Mukhil
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Nightwitch reacted to a post in a topic:
2022 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum
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I can't decide which piece of wisdom is better to offer @Ydrl and @mrvisser for their house hunting: 1. Like one who draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it who, half through, gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds. OR 2. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house.
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We must all keep hope alive. Yet we cannot entirely depart from realism, neither in our writing nor in our planning. And we must ac.knowledge that there is a better chance Trump will win in 2024 than that @Ydrland @mrvisser will both be at Michener in 2024. The gambling sites give Trump a 30% chance. If we assume ydrl and visser each have a 1% chance, then the chance of them both making it is 1 in 10,000. So even if ydrl and mrvisser start picking out their Austin apartment today, that won't make it more likely they will need it tomorrow.
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@Ydrl, can you help @mrvisser ? He has been asking around about where he should live if he gets into one of the top schools he is applying to. Now, I know what ydrl is thinking. She is remembering Mr. Visser's post from last year comparing UT Austin to Iowa, and saying how tough the choice is. But let’s just assume he gets in everywhere and figure out the issue. Ydrl, you know what MFA school is like. Do you recommend Mr. Visser live on campus or off campus at UC Irvine? Mr. Visser has asked specifically about that.
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@Rm714 Iowa claims students do the first reading, but the director reads everything too. Of course, this makes no sense. You might as well cancel the student reading. My guess is that the Director skims if the student says it is crappy. Everyone knows 80% of writing samples are immediately rejected as clueless by the funded schools. So Iowa might legitimately use students to read the entirety of the clueless samples. The Director might be able to confirm the crappiness with a quick skim. And so the system isn’t really corrupt. The Director claims she reads everything. That would mean 50,000 pages a year. She must mean she skims the stuff the students nix.
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Any idiot can see Abramson's attempt to deceive: “Nearly a third of the world's 148 full-residency MFA programs fully fund 75% or more of incoming students. More than half of the top 50 programs are fully-funded, with 70% fully funding half their students or more. And most applications from the nation's three to four thousand annual full-residency MFA applicants go to these top 50 programs.” He says "most applications . . . go to these top 50 programs." He wants you to think "most students" go there. It makes no difference where most applications go. But I can't seem to convince @Yellow62 .
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If this is berating Ydrl , then I shudder to think what @Yellow62 thinks of my other posts. Seth Abramson’s linked in says he is currently Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire.
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@Yellow62 , what does it matter that the article is 10 years old? My complaint is that a writing professor writes sophistry. The writing still shows up as the first thing in a lot of google searches. The professor could write the same article today with updated numbers, and the deception would be the same. Regardless of how accurately you present yourself on this forum, I'm sending you well wishes, as you seem to be a healthy, behaving individual.
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How does @Ydrl fail to call out her professor Seth Abramson from New Hamshire, who is so full of shit. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/six-myths-about-the-creat_b_705279 He isn't dumb. He is pretending. 1. He invented a term "harder to get into," but he doesn't tell you how he is defining it. He means the percent of applicants rejected. 60% of those nominated for the Supreme Court or the cabinet get confirmed by the senate. Under Abramson's logic, it is easy to get these jobs. Disney theme parks take less than 1% of job applicants for the summer job. It doesn't mean Disney is harder to get into than Harvard. It just means Disnsey seems like a cool summer job. If you want to compare two MFA schools, the rejection rate might mean something. It means nothing when you compare an MFA school to an undergrad school. High school guidance counsellors tell student they got no shot at the ivy league, so the the ivy league rejection rate is not that high. The applicants self deny. No one has good data on their chance to get into Iowa MFA, so everyone applies, there and to every other MFA. Also, MFA schools usually have only 5 to 25 seats, and there are no qualifications for applying. A million people who don't know anything about literary fiction apply. Most MFA grads end up never publishing anything, and less than 1% get tenure track jobs. (And those are the ones who got in.) 2. Abramson's funding claims are even more deceptive. To be straight forward he would say something like 36% of tuition dollars are waived, and mostly by the best schools. Abramson is deceptive, phrasing it something like 60% of students get an average of 60% tuition waived. He tries to hide the 36% figure and replace it with the 60% figure.
