tubthumping

Thank you @feralgrad and @mrvisser for your thoughtful replies!! I appreciate it a lot, and honestly right now that's kind of how I'm leaning (depending on what happens with Brown and UC Irvine, anyway). I'm just kind of worried that this one acceptance might be my only chance. But I've got a bit of time to make decisions. Feralgrad, I'm just wondering, when you applied the second time around did you ask the same recommenders to write letters of rec for you? Do they have to write their letters all over again? It's a far-ish off problem, but I've never done grad applications before this year and have no idea if I'm allowed to "recycle" recommenders.

Hey everybody! Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I'm a 25-year-old applicant in fiction for this year. Applied to six schools, out of those was rejected from UMich and Syracuse so far, expecting rejection from UT Austin, still waiting on Brown and UC Irvine. The reason why I'm here is that actually just got accepted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with partial funding, and I was hoping for some advice. So here's the situation: First off, I am very excited I got this acceptance! I love the city of Chicago, the Art Institute itself, and I know people who've gone through the program and enjoyed its less-conventional art-school approach to the MFA in fiction. But I definitely don't have the money to pay for SAIC out of pocket even with the assistance they've offered so far, and I'm suddenly paralyzed by the reality of having been accepted to an MFA program that's out of reach without loans. I'm fortunate in that my parents have offered to pitch in on tuition, but the usual wisdom here is that you really shouldn't pay for an MFA if you can help it. Anybody have any advice on this? Should I decline this year if I don't get a fully-funded offer elsewhere, and apply again when I'm more financially stable or when I would be ready to just dive in with loans? (I'd love to know if I could defer & save for a year until the cost is more manageable for me, but I know that's not usually an option with MFA programs.) I'm still holding out hope for the fully-funded Brown & UC Irvine programs, but I also know it's more likely than not that I'm not accepted there. Or anybody have any experience with SAIC's program and can offer a bit of insight there? Also, congrats to everybody on their acceptances so far, fingers crossed for all who've been waitlisted for programs they really want to go to, and I am also here raising a glass in commiseration to those of us with rejections from schools we really liked. What an emotional rollercoaster these past months have been, for all sorts of reasons.