writernity

Stony Brook is 2.5! With the last semester being just a thesis focus.

Hi all!! It's been a while since I've been in here, I've spent the past month agonizing about decisions haha. I visited both Manhattanville and Stony Brook (I rejected The New School pretty quick because I realized it didn't offer what I wanted for teaching opportunities and it would be too expensive anyway). I was really hesitant about attending either school and was considering just reapplying next year, but after visiting SBU, I've decided that it's the right program for me! I do want to give a shoutout to Manhattanville as a program that seems to be on the rise, the whole process was very personal and inviting and the director is doing a lot of work to make it a really good place to be, but I felt that its current state didn't fit my needs and SBU was much better for me location-wise. The teaching fellowship pathway they offer is a really great opportunity though, it makes the program almost fully funded. I'd recommend looking into it for anyone applying next year, especially in NY. This forum has been a great help, and I've really loved seeing everyone's news and talking with you all! Thanks for helping me get through the season! ❤️

Columbia IS competitive, especially if you've got any funding offers! Like NYU, they accept a larger cohort, but they also get a very large amount of applicants and the amount they accept is around 20% at most, much less with funding. Sure, less competitive than some schools that only accept 6 students (and way too expensive without a massive funding offer) but still an achievement. It doesn't seem like I'm getting a Columbia acceptance at all (though I guess we don't know for sure if they're done yet).

Nothing to apologize or be sensitive about haha, you're all good! It's not your responsibility to know what programs everyone else is applying to or when those programs are releasing stuff or mind all of our feelings. Celebrate your success, we're happy for you!!! 🎉🎉 I'm just a bit emotional because that seems to be the end of my run aside from some maybe waitlist possibilities, and while I do have 3 acceptances, they're all to less competitive non-fully-funded schools I'm not sure will be the best fit and I'm now entering crisis mode of "Do I try again next year or just go with what I got"

Oh no, that's a bit crushing 😭 I just got my Brown rejection but was still holding out hope for Hunter since there's been no mention of it here or draft. Congrats, though!

Many schools do stagger acceptances, even email/portal update one, for various reasons unknowable to us mere mortals. The reality we've seen is that there's no way to guess how long most schools are going to actually take. I thought I'd been soft rejected from The New School when mass emails went out one day, and then 2 days later I got a stray acceptance with funding. Essentially: it's not over til the rejection comes!

Acceptance emails can take a long time, for various reasons. It's rare that they go out in bulk for most schools, actually, it seems. The New School sent out what looked like mass acceptance portal updates in one day, and then 2 days after that I got a stray acceptance I was not expecting. So don't give up, it's not over til the rejection comes!

Happy 100 pages all!! I'm so proud of our generation of applicants and all we've put into this year. Lots of sharing information and advice, supporting and congratulating each other, and many of us getting into incredible programs! Whatever happens this year, I know that every one of you has worked your hardest to follow your dreams, and even if it's not this time around, I hope every dream comes true 💜

Columbia definitely does NOT accept everyone, it is still a competitive ivy league school. However, they do accept a larger cohort than a lot of other schools, and very few people get offered any funding, let along substantial funding. They're ridiculously expensive at about $140k for 2 years, and it's really not worth going into debt if you don't get a good enough funding offer. Columbia only just started sending out acceptances, so there's still news yet to come. If you get any acceptances or waitlists at all, have confidence in your writing-- even less competitive schools won't accept just ANYONE who's willing to pay! Not yet, they just started sending waitlists. Will probs take another couple days, though sometimes they stretch things out for a while.

Huh, I got an acceptance to The New School with a 30% tuition funding offer! I really thought they were done, perhaps this is the "lower half of the alphabet" curse again 🤣 or something else. Who knows, admissions offers are a nebulous magical force. With NYU wailists and Columbia acceptances coming out now, hoping for good news for everyone! 🙏 and congrats to those who've gotten that good news already today!

Congrats on the Brown acceptances/waitlists!! I got my rejection for the cross disciplinary track, but I will jump on the bandwagon to summon a fiction acceptance from there and Hunter 🙏 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 💜 Brown 🕯 🕯 fiction 🕯 🕯 summoning 🕯 🕯 circle💜 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 💜Hunter 🕯 🕯 fiction 🕯 🕯 summoning 🕯 🕯 circle💜 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

Happy Monday all!! Back to the days of eager anticipation! Time for the Weekly Writernity Forecast (as usual, mostly focused around the schools I applied to since I haven't closely tracked the stats of others): I'm predicting this week and the next will be a flood of news! Brooklyn has started accepting poets and may call a few more in the next couple of days. It seems they usually do interviews for fiction, not sure if that's the case this year or what the situation is for playwriting, but in any case I expect they'll start contacting fiction interviewees/acceptances this week as well. Hunter should also start contacting interviewees soon, but might be a little later than usual this year. I'm planning to go to their reading event tonight to get a feel for the vibe and see if I can scope out any info, will keep yall updated! Brown, Columbia, and The New School are also looming on the horizon, more likely to contact admits next week rather than this one, but it's possible we'll get early news. Hold those umbrellas high, the storm is coming!

