itsbeensnowing

Thank you for the info! Considering it's been a few days, I hope they'd have let me know by now if the cohort is locked, but you never know. If I don't hear anything by the end of the day tomorrow I might email. I'm mostly antsy because my current best plan would require a lot of preparation that I can't really begin until I'm fully committed, which I can't do with this waitlist hanging over me.

Because I'm still on a waitlist, every hour post-April 15 has been moving at an absolute snail's pace. I wish I could get constant play-by-play updates about everything going on behind the scenes lol

Congrats! I'm also waitlisted for fiction at UIUC, so I hope yours wasn't the last slot! (They didn't happen to mention any intel, did they?)

Have you already reached out to the top choice program to ask about the likelihood of getting off the waitlist? I feel like if you explained your exact situation, there's some chance of a candid answer that might help inform your decision. It's a bit weird that the one you're accepted at wants your decision by Friday. Have you tried asking for an extension? If neither of the above gets you anywhere, I'd personally make a decision with the assumption that the waitlist won't work out, which essentially comes down to either accepting the offer or committing to waiting an additional year. And that alone is a difficult decision, and I don't know your particular circumstances. I'm in a somewhat similar situation, so I empathize. The timing of everything is seldom ideal and it gets complicated.

Finally, a rejection from UCI 😅 It really seems like a great program but idk how many times I'd be able to go through this whole "wait until the week before the deadline to get an official rejection" thing

Anyone know wtf is going on with Southern Illinois University? Guessing not a lot of people here applied there but I haven't seen any acceptances on the results page. It's getting quite late for any program to still not even have their first wave of acceptances out. But maybe they do and it just doesn't include anybody on this site. (I'm not on facebook, so if there's been any word there, let me know.) Also, any intel on waitlist movement for Urbana-Champaign? (Or if they're getting close to finalizing their slots?) Dunno if I should be waiting on them. Anyways, less than three weeks until the big decision day. Hang in there, everyone!

This is truly the most excruciating stage of the season. Waitlists, uncertain funding, presumed rejections without any official notification, and a couple random stragglers that seemingly haven't even sent acceptances yet. It's a strange limbo to be in: Pretty much done, yet can't finalize any plans yet because there's still technically a chance of something happening. Hoping the finish line is near!

Yes, tis true. My rejection last year was on April 18th, and I think that's true of everyone. They were also quite late in 2022, albeit a few days before April 15. Based on the results page, it seems like they used to be a lot more prompt about it (mid-March). I don't know if the past two years have been fluke years or if the late notifications is the new norm. (Based on the fact we haven't heard anything yet this year, I'm guessing it's the latter.)

The semi-answer to all of your questions is that people do tend to wait until the last minute to accept or decline their offers of admission, meaning the most waitlist movement is going to be happening around the April 15 deadline and in the immediate afterwards. The ripple effect is pretty much inevitable. When someone gets accepted off a waitlist, they either decline the offer, opening the slot up for another person, or they accept it and decline their other offers, opening those up for other people. So a lot can happen in a short period of time. It's even not unheard of for someone to get off the waitlist in May or June if someone falls through or if they have to go through a large portion of the waitlist before finding someone who accepts. So, it's not over until it's over. I think by mid-April it'd be worth reaching out to the school to ask if they've filled all their slots if they haven't already volunteered that information. I'm waitlisted for admission at one school and waitlisted for funding at another, so I'm trying to keep myself sane through this purgatory more than anything.

People on draft, has there been anything from Hollins or Southern Illinois University? I think SIU is the only one I've applied to that hasn't sent any acceptances out yet. Hollins has an apparent acceptance on the results page here, but they didn't state the genre.

Got this one too. Talk about an impersonal rejection 😭

I've also been accepted at Temple, waitlisted for funding. They tout themselves as being more affordable than other MFAs, but that's not saying much and I'm not totally sure how feasible it'd be for me to attend without funding. It really seems like a lovely program, so I'm hoping for some movement on that waitlist! Right now it's my only MFA acceptance, though I also have been accepted into a 1 year MA program that costs about as much as Temple's 2 years.

My general impression has been that most programs are pretty amenable to spec fic, but most do expect said spec fic to be of that nebulous "literary" quality. If you're writing "popular" sci-fi, it might be a harder fit. (But I put those terms in quotes, because how are we really supposed to define them and draw the line between them?) I've mostly gauged a program's attitude toward genre lit through its faculty's work. If none of them write spec fic, it doesn't mean they'd be hostile towards it, but the inverse is a pretty good sign that they are open to it. For example, Megan Giddings from University of Minnesota pretty much exclusively writes horror sci-fi/fantasy. Alex Shakar from University of Illinois writes a literary, philosophical sort of sci-fi. Claire Vaye Watkins from UC Irvine has written a literary dystopian novel. University of Colorado has a range of genres represented among its faculty. Some programs do have a stuffier reputation than others and may turn away from any sort of genre fiction, but I'm not really clued into which ones those are.

Is that for fiction? Rutgers-Camden takes forever to get rejections out (mine didn't come until April 18th last year), so yeah I think an assumed rejection is the best we'll get for a while. Maybe give it a few days before losing all hope, though.

Ahhh I see. I don't like thinking about these programs googling me, because one of the only things that comes up with my name is a book of short stories I wrote when I was 10 that my dad self published for me. There's no escaping it, it haunts me