prufrock_

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i just got an email from ole miss saying I'm in round 2!!!!

yes, that's what i meant, hah! also! Grats on whoever listed their WashU acceptance!! I applied there, it looks great!

wow, emailing the director of JHU and personally asking they were declined is a rather bold move.

yeah, interesting, last year their round 2 notifications went out end of jan, with actual acceptances hitting end of feb. I suppose it's possible round 2 already went out, but no one here or in draft got past round 1, but i hope not!

I see one acceptance for UC Davis but nothing for irvine.

grats! wow that's really low, did they mean 200 apps for poetry only or total including fiction? JH had the best looking program and I was going to apply but I didn't last minute cause my undergrad grades are rough lol.

that's wild! I got a spam call today for the first time in like a year (and of course I thought it was the call.)

I'm not sure what to think about Mississippi. Is someone contacting their dept for clarification on if the website is accurate for this year, but the date is wrong?

you're onto something! i just checked my spreadsheet and i told my letter recommenders that they will hear back in January if I made it to round two. well, shucks!

I haven't heard anything, but I see this on their site: "Each year, we receive hundreds of applications to fill only a handful of spots in fiction, poetry, and literary translation. Applicants should not expect to hear about their admissions status until mid- to late-March."

That Syracuse response is an outlier; last year nearly all responses from them came in march, so I don't expect to hear anything for a month or so more from them.

I looked at last years draft notifications and noticed there was quite a bit of activity during AWP. I'm hopeful we'll hear back from Washington University in St. Louis this week, based on last years timeline.

I did something similar in my SOP's. If it ties into your writing and makes your voice unique, then I don't think it's a 'kiss of death'. That subreddit skews VERY heavily to STEM. I imagine writing 'i have (unmedicated) adhd' in a STEM application is indeed the kiss of death. And, too, writing something like 'i'm bipolar and stay unmedicated since I only write during manic phases' would be an instant disqualification for us. But using your unique history in the SOP is what it's all about. I wouldn't worry about it (but i'm also just some random person, maybe we should both be worrying about it!).

I am too in a lot of ways, especially regarding my SOP and one of my story choices (I submitted the same two 10 page shorts to every program). This is my first time applying, so it's definitely a learning experience. if I only get rejections this round, the silver lining is I'm making a list of a lot of great schools I didn't know about/apply to that I will next time.

Grats! It sounds like most acceptances/waitlists might have gone out for u of oregon this week, and we'll see a wave of rejections maybe in a few weeks (that's my assumption, having applied and having not heard back yet).

i'm glad this wasn't one of the schools i applied to; i'm sorry to anyone who did, what a terrible thing to happen. How could they only know in the middle of applications that they would have no spots? Seems like a very weird situation.

Irvine and Iowa were both on my list to apply until I saw the hard copy requirements and I dropped them. I wonder, even with the big name prestige, if their application pool is a lot smaller because of it.

i saw someone say each rejection comes with its own full grief process, which seems true. We put a lot of work into a dream that dies mildly with each one.

There's three outcomes that I've thought of, that I'll likely be pursuing. 1) you get accepted somewhere, anywhere, to one or more programs. Victory! Doesn't mean you're great but it does mean you got lucky and you need to spend the next 2-4 years wisely using the time to make the best work you can + make the best connections. Getting in is just the start. 2) you get wait listed to one or more programs, but no acceptances. Time passes, April comes and goes, and you don't get in from the wait list. This proves you have the chops, but the system is very subjective. Maybe you can write something a bit better, work on your sop some more, and reapply to the wait listed schools + different ones next round, and hope that whoever reads your submissions this time vibes just that 10% more that you needed to get in. If you don't get in on the second round, move on to actions below. 3) denials all across the board. Again, the process is subjective. This doesn't mean you suck but it does probably mean that your writing/sop/academic history isn't suited for what the MFA's are looking for. Time to pivot. Get/maintain a day job that's disposable, join a writing group, finish a novel, find an agent, publish some work, enjoy the process. Writing will likely never even be the day job for those who got into the MFA's, so don't expect it to be yours. I use second person here, but I'm really talking about myself and how I'm going into this whole process. The acceptance rate of all the schools i applied to are 1-5%. I'm preparing for the most statistically likely outcome: all denials. That doesn't mean my work stinks, it just means I applied to a very unlikely subjective lottery.

I submitted most of my applications right on the deadline (getting the last one in last night!). I'm not even in college again and yet I'm already procrastinating! It's like dressing for the job you want.

i did some quick math a few months ago and even under the BEST SCENARIO where you get everything they offer every year (not exactly likely), you'd still be in about 15-20k worth of debt after their MFA. edit: this is assuming there's not some secret funding they don't have listed on their programs website; i don't have any insider info.

i wouldn't give up all hope until you hear one way or another. That is a tough rejection though if it does happen since they only accept specific genres every other year. They were one of my top choices but I didn't apply because I didn't have a critical writing sample ready.

something i didn't anticipate but should have known: the closer we get to the likely response days, the higher my anxiety is getting!

I haven't heard back from either yet -- but i'm fiction.

I didn't think creative writing MFA's had interviews for admissions? is that common?