porta

in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

My only vendetta is against disinformation (which is the word generally preferred over misinformation). It used to be considered a fake word, but by now, is just unorthodox.

There is no good reason someone should take my advice other than it is not the standard BS you'll find everywhere else. MFA's are opaque. Advice here is more art than science. There is a wiki article on the College of General Studies and Harvard Extension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AColumbia_University_School_of_General_Studies

That is not exactly true. For starters, the School of General Studies is more or less open admission. The General Studies School has its own classes, but you can sign up, with limitations, for Columbia College classes. If you apply to Columbia College, you are barred for three years from applying to the School of General Studies. Sounds crazy but google it. People in New York know all about the General Studies School, but I agree that overseas people might be fooled, as with the Columbia MFA. I only googled her because she posted the strange claim that she has a GED but is ivy league. She was implying that is normal. I knew that was just about impossible. She was being deceptive in order to inspire with her achievements. I found it distasteful. A quick google search showed she meant Columbia School of General Studies. Every MFA rejected me. You don't get me at all. My type brags about failure. It gives us reason to strive. My type never makes the irrational claim that they were rejected everywhere but did not fail. I failed alright, failed everywhere and grandly. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm not noble and secretly suspect I'm usually the smartest in the room.

I went to City College in New York. The only difference between her and me is I don't pretend to be Ivy League, and she got into Vanderbilt MFA. Harvard too gives a open admission BA from Harvard Extension School. It charges top dollar and makes money. Plenty of people go there and imply they went to Harvard College. If you google her name, you'll find a Columbia student newspaper article saying she went to Columbia's School of General Studies. Columbia lets the marketing department call it Ivy League; all the ivy continuing ed schools do the same. Harvard Extension is allowed to call itself Harvard.

That might be true. Jess from Draft posted that she is "ivy league" without mentioning she did not go to Columbia College, but rather the open admission Columbia School of General Studies. Her webpages make the general claim of "Columbia University" without mentioning she did not go to Columbia College. Overseas, you could probably tell people you have an MA in Creative Writing from John Hopkins, and leave out that it is low res and open admissions and something different than the MFA.

Well, people know it is no great honor to get into The New School or Emerson. People don't know that about Columbia/NYU because 10 years ago, when there were few fully funded programs, it was a great honor. It is false that "plenty of people" get into a fully funded program, but not Columbia/NYU. The number is not zero, but low. It can't be zero owing to subjectivity. Every year, there is at least one guy who gets into Iowa and rejected from every other school. If I applied and got into Columbia, I would not be proud, especially if like Blackhole, my submission was last minute and included typos. That says it all.

Kindness and support come in many forms, both long and short term.

Since you don't get the bias, I'll tell it. It isn't bias, and it isn't "everything," just the lies, particularly the lies with long term debt at stake. This is the standard debate between coddling and truth. If you can’t process it any other way, see it as a troll opportunity without need to lie, and with doing public good. Any way you take it, if you pay for Columbia, assuming your name isn’t Rockefeller, you are a fool. This is why Cady and to a lesser extent the less courageous Jess tell everyone not to pay. On this issue, we intersect. You aren't ready to write if you believe "We all know deep down in our hearts we aren't special." That is probably the biggest lie I've heard this year, and I don't believe you believe it. "I don't know why the professor made the sales call and why Columbia wanted to charge me.": More reality. They want to charge you because they didn't think your last minute submission was top 1%. Now you know.

You are late in this game. There is basic undisputed knowledge you don't have. You should probably browse through old posts on Draft. Put more weight on what the veterans posts because a lot of newbies invent theories and push it for data. The conventional wisdom is that it is almost all writing sample. Now and then, you get a professor saying low grades did disqualify someone. I've only seen that claim for schools ranked below about 20, and not much of it. I don't think it could disqualify you since you graduated long ago. Everyone wants to believe that their last minute job inspired a professor to pick them as the 1% who get in. Don't give in to that temptation. Presume you aren't special. Read some of Cady's posts on Draft where she says the hard truth. Unfunded Columbia is not hard to get into. Rutgers Newark and unfunded Brooklyn College are much harder to get in to, and are both near Manhattan. See the phone call as more of a sales call. He made plenty of calls. Ask yourself why Columbia wanted to charge you knowing that would lead you to say no.

You've read this on Draft already. If they gave a "pittance," you weren't one of their chosen ones. They thought you better than the ones rejected and worse than the chosen ones. They read your sample. They read a lot of samples. They just won't remember it. The signal for how good they thought the sample is the funding. They know most people turn them down if they ask for tuition. They know most anyone would rather go to one of the 60 funded programs than pay for them. You said your sample had typos. It was up against samples that were not done at the last minute.

There is no reason not to ask. It won't stop you from getting in next year or have any other ramification. But he probably won't answer. The cohort is 70. They admit many more. This all assumes you weren't one of their chosen ones, for whom they waived all tuition. He would have to pull up your work to even remember you.

What is your definition of failed?

Which school?