mrvisser

Birds are good for the soul. Birds are also helping me keep the boredom away during this waiting period. Today I went out and found a red-throated loon, which is rare around these parts.

I wasn't an English major, either. I only had one application that required a critical sample, and I submitted a paper about populism and anti-EU rhetoric in the Netherlands that I wrote a few years ago.

I've also been waiting for more than a week to get in.

Thanks! I hope your intuition is correct. I generally tend toward the classics and the modernists, as well as some of the postmodern stuff. I'd like to think my style mixes writers like Woolf and Fitzgerald with the sarcasm of Vonnegut and Tom Robbins, but at the same time it's hard to compare because I try to make it very much my own.

Yeah, I check my email and here mostly, but I haven't yet resorted to checking the portals. I'll probably wait on that until I hear that people have been contacted by the schools I applied to. Michener made me upload some different transcripts as well, which was kind of obnoxious.

Well, some results are already coming in, and some more will probably come in before March.

My top choices are Texas, Iowa, Vanderbilt and WashU in that order, and then I'd say the other schools are a tier below. But I'd be very happy to go to any of them! Just want to make it in.

This forum is a godsend for sure! It's nice to know everyone is basically feeling the same way. I haven't heard anything yet, but the deadline was 15 days ago, so I imagine it'll be one of the later notifications.

Hello! I'm prose as well!

I think Michener has replaced Iowa as my number-one, so hopefully all three of us can happily bask under the Texan sun.

I'm ready for the storm! Bring it on.

If those results are true, that's some quick turnaround. Illinois has the same deadline as Michener (Dec. 1, although I'm sure Michener has many more applicants) and UMass has the same Dec. 15 deadline as most schools.

I'm just considering it a continuation of 2020, and hopefully 2021 will begin in earnest.

Anybody apply to Illinois? I didn't, but I saw in the results that someone got waitlisted a couple of days ago.

I am, and I really hate Ohio State, so I'm happy to see them losing, even though I'm no Bama fan, either.

I just hate the thought of having to spend another year of working and writing in my spare time in the hopes of making it next time. First-world problems, for sure, but after this year it seems weird to imagine going back to a pre-pandemic way of life.

I brought this up before, but it's just amazing to me how much confidence can sway from one day to the next. Maybe it's because we're at the bottom of the waiting valley, but mine is low right now. There are days where I think, "hell yeah, I could really compete for a spot at Iowa or Michener," and then there's today, where I think, "holy shit, I might not even be considered at the 'less-prestigious' programs I applied to." I know we've beaten this subject to death, and that my worth is not entirely tied up to one application process; I just have to laugh at the gymnastics my brain performs in a given week.

Congrats!

Everything I've heard indicates there are a lot more people applying this year, but that's been hearsay.

Haha well Ted Kaczynski got a doctorate when he was in his 20s so he was probably really good at grad-school applications!

Interesting that they told you the SOP is most important. The faculty members I talked to emphasized that the SOP is important, but is always second to writing sample. I think it makes sense, though, that people should really demonstrate their attitude. I didn't actually talk about working with other MFA students in my SOP, so hopefully that doesn't hurt me. I mostly emphasized my own influences, what I hope to get from a degree, why I'm interested specifically in each program and its location, and what I want to do with my career going forward.

Vanderbilt is typically pretty high on the rankings I've seen. Besides rankings it's a three-year program with strong financial support, a great location in Nashville, and the school has high academic standards in most of their other departments, which is a draw for me.

I feel good whenever I write a paragraph in a day. Instead of focusing on getting a lot of story done, I just work really hard on one paragraph to get the craft down well. At this point it seems more important to me to increase the quality instead of the quantity.

1. Iowa 2. Michener 3. Vanderbilt These top three are really close to one another, though.

Well then that's perfect; I couldn't have applied this cycle anyways!