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koechophe

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Everything posted by koechophe

  1. koechophe
    Question to pass the time: What's the nicest rejection letter you've gotten? For me, it was actually a non-form email from a faculty member (I'd emailed the program to verify my rejection because the other rejections had gone out, and it was still crickets.) It ended with "I’m sorry we were not able to offer you admission this year. We would welcome your application again next year, if you choose not to accept another offer." Made me feel better than the rest of the form letters I got tbh. I didn't reapply to that school this year, but if it's straight rejections again, this school will probably be on my list again. Anyone have any rejection letters that actually managed to make you feel sort of good?
  2. koechophe
    My biggest advice is that if they're doing interviews, it's likely because they've accepted people and then later realized that those people have an attitude problem. So maybe don't focus so much on what you should talk about, but your attitude and how you come across. Make sure you do what you can to show humility, while also showing enough confidence that people don't think you'll crumble or give up. Tough balance, I know, but just show you're the type of person they'd like to spend time around. Out of interest, where are you interviewing, and in what genre? I've seen a lot more interview requests this year than last year, and I'm curious which programs are switching over.
  3. koechophe
    Yes. Sometimes this happens over the course of a day or two as adcoms call everyone, but they generally happen VERY close by. Wait lists might be sent slightly later, but rejections are almost always sent much later. Some schools will reject a bunch of people with their acceptances, and keep a few other people in "not rejected, but not waitlisted" limbo until their things go through, and reject them after that. Some schools just keep everyone in that limbo until they fill all their seats. However, this rule doesn't apply across genres. If Poetry is sent through, that doesn't mean that fiction has been notified yet, or even that fiction will be notified any time soon. But unfortunately, if a school's acceptances have been sent out for more than 24 hours, it's a pretty safe bet you're rejected, or MAYBE waitlisted, but don't hold your breath for that, since most schools do notify people if they're on the waitlist (with few exceptions)
  4. koechophe
    It's going to hit your self-confidence. There is no way around the fact that rejection will hit your perception of your work. But I can promise, once you have resolution for this season, once you know an answer, you'll be able to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue on your path. I got straight rejections last year, and it was hard, but I was able to move forward. Please, trust me, when you know what you're dealing with, it will be much easier to actually deal with it. Even if worse comes to worse and it's straight rejections, you'll be better off than you are during the waiting period. Try to be kind to yourself, do what you need to do to get through it, and I promise, it'll be much better once it's all over, no matter what happens.
  5. koechophe
    No worries, I asked the same question last year. So MFA Draft is a facebook group where people post/discuss admissions. It's a private group, so you'll have to request an invite, and it can take some time to get in. Here's the link to it https://www.facebook.com/groups/1018484244926541/ Also, good luck!
  6. koechophe
    A user on Draft posted an acceptance from John Hopkins in Poetry. Pretty impressed at how early that was, but good for them!
  7. koechophe
    @floralhell I appreciate the sentiment, but it's best not to engage with them. This troll has been here for several years now, making a legitimately massive stream of new accounts, and is just looking for a fight. I replied to the other poster because I wanted to do what I could to dissuade them from actually being discouraged by the test the troll proposed. I know from experience that as much as it might be tempting to engage, doing so often turns this thread into a massive argument with the troll, which isn't good.
  8. koechophe
    Please, don't ever try to decide your worth as a writer based on something so elitist and asinine as a test of "is my work similar to the New Yorker" test. Some of the most brilliant writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading would fail that test. Post-modernism itself would've failed that test a century ago. I know I'll get flack from the troll for posting this, but I don't care. You do the literary world a great disservice when you try and mimic the style of other people (especially the often elitist paradigms of the New Yorker) and squash your own voice in the process.
  9. koechophe
    I actually wrote one of the heftiest academic pieces I've ever done on "Revelation" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find." I do think the latter is a bit overread, but the former is one of my favorites. It's hard to find a writer that deals as bluntly with Christian tradition as her, especially the specifically southern conventions.
  10. koechophe
    Eh, I'm not that big of a fan of Hemmingway, even though people would call him a minimalist. More like Raymond Carver, Amy Hemple, Flannery O'Connor, Sherwood Anderson... Those sort of authors.
  11. koechophe
    Heya, welcome! Hope this cycle goes well for you! What kind of literature did you enjoy in your major? I was partial to more minimalist literature, and definitely more a fan of modern/postmodern. I can respect classical literature, but my heart seems to be in the more recent approaches =).
  12. koechophe
    Eh, a lot of the emails say things like "we had more applicants than usual" literally every year. I wouldn't read too much into it tbh. I'd actually be surprised, from a social-economics view, if we had more applicants this year than normal, since these applications tend to be closely correlated with unemployment rates. I mean, Covid is Covid, and stuff is weird right now, so who knows? But a lot of times emails say things like that.
