trenchywrench

while i’m still here—or, rather, before i have too much fun at date night and forget how to type—has anyone heard where Rutgers (Camden) is for their fiction applicants? i heard they send out their rejections super late and my application still says it’s under review. how has their spread been looking?

i applied to both these programs for fiction! on 3/7, i was waitlisted for NYU. i haven’t heard back from UMD yet at all. i believe NYU does rejections last, but tons of people haven’t heard back from UMD yet from what i can gather. a few others who applied to UMD have been telling me to treat my status like a soft rejection…but honestly, i have a feeling UMD isn’t done with acceptances yet. as for NYU? yeah, they’re done with acceptances but they may be still waitlisting people because their waitlist doesn’t come out all at once—from what i gather, the notifications are individualized! best of luck to you! i hope we crawl out of UMD’s limbo sooner rather than later.

i applied to LSU as well—if i got in, i’m not sure i’d go even if it were my only option (i’m at 0a/1w/3r/3p) because it’s a 24 hour drive from my loved ones *and* a 3-year program (i have stepkids. i have my fiancée’s permission to go as far away as i want to…but she and i will have to talk about the spread this year when my cycle is over). i’m understanding as i go here that there is a slim chance i may have to make the hard decision to turn down the only offer in pursuit of a 2-year for the 2025 cycle. but that doesn’t change the fact that i applied. my spreadsheet is up-to-date. according to it—and all the data on it comes from the universities, so no second-hand stuff—LSU should start notifying mid-March at the earliest. so, yes; this week. best of luck!

thanks for letting me know! i’m going to wait until i get the actual rejection to put it into my spreadsheet, but it never hurts to have an idea of how you’re standing!

fiction! from what i’ve been reading, poetry has tended to come out first from most schools. i’m not in Draft because i refuse to get Facebook. have there been fiction acceptances/waitlists? UMD only has 3 spots per genre…

anyone else apply to the University of Maryland? i’m just checking in because don’t believe i’ve seen it mentioned at all.

also, idk how i missed this, but. @justasmidge @girlgenius boygenius fans? my fiancée and i love them. she saw them in New Haven last year and called me probably every 20 minutes to tell me how awesome they were and how much she wished i was there. just after they announced their hiatus this year, they released their limited-edition signature guitar with Gretsch: only 1000 were made. well, she doesn't know this and i'm just kind of dying to tell anyone, but the guitar ships like a month before one of our most important anniversaries. so i scraped together some cash to do a pay-in-4--because i knew i'd never get the chance again--and my final installment comes out in a week. i'm going to try to get a case for it when i get my state tax return--my federal all went to car repairs and the little bit of student debt i had to take out to get my B.A.. and this is already shaping up to be one of those mornings during which i need to sit down and remember that i'm 23 years old 😂 everything feels like it's going on at once right now. good on you guys for whatever news you've gotten back from schools. and, if it's applicable: cheers, queers!

on the topic of the NYU fiction waitlist again, because my brain likes to spin around and around ceaselessly about things...how difficult is it to make the waitlist? NYU is especially cryptic about their waitlist stats, even for their undergraduate programs. i saw that literally four of us made either poetry or fiction waitlists this week. is the NYU waitlist very competitive? getting anything other than a rejection with my little lesbian science fiction piece, the back end of which was still mostly slightly-refined draft, is giving me an identity crisis lol also, has anyone heard back from Maryland?

i figure this is probably how it's going to go! i do have sort of a weird feeling that i'll get off the waitlist, so i'm trying to do whatever i can. i qualify for some education credits from the Army, and the program i qualify for has been known to give ex-soldiers stipends in some cases. i'm going to reach out to my local VA and see what this'll look like if i'm already pursuing 50% remission and an assistantship, because i'd rather be prepared and not get in than get in and not be prepared. i will do anything.

okay, now that i'm on the NYU waitlist for fiction. i've heard getting off it is a mixed bag--i know some schools do rank their waitlist, and i know NYU may or may not do this for their full residency CR M.F.A.. the NYU website makes public that the waitlists can extend well into the summer, which--to my knowledge--is still true, as i'm aware of a candidate from 2019 who said they were admitted from the waitlist on july 8th. other schools will try to compile a diverse waitlist so that they can replace someone who declines their offer of admission with somebody who will complement the class makeup similarly; this is what i think may be going on with NYU. either way, i've accepted that my odds of shifting into an acceptance are inconclusive and that sitting on the WL is just as much of a crapshoot as applying to a program in the first place. what i'm worried about is the potential funding package. i'm guessing NYU's system for granting fellowships and funding is priority-based, which probably means their most coveted accepted students will get the packages with the full tuition remission and the stipends. accordingly, the students NYU's committee has deemed the next most promising would get less and less until they chose the bottom of their incoming class, which--according to their website--gets 50% tuition remission and no stipend. NYU is my top choice and i would really like to go if i get off the waitlist. i would take literally any grant or fellowship they have available if i could get the full remission and the stipend i'd need to actually attend their program this year. does anyone know of anything i may be able to start doing in the meantime to prepare? i'm conducting some more comprehensive research on NYU's funding as well as external opportunities (which are fewer, farther between, and not as lucrative as one might hope) just in case. but i honestly think i will be out of luck until next year even if i happen to get accepted.

