justasmidge

Just talked to an author acquaintance who graduated from a school that I didn't get into and just got longlisted for a very prestigious prize so I really feel like I can trust her judgment on this. I'm in between two schools. One that will leave me about 16k in debt and another that would leave me 40k in debt. The open house for the 40k one isn't until Thursday. It's quite a substantial price difference but I also know that if I did choose the 40k one that there are fellowship opportunities in the second year that could take the price down. I was concerned that the 16k school doesn't have as much name recognition as the other one, but she assured me that the name of the program doesn't matter - it's whether if you think your writing will benefit from the program's resources and if there's support from faculty. She said that one can draw on faculty connections for letters of recommendation and blurbs. I definitely believe that the 16k school will give me a tremendous amount of guidance from all of my interactions with them so far. I do think I would be very happy there. We'll see what happens with the 40k school.

You are right - they told me that they were waiting for my FAFSA info to come in before they awarded funding. Let this be a lesson not to get down on yourself if you don't get a funding offer immediately. I honestly thought, despite my other acceptances, that I wasn't good enough because I didn't get funding at first, when really, it turns out it was a matter of paperwork.

This...was an interesting afternoon. So I decided to decline my spot at SLC because of lack of funding and wrote them a really nice letter saying that it wasn't feasible financially and wished them all the best. Then I got an e-mail to check my portal and they sent me another acceptance letter, this time with the 12k a year scholarship. I'm wondering if maybe they forgot to give me the award in the first place? It just seems weird that they would accept me again after I declined. I wrote to the grad admissions staff asking if they could explain what happened because it is a little disappointing that, because of the lack of funding, I decided that I wasn't going to entertain the accepted students events...but if I knew I had funding, it would have been a different story.

Ohhhhh myyyyy gosh, that is soooo fucking cool! I would dieeeee

In at SLC but without funding. I'm going to email with my other offers and see if that moves the needle. If it doesn't, I will decline. The acceptance letter was personalized, which was a nice touch though, so brownie points to them for that.

Oh, that's awesome!!! My father is from Sicily but grew up around Milan after an earthquake devastated his hometown of Partanna. We are going to Milan first and then we will be flying down to Sicily Thank you so much for the tips - I was wondering how the waiting game was going to sort out with being 6 hours ahead The best of luck to you

About to leave for Italy in a few hours - Sarah Lawrence and Columbia, it would be nice to get some good news before airplane mode goes on! Also, for those of you who are local to NYC, I asked TNS if I could meet with a faculty member to discuss the program and see if it's a fit and they have been really accommodating. They're going to set me up with a faculty member and a student after Spring Break, which I thought was really nice of them. I think it's worth asking for

I miss the old days where I was confident that a strange number calling me was spam. Now it's like...is it spam...or is it a SCHOOL??!?!

It feels way too quiet today.

There's always a waitlist If I'm not mistaken, didn't they say the class size was 30 for all concentrations? Also, I don't know if this counts for anything but I had a heart attack the other day when I checked the portal and it said my application was incomplete. I emailed them and they said not to worry and my application is with the department so we shall see!

I just found out that I received a 50% scholarship to The New School! Ah, after receiving some frustrating news today about one of my brothers, I realllllllly needed this. I still have yet to run the numbers to see if it's affordable but I will take the win right now.

Ah, Rixor, I am so sorry about the car - my car was stolen in 2012 and I will never forget how violating that felt. DMs are open if you need someone to lend an ear.

I don't think NYU is done - we haven't heard anything about the waitlists.

I'm also waiting on Sarah Lawrence! Hopefully this week, we'll here something. I think we're going to hear of a lot of news this week.

Whew, I can feeeeeeel the anxiety already for these next couple of weeks. I did have breakfast with a professor from Stony Brook which was really nice since she's a friend of my colleague's. I really enjoyed it! Still trying to figure out if going to Italy is a good or a bad thing with being six hours ahead of all of this, but at the very least, it will be a distraction. I'm an amateur photographer, so I'll probably be busy taking photos. Anyone else here shoot film? It's my favorite medium. I'm taking 3 rolls of Ektar 100, 1 roll of Portra 160, and 1 roll of Lomography Purple.