cecsav

Someone on Draft just got a call of acceptance from Michener. This is not a drill.

For those of us who are staring down a possible clean sweep of rejections this year and want to prepare for next season, would any fiction kids be willing to form a critique group? Thoughts are that it would either be over zoom (traditional workshop-style) or maybe just laid back exchange of google docs over email.

Please stop mass-reporting frock's posts because you don't like their content.  There are human moderators on this forum who don't want to spend all our time deleting accounts you don't like.  If he posts something abusive or starts spamming, he will be banned; otherwise, ignore posts you disagree with and don't respond.

Congrats!! That's awesome!

Just found out I'm going to get a Truman Capote Literary Trust scholarship from the university of alabama!! ahhh!!!

I'm still waiting on three schools (possibly two, depending on whether UW has made its decisions), but I spent a fair amount of time today making up a spreadsheet of 51 schools to narrow down for next year. And now I feel like I'm insane for obsessing this much.

just heard from Hollins - I'm in for CNF with funding info. I know someone asked about them recently so I thought I'd share. I'm torn - the funding HU is offering me (a first-year fellowship that covers tuition remission and "the opportunity to apply for" a second-year TAship)  isn't guaranteed past the first year, and the other acceptance I've gotten so far is guaranteed all 3 years with a GA from the jump. during the app process I was really drawn to HU's genre fluidity, creative ethos, and some dreamy mountain living. fuck!!!!

Hi all! Quick question while we wait. What are some favorite books on craft? I'm looking mainly for a focus on poetics, but could be fiction, nonfiction, syntax, etc. Some of my favorites are "A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry" by Gregory Orr; "Rules for the Dance" and "A Poetry Handbook" by Mary Oliver. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them! Thanks!

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!  ?????

Did anyone hear from Houston today? Saw that someone got a acceptance call for poetry today.

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!  ?????

Mine was based on a mixture of program reputation and location. I prefer to stay in a city. I applied to Ole Miss anyways, thinking it might be easier to get in (I was wrong) but probably won't apply there next year. With Iowa I figured it was worth sacrificing the city to attend the most famous program. Notre Dame is a little more rural than I'd like, but it's so close to Chicago I figure I can make it work. Next year my list might look totally different, though, as I will (assuming this year doesn't work out) apply to a lot more schools. My "for sure" list for next year currently looks as follows (in no particular order), but I still haven't finished narrowing it down yet:
Cornell
Brown
Michener
Vanderbilt
Washington
WUSTL
Wisconsin
Syracuse
Minnesota
Virginia
Pitt
Michigan
Rutgers-Camden
Northwestern

I had a very similar process -- I limited myself to mostly NYC-area schools because I coparent my children and cannot be away from them (I did include Brown and Cornell in my group of schools because I allowed myself to fantasize that the long commute might be achievable). Beyond that, I limited myself to schools that either offer full funding or at least sometimes offer a comparable package. This resulted in my list of 6 schools (one of them is Hunter, which doesn't offer funding really but at least has free in-state tuition).

And the McNair Scholars Program. I only paid two application fees. 
I wish fewer schools required official transcripts for application purposes though. 

While we're on the subject of rankings etc, would anyone be interested in sharing how they evaluated each program as a good (or not so good) fit to decide where to apply? This might help those who are considering applying next year. It could also just be interesting to see how others' brains work.
I first narrowed by funding (fully funded only), then location (I am not, for any school, willing to live further north than I do now; I absolutely hate winter), then faculty. Then I checked out every book I could find at my library and through interlibrary loan that's been written by the poetry faculty at the programs in the running. I documented a bunch of information such as size of program, length of program, cost of living, funding, literary journal, graduates from the program, and housing (and more!) in a spreadsheet and used that information to loosely rank my list of schools in my own personal order of preference. Of course, then I tacked on a partially/possibly funded "safety" school. As notifications begin to roll in, I find that I'm wishing more for some decisions than others, which has lead me to rearrange my list a bit. 

So i've been checking this for the past few weeks and now my anxiety has driven me to actually make an account. I'm realizing if I'd done so sooner, I may have found better answers here than from my professors lol. I'm currently in my last semester of undergrad and applied to poetry programs. I thought mostly about program ranking/location/funding when applying. I really want to end up in a city, somewhere where I could maybe see myself for this next chapter. Those schools ended up being UC Irvine, UC San Diego, The New School, NYU, Columbia, and Sarah Lawrence. I already got a denial from SD (yikes). I guess I'm wondering if there were better/more advisable ways to go about picking programs? Sometimes I worry I'm too young or green but I'm just hoping that doesn't count against me. I mean isn't the point of these to mature your craft to the next level? 