  13. koechophe
    Ah, right, some people do 2-round systems, I forget. None of the 18 programs I've applied for in the last two years did that. My nature is to be like, "No, hold out hope! It could work!" But maybe hope isn't what you need? So idk, but I will say that, for what it's worth, it's a bit early in the season to think that your fate is sealed.
  14. koechophe
    Dang... you've got some schools the release decisions early if you're already up to 4 probable. Not a peep out of any of mine yet, except BSU, which has sent out poetry interview requests (or... 1 poetry interview request, to be precise), but nothing for fiction that I've seen.
  15. koechophe
    This is unfortunately standard practice. Since most every grad school runs on the same deadline for acceptance (April 15), most people don't accept their offers until a while after they've gotten their acceptance. But schools, to hedge their bets, don't actually send out rejections usually until they are either full or close to full with accepted students. So you just have to wait until people actually accept the schools before schools usually do their batch rejections. Not all schools are like this, but a lot of them send rejections significantly later than acceptances, just in case a bunch of people say no, I think.
  16. koechophe
    I know from experience (particularly last year, I think this year hasn't been as bad) that there's nothing anyone can say that will make that feeling go away. I recommend being nice to yourself. This is a hard thing, and a hard wait. Don't beat yourself up for feeling that, if you need to go curl up in a ball on the couch for a while, don't feel bad about it. It's okay to expect less of yourself in times like this when you've got less to give. The thing that usually feeds the nervousness the most is self-criticism. It's rough, hang in there, and if you feel like you're not handling it super well, join the club =). Just don't get too down on yourself for what you feel.
  17. koechophe
    I've actually been in the storyboarding stage of writing a new novel. I don't usually storyboard on paper (I'm not a discovery writer, I'm just usually good at storyboarding the entire thing in my brain) but this one is getting too complicated for me to keep track of without some notes.
  18. koechophe
    In case anyone's curious, I put together a list of when my schools usually notify people--so that I can theoretically University of Maryland ~March 8 John Hopkins University Lots of variation, late feb-early march Brown University ~March 1-8 University of Michigan Lots of variation, as early as Feb. Virginia Tech Late Feb/Early march BSU ~Feb 28 Arizona State ~Feb 15 University of Wisconsin - Madison ~Feb 18 University of Florida Late feb/early march University of Idaho ~Feb 28
  19. koechophe
    My personal goal is to not check Draft/Results here that often so that I don't think about it as much. Some days I do better than others.
  20. koechophe
    Not gonna lie, I lol'd at one of them. And then I seriously wondered how many applicants people reject just because they don't like (what they can see of) someone's attitude. If I were on a board, that could easily be what helps me decide between multiple strong candidates. As someone who's spent a lot of time teaching, I definitely would want people in my program with at least a smidgen of humility. People who think they know everything are super hard to teach.
  21. koechophe
    Oh. My correspondence was from someone in the program, so I assumed (since it happened on the same day) yours was too. But I guess... I can verify they are in fact looking at applications? Since they said what happened with mine is the system uploaded blank slides where the SoP and CV should've been, that's not something they should've known unless they were actually looking at apps. So they're looking at apps! I feel this. I was like "Hey, if they're looking at my SoP and CV that means I didn't get thrown in the trash bin of applicants whose writing sucks... right? Maybe? Pretty please?"
  22. koechophe
    Wow, that's something I've never heard of before. I mean, if we're looking on the positive side, I can at least say, "Hey, this means they're looking at applications!"
  23. koechophe
    I console myself with the fact that applying for the schools can actually be dang expensive. I think my 10 schools came out to about $800. Even 2-3 more could've put me over $1,000 lol.
  24. koechophe
    I got an email from ASU earlier today saying, basically, that some of my application materials (CV and SoP) were missing and to please email them. And I was like, "How on earth did I miss something?" And you know, thinking, "well, that's a great way to impress the department." (And it was an actual faculty member from the department that emailed me.) So I apologized and sent them off. Then in the response, he basically said that it was a system glitch on their end (that had apparently happened to a lot of people, by the looks of it) and apologized for the inconvenience lol. I'll take the win that my first interaction with a grad school this cycle WASN'T either a rejection or a stupid mistake on my end ?
  25. koechophe
    For me, it's honestly the rejection that's the hardest. I can deal with my life like it is for another year, it's not a bad life. But as a writer, I'm my own worst critic. There's a part of me that thinks some level of that is actually necessary if you want to be good at writing, though I also think we as writers usually take it too far. People that are serious at writing are often seriously hard on themselves, too. The waiting is hard on me because it's like this constant reminder of my own fears and self-doubts about myself as a writer. Those negative voices seem much harder to quiet during this period, tbh.
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