prufrock_

I predict i'm going to run out of likes today; big day coming up! Grats already yall!

It's possible they are coming in waves, but it looks like last year all reported rejections came on the same day, which was a day or two after acceptances went out. Did your UCSD portal update?

they're the one i find myself day dreaming about the most! Everything about their program seems so wonderful. I especially like that they offer a minor in environmental studies or Native American & Indigenius studies. i'll check out "laramie time" by lydia conklin -- been meaning to read something by them. Who is your favorite writer who went there, if you want to share?

My UVA also says Awaiting Decision. I wouldn't read too much into it. Portal updates aren't the best source of information imo (like, my lone waitlist so far still says Awaiting Decision in the portal). Until it says accepted or declined, it could mean anything.

I wouldn't call it a poor choice, since people do get in with novel excerpts all the time. That said, I think the majority are short stories. It's important to show you can end as strong as you start, which doesn't happen in a novel excerpt. I hope you get in somewhere, but it's not a bad idea to start a short just in case.

a few things: the most important: I kept writing, reading, and workshopping. I wrote a new story that got the strongest reactions i've seen, so that now leads my portfolio this year. I reworked the strongest story I submitted last year and that's also in my portfolio. I checked all my schools this round to make sure the funding they offer covers cost of living in the area. Last year I got into a fully funded program that I turned down cause it didn't cover CoL, which stung. This year if I get an acceptance to anywhere, i know i'm going 100%. The downside of this is that my school list is mostly prestigious long shots. I increased the schools I applied to from 11 to 17. I started earlier on the apps and gave more individual attention to each school (though the SOP reads mostly boiler plate, except for a couple sentences). I wrote a new SOP that was less autobiographical and more about my present and future work/plans. I mildly workshopped it with peers and removed the bits that didn't work; the year before my sop felt more like a blog post than a graduate level 'paper'. I saved as much money as I could; i only want to focus on the MFA for the years i'm in it.

acceptances are a phone call first (then physical mail to confirm? not sure) -- rejections are only physical mail though. i wouldn't expect Iowa results until next week, but maybe they're going out earlier this year.

I wrote this last year but think it's still true: 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 [those admitted to multiple places] 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.

Why are we thinking UWY might come out soon? They had a very late deadline (1/20!)

I'm counting Minnesota as a soft reject at this point, yes, because i've heard nothing, yet acceptance/waitlists have gone out. Most programs operate like this with the lag between waves. Most don't have massive distances between the three stages, but some do. I'd guess programs wait because that's just what works best for them for whatever reason. Applicants shouldn't even know about the waves; we only do because we have an underground network of crowd sourced data.

I'm sure you're fine! (also this is why i'm refusing to double check any of my apps lol, i know i missed something or another)

A Syracuse poetry rejection just hit. 🤔not sure what to make of this???

Sorry! It's a character flaw of mine! This week I'll join your optimism and hope for a JHU fiction result. Next week I'll be hoping for: Cornell and a Minnesota waitlist. After that, the flood gates open and who knows! It looks like most of yours are pretty late notifiers, though naropa might be a wild card.

Expecting UWY results soon seems a bit too optimistic imo, their deadline was just a couple of weeks ago. I'd guess that rejection from last year was an outlier from someone who maybe didn't even finish their app or something.

heck ya!! grats!

this just went off and scared me during a work meeting 😅 Oregon fiction responses going out! (Grats hideonbush if you're here!!!)

I'm not sure if I'm now enlightened or full on degenerate but i made a python script that automatically pulls the draft sheet every 5 minutes and plays a big cow moo if any new lines have been added. at least now i can work without manually refreshing the sheet every minute?

I agree with you that the third week of Feb is probably going to have the most movement. I hope things start ramping up though!

another quiet week. Next week should be a flood. weekend notifications are rare but not impossible. I don't think a lot will drop this weekend, but a few might trickle in.

i suppose we don't know 100% -- they could still be rolling out. But the way I see it: not every acceptance is gonna show up on the list. Some people don't know about it or some don't report every movement, so it'll never be a full data set. Since over half of the available spots are reported as accepted, it's very likely all have gone out. waitlists for minnesota should go out in a single wave in a week or two, if patterns of the last few years stay true.

me, knowing minnesota has sent out all acceptances, yet still manually refreshing gmail just in case they forgot little ol' me

yes, based on the last 4 years of draft data, Iowa gives a phone call for acceptances. They start around mid to late feb.

I wouldn't worry about it; acceptance is done via phone call, but the rejection is over snail mail. So if they're looking for your address and notice it's missing on the form, it's probably not going to change their decision by that point. Then yeah, I think they'd pull the digital form and mail it that way!

Fiction wait lists are out for UIUC, so I'd assume all acceptances are out as well. I picked up a wait list spot, which feels nice as my first result! of course it's so subjective i could still get 16 rejections lol, but it gives me a glimmer of hope for this round.

Directors and chairs and heads and committees all change over time, so there's nothing set in stone for any of these programs re:dates imo. The only date we can really count on is april 15th (and even that is not a hard and fast rule as much as it's a guideline) my wild speculation is that Illinois hasn't done admissions yet and probably will next week. 50/50 that ohio has and asked people to keep quiet or by some bad luck everyone who got in aren't as plugged into these communities as we are.