On the fee waiver convo: if you're a Fulbright grantee, or have done Teach for America, the Marshall Scholarship, or Peace Corps, there may be special waivers available! 
I don't qualify for a fee waiver based on income this year, but that didn't mean app fees weren't very, very painful. I was grateful that UNLV waived my fee and it makes me feel even better about their stated commitment to an international focus/travel/etc. 

While we're on the subject of rankings etc, would anyone be interested in sharing how they evaluated each program as a good (or not so good) fit to decide where to apply? This might help those who are considering applying next year. It could also just be interesting to see how others' brains work.
I first narrowed by funding (fully funded only), then location (I am not, for any school, willing to live further north than I do now; I absolutely hate winter), then faculty. Then I checked out every book I could find at my library and through interlibrary loan that's been written by the poetry faculty at the programs in the running. I documented a bunch of information such as size of program, length of program, cost of living, funding, literary journal, graduates from the program, and housing (and more!) in a spreadsheet and used that information to loosely rank my list of schools in my own personal order of preference. Of course, then I tacked on a partially/possibly funded "safety" school. As notifications begin to roll in, I find that I'm wishing more for some decisions than others, which has lead me to rearrange my list a bit. 

While we're on the subject of rankings etc, would anyone be interested in sharing how they evaluated each program as a good (or not so good) fit to decide where to apply? This might help those who are considering applying next year. It could also just be interesting to see how others' brains work.
I first narrowed by funding (fully funded only), then location (I am not, for any school, willing to live further north than I do now; I absolutely hate winter), then faculty. Then I checked out every book I could find at my library and through interlibrary loan that's been written by the poetry faculty at the programs in the running. I documented a bunch of information such as size of program, length of program, cost of living, funding, literary journal, graduates from the program, and housing (and more!) in a spreadsheet and used that information to loosely rank my list of schools in my own personal order of preference. Of course, then I tacked on a partially/possibly funded "safety" school. As notifications begin to roll in, I find that I'm wishing more for some decisions than others, which has lead me to rearrange my list a bit. 

While we're on the subject of rankings etc, would anyone be interested in sharing how they evaluated each program as a good (or not so good) fit to decide where to apply? This might help those who are considering applying next year. It could also just be interesting to see how others' brains work.
I first narrowed by funding (fully funded only), then location (I am not, for any school, willing to live further north than I do now; I absolutely hate winter), then faculty. Then I checked out every book I could find at my library and through interlibrary loan that's been written by the poetry faculty at the programs in the running. I documented a bunch of information such as size of program, length of program, cost of living, funding, literary journal, graduates from the program, and housing (and more!) in a spreadsheet and used that information to loosely rank my list of schools in my own personal order of preference. Of course, then I tacked on a partially/possibly funded "safety" school. As notifications begin to roll in, I find that I'm wishing more for some decisions than others, which has lead me to rearrange my list a bit. 

Marshall, marshall, marshall... a rogue by any other name.

On the off chance you aren't, and to direct others who might have similar worries: feel free to search earlier discussions in this thread regarding 'rankings'. I believe @mrvisser had a pretty good response about it all.

And while I know I sucked at looking into fee waivers initially, I realized I should just do it this time, and over half of my app fees got waived. Worth acknowledging that if you're having to work extra (like I did first time around) to get enough $$ for app fees, it also probably means that you are eligible for waivers.

FAFSA is a good first start; researching and emailing next.
Here's big ten's free app sign-up, which would give you access to like 14 great schools:
https://www.btaa.org/resources-for/students/freeapp/eligibility

Frankly, I think I'm underselling this still. If you feel ANY pressure about app fees while applying to under ten places, please look into fee waivers. Not everyone will grant em (Syracuse! *shakes fist*), but I think a good portion will.

Remember, it's not like you're costing them anything, and asking won't hurt. There are people whose literal job is to help on this sort of front.

As someone else said, rankings are way too subjective to be defined, and that's why Poets and Writers stopped doing them. That said, Syracuse is always one of the most sought-after schools, seemingly just below that Iowa-Michener-Virginia tier, and schools like Hunter generally aren't as competitive as that because you don't have 1,000 kids competing for schools that aren't even fully funded. 

Poets & Writers stopped ranking programs, but the last time they did their rankings Syracuse was #6 and Hunter was #28.
And even if Hunter was better-ranked, they don't fully fund people out of state, so that automatically rules them out for me.

I'm just making a list at this point. I want SO MANY things! But I'll most likely be moving out of state, and I figure it'll be easier to make most purchases after I move instead of having more to pack.