prufrock_

wishing you wont need it!! but do you wanna share your list for next year? I gotta start making mine as well.

as a current mid thirtys applicant, i hope so! If your life circumstances still line up with being able to move across country, change careers (at least for the duration of the MFA, if not after), and live off the small stipend, then nothing else has changed imo, go for it again.

GRATS! Heck ya!!! That school wasn't on my radar; I just checked the faculty and it's STACKED. That would be an amazing school! I hope the best for you (and i'm definitely applying there next year if I don't get anywhere this year!).

I don't know if 'theo' or 'getty' from the draft spreadsheet are here, but they're a great example of what we're always talking about: they have many rejections -- and then an Iowa acceptance! I love this roller coaster of admissions, it's so cool we crowd source all this information and can follow along. (also, grats if yall are here!)

oof I didn't realized NWP only let in three people. I was feeling rather confident about that one until just now! I wanted to live in austin texas so I could pretend I was in Friday Night Lights. Two dreams dying with one rejection!

David Attenborough voice over: Here we see the anxious writer, a creature of frayed nerves and jittery anticipation. It subsists on stale coffee, expired snacks, and the faintest glimmer of hope. The air bristles with false promise. Days blur, punctuated by obsessive email checks and muttered pleas to unseen literary forces. Sanity frays. Should a sacrifice be made? An old rejection letter burned as an offering, perhaps? And then... a chime. The pivotal moment. The anxious writer freezes. Will this be the sound of triumph, or the final, echoing note of defeat? But alas, it is neither. The writer deletes yet another spam e-mail, wondering how they never noticed so many newsletters before. For this one, the wait continues.

I'm going to say no out of pure copium.

This has been the toughest week yet. I'm glad yall are here to get through this together with!

unranked is based on vibes. so if someone similar to your work drops out, then you'd move into acceptance. If it's a larger program, the odds can be pretty good! Wishing the best for you!

Just got my Syracuse rejection. This one hurts!!! We have a little cry and move on. I still have more pending than I have rejections, so I haven't lost hope! Once the rejections outweigh the pending (and assuming no acceptances) then i'll start spiraling, i'm sure.

fiction waitlists from Syracuse up on draft 👀 maybe all acceptances out as well.

I was expecting the Alabama rejection since we saw acceptances/waitlists go out a while ago. But I also thought the rejections would come out in a large wave -- I seem to be the only one rejected so far! Not sure if that's a good or bad sign, hahah. edit: wave is happening!

bama just hit me with the 'no thanks!'

Sorry to all in the wave of rejections from university of Michigan! And grats to any A's and W's! It is a great looking program. I didn't apply as they asked for 'several stories (about 30 pages)' but I only had 20 pages I was confident in (two stories). I thought it was odd they asked for so much!

I'm right there with you; i applied to NWP but not michener! as for our mysterious YD, sometimes stars align on the page and beyond it. I imagine 10%-20% of all applications from any slush have good enough writing to get into the program, and what turns you from that 10% to 'admitted' is less subjective than we may think --- prestigious awards & an ivy undergrad, LOR's from a Pulitzer winner, an sop that's two pages yet reads like a novel synopsis because your life is like Forest Gump. But it's also possible they just wrote a really killer short story and have an sop that shows they'd be fun to work with for a few years, which is all it takes to get in anywhere.

someone might have more detailed advice, but mine is: rejections are part of the process! as long as you're submitting your best work to a place where it fits in, then there's no reason to stop submitting.

That '23 draft spreadsheet lost all data submitted prior to 2/24/23 for whatever reason, so it's not really possible to see if this round has a larger application pool or not. edit: i guess i do see about 100 manually added submissions that might have been the whole picture from before 2/24.

I'm sorry you didn't make it to round two. All you need is one acceptance, Iowa or Michigan are still just as likely as before! Each program is a subjective process. No one is going to make it into every program they apply for, but each rejection still hurts. I made it to round two. If it helps any, for context, I submitted two 10ish page short stories -- one is kind of a straight new sincerity piece and the other is comedic satire - the last being a gamble that's earned me a few rejections so far. 3feetofsnow summed up my thoughts on the entire process, re: diversity of style, and 'luck'.

no matter how i start my stories, they always end up being about failed father/son relationships, or codependent & toxic romantic relationships. I add a lot of jokes to make it less sad, but maybe that's just a defense mechanism against sincerity. I idealize 'new sincerity' but I have a hard time writing it. One of the shorts i submitted is postmodern satire. Which maybe means I kinda really have no control over what I write or what ends up 'working', cause I wanted to write the opposite of that.

reduce the P line once you get an answer. to me the p stands for pending.

is the program fully funded? Having 2+ years to focus on reading and writing will get you closer to publishing, no matter what else happens. I don't think getting into any program is going to make you published. creativewritingmfa.info/rankings/ - this website ranks programs based on published output (with a focus on short work). This might feel you a little less scared if the program is on there?

ditto re: U of W-Madison. It's kind of them to send rejections and acceptances on the same day though!

Looks like most acceptances/waitlists have gone out for UW Madison; i'm going to assume I'm rejected there at this point. That means i'm 'unoffically offically' rejected from: UW Madison alabama u of oregon WE MARCH ON!

yoooooooo!!!!!! that's massive!!! congrats! Was that your top choice??

Congrats, that's such a wonderful program! I hope you get in.