this is really helpful; thank you! it would be exactly what i'm looking for, except my fiancée is in CT. i already live away from her right now, but i'm a 4-hour distance and i'm trying to get closer rather than farther--she's supportive of me pursuing my dream but i want to make it as easy on her as i can. she deserves that much, and whatever else of the world i can give her. i'm waiting a response on LSU...but even if it were the only school i got into, i think i'd wind up turning it down because it's a 3-year program a 24 hour drive from her. i'd end up applying to 2-year ones closer to her and trying to graduate at the same time i would have. that work/life balance, man...sometimes it means sacrifice.

while i don't have any experience in a creative writing m.f.a. program, i can--funnily enough--speak on this topic. my first undergraduate program was an engineering school. to this day, it has about an 8% acceptance rate (i'm speaking as if i weren't admitted in 2018, lol). it's considered elite and prestigious--so much so that many of my classmates were silver-spoon type kids who weren't used to being told they couldn't do things. while not all privileged people are ignorant about the ways of the world, it doesn't help that the school breakdown is still, like, 80% male. again, not all men are ignorant about the ways of the world. but when you plug variables into a certain formula... privileged + male + 17-23 years old... well. a school that fancy likes to maintain its polished image. what i discovered is that this means the school swept a lot of things that happened within its walls under the rug. but, at some point, the school figured out they could prevent this and started rescinding offers for candidate behavior prior to the first day. however--and i believe this is the piece of news you will be interested in--these offers were ever only rescinded for extremely atrocious behavior. now, you might be asking what qualifies as extremely atrocious behavior in the eyes of an elite school. so, if you want to get your offer rescinded by a high-caliber school? i will be your guide. all of these things must be true: 1. you did something illegal, and 2. you were caught for what you did, or there are enough character witnesses arguing that this sort of behavior would be on-brand for you (if this is the case, then at least one witness must be very important) 3. the illegal thing that you did is something the school considers controversial. and there you have it! i hope this makes you feel better xD

guess i might've spoken too soon! just found out i made it onto NYU's fiction waitlist!

thanks so much for your response! yeah, i get the same general impression from a few schools! i did lots of research on faculty for statements of purpose and to ensure the schools were a good fit for me in general. because i won't have that veteran's funding in place until it's time to apply for the 2025 cycle, i can include schools like Sarah Lawrence (which i've gathered has a really good spec fic program), which aren't necessarily fully funded, to my list next year. i started writing sci-fi for the same reasons many people write literary fiction: to comment on the state of our world from the lens of one little person in it. the difference between me and a writer of literary fiction is that i build fictional worlds to support these statements rather than drawing on aspects of our real one--that is, my work does have a strongly literary quality that i am aware of even despite the impostor syndrome. i won't lie, though--i didn't feel quite ready to submit a lot of my applications by the time the deadlines rolled around, though i had been working constantly on everything app-related. i completed my B.A. in September and have really just begun to understand my own style and brand. funnily enough, i feel prepared now. it's not going to hurt me to build a list of schools that could better support my work for this next cycle! i appreciate you. best of luck on your literary endeavors

hi! saur late here. posting because i want advice from the other doers and have-doners. i got my rejections from Syracuse and JHU, as well as the famous UVA soft rejection that i see has been a topic of discussion here. i am waiting on NYU (the full-residency--not the Paris), Rutgers (Camden), and Maryland. i understand there have been sentiments here about giving up on NYU and Rutgers. because of this, and because i intend to move out of the state in which i'm currently living to be closer to family in case i don't get in anywhere (which i'm assuming so that i may plan accordingly), i am starting research on applying for the 2025 cycle already. so i wanted to ask you guys. i am looking for programs that offer teaching assistantships because i want to teach undergraduate students for a living. while i only applied to fully-funded programs this year due to cost concerns, i am a disabled veteran and i just learned that i can probably get two years of a program paid for if i want to attend one that'll cost me. more importantly, i am a chiefly a speculative writer and am wondering if anyone knows of programs with admissions committees that don't laugh science-fictioners out the door. based on the research i have done, many speculative programs don't have what i need as they tend to be low-residency/expensive/lacking the teaching opportunities i'll need to begin a professorial career. do i have to be a poser and pretend i only want to write what we call "literary" fiction? of course, i plan to research on my own, because 1. this is obviously very important to me, being the most major step i can take now toward what i want to do with my existence, and; 2. what half-sane person wouldn't? but i feel as if multiple people here--because we've all researched programs and will continue to, extensively--may be able to chime in. if anyone would like to help, then what's the word? also, it's nice to meet you lovely people. let's hold hands in anxious solidarity?