goldentulip

got my umass rejection!! grateful to finally have all my rejections be hard and not soft 🤪

thank you 🥹

can empathize so much with this as a fellow first-gen student!! i’ve had the privilege of being guided by and studying under poets who have had wonderful things happen to them in their careers (guggenheim and macarthur fellowships, an inaugural poet) and i was given a lot of really great guidance and reality checks with my expectations. but one of the biggest things they emphasized was that whether i got in or not, i was still a poet, a writer, and someone still worthy of these labels even if no school within the application cycle saw it. they shared countless stories of friends, students, and fellow writers who it didn’t work out for at the beginning, but despite initial rejections, made it out the other end better than they could’ve imagined. i like to doom-spiral in my head a lot, and my past year’s applying just validated those thoughts. but, i’ve come to a place where even if my single waitlist doesn’t pan out (i’ll definitely be a little devastated) but i’ll know that if anything, i had the privilege to even apply and dream about one day be writing for a living.

fingers crossed this works for waitlist movement too🤞🏼 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 iu bloomington 🕯 🕯 ❤️ 🕯 🕯 acceptance 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

@jadedoptimist CONGRATS ON BROWN!!!!!!!!!

Kind of random, but still literary! Since Miami has been mentioned, and its 305 day (our area code, it’s a big celebration), I must share about our city! Aside from what you all may have heard about this city (and the state it resides in), it’s an awesome literary city! If you ever want to visit, we have an amazing poetry festival (O,Miami) every April (national poetry month) that “aims to have every person in Miami-Dade County encounter a poem during the month of April.” (I’ve seen Kaveh Akbar, Paige Lewis, and Hanif Abdurraqib here!) They do a lot of great community work! Then in November, we have a really well rounded, week long book fair. Both events get incredible writers into the city (in previous years I’ve seen poets like Ross Gay, Major Jackson, Sam Sax, Chen Chen, Mahogany L. Browne, Nicole Sealey, Sandra Cisneros [got to interview her!!!], Fatimah Asghar)! And finally: our local, independent bookstore—Books & Books, just recently started a literary foundation to help continue its community building and help fight against a lot of the book bans and restrictive legislation we’re facing in the state! Okay, sorry for my ramble, but I do love this city, and hope you all can come one day and visit (maybe during these special events)!

I didn’t go to UM, but I did go to FIU for undergrad and most all the CRW professors are friends. I’ve heard great things about their program so fingers crossed for you!! If you want any info about Miami, or South Florida, let me know—I was born and raised here!

vandy hard rejections have started! being out of the liminal space is nice. 🥲 currently at: 0a/1w/2r/2p

a walk in the woods would be so nice. i’d go to the beach and read, but since its the weekend, it’ll be crowded. because of my poetry fried brain, i actually have been brainstorming and writing fiction for the first time since undergrad workshops. i think i’ll spend this weekend holed away and seeing where it could go. it’ll be better than doomscrolling and anxiously mulling over my what-could-have-been soft rejections.

curiosity: have we found out why indiana has no reported acceptances, only waitlist and rejections? is it like a thing where, as people drop out of the waitlist, they’ll then send out acceptances? have i missed something?

oh this is beautiful!!! thank you!!!!

omg yes please! i neeeeeed more queer recs. i love my friends but everything is very het. i read my first romance at the beginning of jan, and now i’m on my eighth book of the year which is wild for me because i’ve been a devoted poetry + creative nonfiction reader for the past few years. i read my first book ever with explicit neurodivergent rep and it was very exciting. would you be willing to share your goodreads? 🫣 i was forced to make one and now i love reading some of the unhinged reviews people leave LOL

i love seeing the way we’ve all coped with the anxiety. i’m still here, waiting in the liminal space for the rest of my apps. i’m expecting a rejection soon from umass amherst based on the draft sheet. everyone seems to have gone towards more serious fiction and i have shut my brain off and dived into romance for the first time LOL will definitely be adding all your recommendations to my tbr list

it took me about a week to get accepted!! and i was accepted like 3 days ago! its a facebook group! if you look up MFA Draft ‘24 on facebook, you’ll be able to request to join! there’s lots of resources (like the spreadsheets) and discussion going on through there as well

has anyone by chance applied to FIU?

Brown, Boston, UMass Amherst, Indiana-Bloomington, and Vanderbilt were my list!

oh yes definitely! i wish they would say tbh. at least my informal rejection email from boston said it—which they received over 650 total applicants. 😖

🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

indiana bloomington notifying waitlist (poetry)! i was trying to be totally chill but was honestly a little worried i wouldn’t get in anywhereeeee. so waitlist is EXCITING!! ross gay is one of my favorite poets, so if this turns into an acceptance i would actually probably pee my pants. also, email came from brando skyhorse (fiction prof) which was really cool. 0a/1r/1w/3p

i don’t 😭 searched everywhere for it and can’t figure out what platform i saw it one 🫠

yes! there was actually a post a few weeks ago circulating that was a photo of her, aaron dessner, and jack antonoff during a recording session and the caption was “in another life they would head the english department somewhere” and it made me laugh. and when the announcement came out i felt like the leo dicaprio meme like “hey! did they see this!?”

Hi, all! Anxiety got the best of me and I started researching decision dates for the MFAs I applied to, and came across this forum! Honestly glad I did, as my friends have already graduated from MFAs, so I’m kind of on my own waiting here. I’m 5 years out of graduating from undergrad (English with a focus in Creative Writing). This is my second year applying. This year I applied to Brown, BU (got rejected), UMass, Indiana-Bloomington, and Vanderbilt for poetry. I know it’s a small selection but I’m AuDHD, so chose based on my needs. I was scared about it at first, but honestly after speaking to professors and friends I’ve kind of settled into the mentality of whatever happens, happens at this point. Good luck to all of us! Glad this micro-community exists. 0a/0w/1r/4p