jinny-r

to US-based applicants, may i know how the state is in the US right now? one of my recommenders, although willing to give her letter, is advising me not to proceed because of the political situation. i am a southeast asian bisexual woman and i tackle US imperialism and colonialism explicitly in my writing. thank you!

hi all! i'm an international applicant! i was here last year and i'm back with a better mindset. (for real, i was previously suffering from foggy thoughts due to a medication i am thankfully not taking anymore.) i feel i have a better grasp of what i should do in my statements and samples. i am also more prepared financially to apply to a wider range of programs than i did last year while taking advantage of fee waivers available to international applicants. bothering recommenders was a factor as to why i couldn't apply to many, since i feel iffy doing it, but in recent months i managed to reconnect with old professors/residency managers/workshop panelists as well as new ones who are more than willing to write a letter for me. things seem to be lining up! here are the schools i am targeting: john hopkins university, brown university, boston university, university of tenneessee-knoxville, university of mississippi, vanderbilt university, helen zell writers' program (university of michigan), michener center (university of texas), the new writers project (university of texas), and university of pittsburgh. does anyone know which of these are more traditional and which are more open to less traditional writing? in particular, i have works that are tropical gothic (which i argue to be realist, given my milieu) and multilingual (wherein non-understanding by english readers is intentional for meaningmaking). i want to make sure i'm sending my traditional and non-traditional samples to the right people 😅 thank you. good luck to us all!

That would be great! I'll take you up on your offer if I do get accepted, thank you! Thank youuu! Same boat, I worry about going through the motions of grief again if I don't get in. But still, I'm happy that we both got waitlisted! Congrats to you! Fiction! Thank you!

Thank you, Chex! I am speechless djjdjdjd

Oh my god, I got a waitlist email from Ole Miss. I already went through the five stages of grief thinking there's no chance. I'm in shock!

I haven't heard anything from Ole Miss, and it's hard to stay optimistic. I'm seeing the waitlists and acceptance and I feel paranoid one ot two requirements did not reach them. It's my last one before I end this application cycle. Congrats to those who've gotten their results though! ✨️⭐️

Did you also comb through social media posts to know more? Checking hashtags and such ahahaha. So glad to know I'm not the only one obsessing! Good luck to us! Thank you so much! 😍 Now I'm trying to figure out time travel so I can tell my past self to include what I just said in my SOP. How could I have forgotten to mention Faulkner? (Thankfully I still talked about my plans for a tropical gothic novel lol)

The past few weeks, I went about my days trying to forget my applications in hopes I will get a result once it's March, but agh. What's taking Ole Miss? 😢 I'm already assuming U of Arizona is a rejection for both the genres I applied to, so I only have Ole Miss left that might potentially be an acceptance. The more I read about Ole Miss's MFA program, the more I've been falling in love with it, and it only recently occured to me that Oxford is where Faulkner lived. Southern gothic led me to developing my own poetics of writing about my rural hometown (albeit Asian). Turns out our own gothic tradition that is tied to multilingualism and colonialism can be traced to the Latin American marvelous realism and Faulkner's southern gothic. I would be really heartbroken if I can't go.

Oohh, thank you for this! It might've been just the portal taking its time, yeah, since my British Council account confirms they've sent it.

Ahh, thank you so much, Chex! I'm feeling less worried now. I'll email them about my IELTS then.

To those in Phase II for Ole Miss, can I ask if they confirm your submission of transcript via email? I sent a temporary, unofficial scan of my transcript, since I'm international and mine is still processing for at least 9 days at my former uni before I can mail it. Also if you're international, did it show in your application status page that they received your English proficiency test result? Mine is IELTS and I've had British Council send an ecopy to the grad admissions comm, but the application status page indicates it hasn't been received yet. Should I email to confirm? Am I panicking too much?

Congrats to carly rae jepsen for getting into Michigan. I hope you release another album this year! Love, ur #1 fan

U of Arizona. There are a few entries, mostly CNF and poetry. There is one fiction waitlist. I don't know why they won't just release in one go 😭

Should I give up hope on U of Arizona? Applied for both fiction and poetry and heard nothing so far, but there have been waitlists already on Draft this month.

Oh no, I think you may have missed the reading period. The deadline was 1st of November and then extended till the end of that month. The BU website got revamped so I can't find the page where I found the instructions but if I remember it correctly, only a few colleges/departments allow departmental fee waivers for international applicants. The timeline for anyone interested in getting a fee waiver for BU in the future: Sept. 24 - I submitted my short stories, personal statement, and applicant ID to the CW program email. Dec. 5 - I was informed that the admissions comittee is requesting the graduate school to grant my fee waiver. Dec. 17 - I was given the fee waiver code to use for my online submission.