Ty both!! Lol, I do like Stony brook too still 🤣 Mville doesn't offer full funding, but they try to cover at least 1/3rd of tuition for all students and the teaching assistantship (which is the real cincher on whether or not I'll go since teaching experience is high priority) turns the 2-year program to 3 years and fully funds the last 2 years. It's about $15k a year total, so if I got that that's all I'd have to pay, or even less with a merit scholarship or lit mag assistantship. I think it's technically possible to get full tuition coverage with the best offers, but idk if anyone actually gets that. The only downside cost-wise compared to SB is that it's too far to commute and the area around is really expensive, and on-campus housing would be about $5.5-6k a semester, so the total costs might end up being about the same or even more expensive. I'd have to do a lot of math to figure out if there'd be a significant difference between them lol, and will definitely have to visit both to see culture in person. Plus I've still got my hopes up for response from other more funded schools, so it might be too early to ramble about math... but if my number crunching can help anyone else in the future I'm happy to do it lol!

Manhattanville continues to impress me! After a form acceptance yesterday (on a very nice, easy to navigate portal with cute celebratory graphics) the program director followed up with a personal congratulations email today mentioning what the committee liked about my sample (they also let me submit a sample above the listed page limit when I asked lol). Funding decisions are coming in mid-March so I'm not sure if I'll be able to go, but I've gotten the strong impression that it's a very personable and community-oriented program that seems underrated.

The hacks keep coming 😭 it seems to be safe for now, but every time it starts getting dicey again I close out for the day. I'm not a very superstitious person myself, but I still compulsively find the nearest wood to knock on whenever I mention anything about my grad school hopes 🤣 Little rituals and looking for signs are a natural human thing to keep our brains sane in the uncertainty and stress of this process.

Congrats to everyone's acceptances!! I just got an acceptance from Manhattanville myself! No funding offers yet-- they said those will come mid-March. The decision DID however have cute graphics with the school's mascot floating down with confetti! Their portal is probably the best-looking and most organized of the schools I applied to.

Some of my info I might have got from going to the open house, a lot of stuff on the admissions page is definitely not accurate! It also says Jan 7th as the funding deadline in one spot and Jan 1st somewhere else, it's very unclear lmao. It doesn't say years on the page, just that it's average 12 credits for a full time semester (since most courses are 4 credits) and at the open house they said it's usually 2-2.5 years full time. There's definitely a lot of obscurity lol it's so frustrating. If you have any other questions about stuff there I have notes from the open house and can see if I have any answers! You might've missed my other reply earlier, repasting-- "Yesterday I got the "acceptance offer pending admissions board review" email I mentioned, and then today I got an email to check my portal where there was a more official acceptance and funding offer!" It does also say that the 25% tuition remission can apply to a third year, but not the stipend.

Yeah wouldn't it be 46, 12 credits a semester on average as the admissions page says?? it's a 2 year program full time, not 3 years (though you CAN do part time and a lot of people do an extra semester for thesis focus, the credits needed would be the same). Idk what you're looking at differently because I'm referring to the same document in the 2024 calculations I did.

The admissions page estimates $9,117.90 a semester for a full-time NY resident, x4 is $36,471.60. The tuition remission is $6500 a year, x2 is $13k. Subtracting that from tuition is $23,471.60 before stipend (which would total another 13k). It does also seem that for the 2024 Spring semester the price has gone up a bit to an estimated $10,043.16 which may stay as high for the Fall- however, in the breakdown it looks like $3k of that is health insurance, so if you can waive that (which I would be able to for at least the first year) the tuition per semester is closer to $7k-- which WOULD be around $14,885 after remission. Not sure if I've got it right, what numbers are you looking at??

Yesterday I got the "acceptance offer pending admissions board review" email I mentioned, and then today I got an email to check my portal where there was a more official acceptance and funding offer!

I am a NY resident, but 25% tuition means I'd still have to pay about 23.5k for the 2 years 😅 and more if I did the extra semester they encourage. Plus whatever it costs to do the summer Southhampton conference, which they don't fully cover. That is NOT a full ride by any means and even putting the full 2 years stipend towards tuition would bring it down to 10.5k, so I'd still have some debt and still have to work for living expenses. It's not a HORRIBLE amount of debt which is why I'm still keeping it in consideration, but it's definitely not ideal.

Finally got a funding offer followup from Stony Brook! It's the 25% tuition + small stipend one some others here have gotten. The letter said this is "one of the highest offers our program is able to make" and they mentioned at the open house that they don't really offer full tuition to anyone anymore, so I'm not sure if they still offer the 50% funding TAship they advertise on the website or if this is what that one dropped to. I'm a little disappointed because I really like SB, but this might be too much for me to pay for unless I don't get any better offers and decide I really want to stick with it.

Yes lol!!! The actual rejection notice is in the attached file which feels so unnecessary if they're just sending the same thing to everyone anyway 🤣

Got my rejection from Pittsburgh! Knew it was coming since I didn't get an interview. Congrats to anyone who's been accepted/waitlisted!

It likely wouldn't hurt your chances (unless you kept nagging them), but you're not likely to get any concrete answers either. Brown usually sends stuff out in early-mid March, I'm expecting we'll hear from them in the next 2-3 weeks