Boomer not Ok

Dang, Banquo’s ghost haunting the MFA 22 thread already? Oh well, I’ll be looking out for it probably and hope all goes well in NH.

Nope, I’m probably the oldest. Got two kids in college. Congrats on ASU. Sounds like a great program. We did a fam trip to AZ two summer’s ago (Sedona, Grand C.) and it rocked (bad pun attempt).

Thanks so much. I see there are some posts already!!

Thanks. Appreciate the kind words. Hope your pending and Mcneese work out. Happy to share link when published.

Oh boy, I was sucked into a project so didn’t have email access, but also got the “BU bust” late in the pm. Commiserations to those who got the ‘no’ too. For the life of me I cannot understand why BU did that drip-water torture style of rejection. But happy to have closure. So final tally: 2a/1w/9r. Anyways, I got a story accepted for a reprint, and some other good stuff been happening, so it helps put all this MFA thing in perspective. Probs gonna apply again next year. Hope some of the folk here stick around. Just wondering if a new thread MFA 22 has to get started?

Thanks for thinking of me. Can totally relate with that poster though. Finally.....

Nothing yet. Really weird. Yeah, I saw a lot of poetry decisions released. Only one fiction. Also, no word from McNeese either.

In a weird way, carefully gleaned excerpts of all the exchanges between the troll and posters on this thread could make for an interesting MFA submission portfolio. There's drama and conflict here, a lot of posturing and "delusion killing" veiled as "public service" but really a sad combo of schadenfreude and sour-grapes. It's a bit like a 'performance piece' blurring the line between fiction and reality. Maybe, I'll use this for my second round...a kind of author-less metafiction dialogue/pastiche.

You may be ok then. I’m waiting on fiction from them but know at this point it’s gotta to be a ‘no.’ Hope it comes through for you.

I can’t speak for poetry, but on fiction I think it’s wrapped up at BU. There seems to have been an initial wave of rejections last week but a poster here indicated who’d gotten in for fiction they were just waiting to hear back from one other fiction acceptance. Which reminds me, if you accept going to a program, I guess ethically you must release your waitlist spots at other programs. But I wonder how many people really do this? What if you don’t give up your waitlists but you commit to one place and then get a better offer on April 15 at another program, can you rescind your acceptance? Do the schools talk to each other? Would you be blacklisted? Just wondering...

This is my first rodeo. I don’t have access to Draft. I don’t know who Jess and Cady are. I don’t know who actually reads the MFA apps. I doubt the faculty do in programs where there are almost 1000 apps to review. I’ve just seen folk here been rejected from NYU and CU and get int fully funded or what are “deemed” more “selective” programs. That said, folk may want to go to NYU or CU for all sorts of reasons. For internationals the name alone may help them back home with jobs etc.

Of course you should be able to ask about your sample if you get called by a rep from the program. If the person is not familiar with your sample and is just calling you to inform you about the adcom's decision and tell you more about the program, then they should say "they'll get back to you about your question." If they don't offer to do that, then it may not be a good sign about the program. Also, I truly don't get this obsession over CU and NYU. It seems from this thread plenty of people got rejected or waitlisted from CU and/or NYU but got into fully-funded or other very competitive programs. Be proud of your acceptance at CU.

Thanks for this. Good to know the situation. But I figured if I hadn’t been contacted by now, it was probably a ‘no.’ Weird how they seemed to stagger out the rejections this year but maybe COVID messed things up. Congrats and hope it’s a great experience.

I hear ya. I wince when I look at my SOP and my recommenders were fine and intelligent but really didn’t know my writing. I went with this, bc from most of what I’d read, SOP and recs don’t really matter to adcoms, only the writing sample. But I’m not sure. I would think in close cases recs and SOP do matter. I hate the idea of going through this again and I have some programs now I could attend, but I feel I’ve learned so much from this cycle that I could put together a stronger app next time and also expand my geographic range of the programs, which I kept quite limited this time.

Sorry about Iowa. Hard to give advice about CU. But getting in there is a great accomplishment, so well done. It’s a lot of money for an MFA and I’m not sure how the CU MFA translates post-MFA into job opportunities, if that’s what you’re looking for, but I imagine it carries some cachet and is helpful. I don’t think I would have attended CU, if I’d gotten in, bc of the money and the cohort size. But that’s a personal thing. I am now considering applying again to other programs next year. I got waitlisted so far at a full funded program, so that tells me my portfolio had some merit, but I think I could submit a stronger one for next time, get better recs from people who know my writing (which I didn’t do this round), and craft a ‘smarter’ SOP. Also, pandemic deferrals may have made this round particularly hard. The fact that you got into CU means you must have a good portfolio already and maybe if other full-funded schools don’t work out this round for you, your chances of getting into one next year would seem to be strong.