Grab the bull by the horns.  Direct message me with your email address if interested and I'll put together a group in 7 days if you want.  We could meet by zoom. ?✍️?