writernity

Whoops, I wasn't specific enough-- as Triciadawn said, the updates were in the Draft spreadsheet, not Facebook posts 😅 Congratulations on Miami!!

It's my first too, wishing us both luck! 🤞 It seems they usually send out interview requests within the course a week or so!

ALERT: Two people on Draft have gotten Pittsburgh interview emails! From past years, it seems they interview anyone they're going to accept/waitlist in late Jan/early Feb. I don't think that's necessarily true-- most schools seem to look only at the quality of your writing and say they don't care about your background, though I do know some programs (like Pittsburgh) do prioritize those with a background in English. I did a psychology major and creative writing minor myself, and if anything learning in-depth psychology has greatly enhanced my writing. Which is something I tried to stress in my SOPs lol 😅 Maybe some of the highly competitive programs might factor it in when deciding between final applicants, but I really doubt it's a major concern. However, I do know that schools like to see that you'd do well in a workshop environment and be able to contribute good feedback, so having a writing/English minor or participating in a couple of workshops is probably a boon. I'm happy to share! Game writing is lots of fun!! I just took an online narrative games writing workshop with Greg Buchanon-- I definitely recommend it for learning more about games writing and the industry, as well as meeting a lot of awesome people. I do not have much programming skill myself lol, I used Renpy which is a VN engine that's really easy to use and pretty quick to learn! It runs on Python and doesn't really require any math, just figuring out the basic language. Plus it's free! Most of my samples had some speculative or surrealistic elements, so I'm also hoping that 😅 Personally, I feel like strict genre divides are often pointless and it's so hard to tell what fits in where. As long as the stories are literary at their core, a lot of schools seem open to speculative elements, but definitely not all of them, and sometimes it's hard to tell which.

Awesome to see the diversity of what everyone writes!! I'm a fiction specialist myself, and occasionally dabble in (not very good) poetry. I mainly write literary and literary-spec fic, but also some less literary horror, mystery/thriller, and queer romance. I also write (and program, draw, and voice act for) visual novel games! I haven't had an opportunity to take any courses in screenwriting or nonfiction, but would love to try them out. I'd also love to do more playwriting. Basically, I want to explore every form of writing I can! Which is an appeal of a couple of programs I applied for. But I'd also be happy to buckle down and focus on really polishing a publishable novel manuscript + maybe a couple short stories, especially since professorship hinges more on publications than anything else and that is the eventual goal.

Uh oh, is it? 😅 Hopefully including my interest in teaching undeserved populations too will make it a bit less terrible... I know college level teaching positions after graduating are far from guaranteed, but is it that bad to mention ambition? I don't recall any advice saying to avoid it in my research. I feel that 100%! Syracuse, NYU, Cornell, and Manhattanville all want to know if you have interest in/experience teaching IIRC. I'd think schools that have teaching assistantships would be interested in applicants who actually want to teach.

They do have on-campus housing for 21+ students that grad students can live in! That's also a major concern for me-- it's not convenient to commute to, and the rent prices in the area ARE really high. The director said the on-campus pricing is somewhere around $5.5-6k a semester, so definitely a pretty big expense if you can't find cheaper housing nearby. I'd say if you want to apply do it soon, since the priority deadline has passed for financial aid rewards but they haven't made any decisions yet.

I'm definitely prioritizing schools that are guaranteed fully funded, but also wanted to add a couple of good opportunities that aren't guaranteed but have the possibility of full/almost full tuition coverage. If you play your cards right with Manhattanville and get the teaching track + lit mag assistantship + merit scholarship, you'd end up fully covering tuition, and if you missed out on either the lit mag or scholarship it'd still only be paying about $2500 for 3 credits in the first semester and all the rest would be covered with the teaching track + one of them. From speaking to the director, it seems they try to give the merit scholarship to as many people as they can, too, trying to cover at least 1/3rd of the tuition for everyone. I know some people don't want to have to teach, though, which is fair-- for me it's a perk because I'm aiming for professorship, and gaining in-classroom teaching experience was one of the top factors in the schools I chose. Mville isn't my first choice, but if I got into only that and Columbia with partial scholarships, I'd definitely pick it over Columbia.

Hi all!! I just started really taking a look at these forums. I didn't realize how useful they might have been earlier in the app process, but now at least I can scream about the Anxiety of Waiting here! I have one app left to do due in a couple of days--it's more or less finished, but I'm reading one of the professor's books to make my SOP more personal. I'm applying to 12 total schools (13 apps-- 2 for Brown in Fiction and Cross-disciplinary/Digital Media) and have absolutely 0 idea how good my prospects are. So hard to tell when the success of your writing sample is largely up to the subjective taste of the faculty 😭 One school I applied to but haven't seen any discussion of is Manhattanville-- is there a reason it seems to be completely under the radar? It doesn't offer much funding, but if you get accepted for the teaching track it turns a 2 year program to 3 with the last 2 years of tuition fully covered. There are also additional tuition remission opportunities in merit scholarships and working on their lit mag. The opportunities don't seem bad compared to some other more expensive non-funded programs, and there's a strong emphasis on community building and a lot of literary events hosted there. I spoke to the program director in a zoom meeting, who seems very nice and eager to find people who will be a good fit for the program, and it's been around since the 90s. So, what gives? Why haven't I seen a single person mention it by searching the forums? Am I missing something??