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Boy, this Seth Abramson, from New Hampshire @Ydrl ‘s school is so full of shit. No professor could be as dumb as he pretends. He is trying to deceive. He says MFA programs are not cash cows. “Nearly a third of the world's 148 full-residency MFA programs fully fund 75% or more of incoming students. More than half of the top 50 programs are fully-funded, with 70% fully funding half their students or more. And most applications from the nation's three to four thousand annual full-residency MFA applicants go to these top 50 programs.” Total deception. So under his logic: The top 25 programs fully fund everyone Programs 26 to 50 are not funding 25% of students. Programs 51 to 148 are not funding more than 25% of students and possibly all their students. All in all, most people who do an MFA are not fully funded. How is this not a cash cow? He says an MFA is harder to get into than an ivy league undergrad. “Portland State's full-residency MFA (ranked #52 nationally) is a tougher admit than University of Pennsylvania (an Ivy ranked in the top five of 4,000+ U.S. colleges and universities). So is #78 University of New Mexico. So is #62 University of Idaho.” This is complete nonsense. He is going just by the percent of applicants admitted. That is a meaningless stat. Iowa MFA has a higher admit rate than a lot of schools. It does not mean Iowa is worse. (It largely just means Iowa has the most students.) The University of PA is a better school than a lot of ugrad schools with lower admit rates. The admit rate doesn’t tell much. And you can’t compare the admit rate for MFA programs to the admit rate for ugrad programs. It doesn’t mean anything. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/six-myths-about-the-creat_b_705279
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There are two reasons to go to a good school: 1. The glory. 2. The @Ydrl theory: she posted that most MFA learning is from classmates, and the classmates at New Hampshire aren't smart enough. Yes, she obfuscated, but that is what she meant. I've heard other MFA's with this theory that you learn more with smart classmates. I've never heard someone say the teachers are a good reason for picking a school. Anyway, I thought @mrvisser wanted a top ranked school for reason #1. But he says his only reason is the money, a stipend. So there are 40 fully funded schools. This means they give every student a stipend. But there are many more schools that give a portion of the class a stipend. For instance NYU. I wonder if it is easier to get a stipend from one of these schools than it is to get into a fully funded school. (NYU is very picky on who gets a stipend, probably just as picky as a top ten school.) But there are lot of state schools whose tuition is low, and who give stipdends to some students. I wonder if Visser should apply to them.
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@Leeannitha You ask where I am applying. I don't know. Possibly the top twenty schools. Maybe only the top fifteen. @Yellow62 You write " to compensate for their own failure to garner writing success." Hello, just wanted to let you know that you don't give any reason for reaching this conclusion, and possibly grasp at a generic explanation. In all events, consider rephrasing as "because their own writing is a failure."
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1. Why does @mrvisser believe Iowa ranks lower than Michigan/Brown? 2. Feral's arguement was to apply to absolute crappiest fully funded program. His theory was you have the best chance to get in. So why not make an active search for the crappiest, big city school? Why limit your range from 1 to 20? Why not 1 to 40? Is there no big city school near number 40?
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1. Where does @mrvisser rank each of these schools: Brown, Michigan, Texas, UMass Amherst, Minnesota, Wisconsin, WashU, Vanderbilt, Colorado State, and University of Washington 2. Why not Iowa ? Too far from civilization? 3. I don't understand. If Mr. Visser is willing to go down to #20, why won't he go down to #40? I can relate to the all-or-nothing mindset where it has to be #1 or maybe top ten. But if you are dipping down to #20, then why not #40? 4. Personally, I suspect that if Mr. Visser gets rejected everywhere again, he'll be back next year. Maybe he will basically cut and paste his prior application, but he will be back. 5. Mr. Visser should try to get someone admitted to a top ten school to look at his writing sample. That someone might tell him he isn't in the big league and will not have a realistic chance any time soon. The problem is 80% of applicants are ruled out instantly by the top ten schools. There is no way to know whether you are in that group. Getting rejected everywhere is not proof you are in that minor league.
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@Leida, you have a misconception of MFA schools. If a student becomes a tenured professor or is published in Best American Short stories, the school he graduated from benefits. Their reputation is aided. But small time bullshit publications, which is what most alum's will end up producing, benefits the school zero. It adds nothing to their glory. Most Columbia students contribute to Columbia only through tuition dollars. The fundamental problem is basically no one reads literary fiction, so there is no way to make money in it. This is why you have almost no writer making a living at writing literary fiction. Universities have to pay professors to write what no one wants to read. Columbia knows it is dooming most of its students to financial ruin, but artists should know that is what they are signing up for. There is no money in high art. @Rm714 I don't think one school is going to have less of a sense of community than another. Jess goes to MFA Vandy, a top 10 school. She pretends she went to Columbia College undergrad, but she went to the Columbia School of General Studies. That is Columbia's money generating, open admission undergrad. (It is kind of like Columbia MFA.) This is the only area Jess misleads; otherwise, you can trust what she says.
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@Rm714 Well, here is the problem. The veterans like Cad and Jess, will invariably tell you that Columbia is a rip off and only has student who got rejected from all the top 40 schools. But MFA land is a politically correct, safe space. So you get people who don’t want to ruin the day of the suckers who are paying Columbia $70K/year for a degree that has zero earning potential. The vast majority of MFA graduates do not ever publish anything or earn a dime from writing. And these noble safe spacers won’t let truth stand in their way. So they give a lot of fluff, claims that for the right person Columbia might be the best fit. Here is another issue. Columbia used to be a lot harder to get into than it is now. Today, there are 40 fully funded MFA schools. Ten years ago there were much fewer. Back then, Columbia was not open admission the way it is now. Your mentor might not know things changed. If you read Draft enough, you’ll rule out Columbia on your own. It is inevitable. Columbia students are not the most objective source; they are a biased pool. I’ve never heard of a person who turned down a fully funded program in order to pay for Columbia. There is another rumor that Columbia breaks down the class: the vast majority are paying something close to the $70K tuition. A few people are paying almost nothing, but no one really knows how much. And this funded group allegedly get more professor time than the rest. New York City does not have any fully funded MFA school. My theory on that is rent/salaries are higher in New York. And every student wants to live in New York, so the schools have more leverage. @Leida There is one exception to your rule that the unfunded schools are all crap. Hunter is top ten. It waives tuition. It coaches the out of state students to pretend they are NY residents for the tuition waiver. But it doesn’t pay a stipend. How does a top ten school get away with no stipend? It is in New York.