small-spiral-lines

This might have cropped up earlier in this thread but, any advice here for waitlisters? how to navigate/good questions to ask/when historically people have seen movement off lists? got a waitlist today at my top school pick…feeling insane and so grateful! and now the infinite feeling waiting game begins. Curious for folks thoughts or advice. Sending good vibes to everyone! ⭐️

If at all helpful as an anecdote as we wait it out here and contemplate the void - at my good ol current 9-5 job I oversee selections for an application process that typically sees 300-400 applicants. of those, we choose 2-3 to offer this opportunity (keeping vague for the internet) to. At a certain point, I am staring at a pool of 30 amazing applications thinking “dang, any one of these people would be incredible! this is a great next step for all of them and they’re all impressive.” and the narrowing down from there is, to a wide extent, randomness, what we are looking for in that given time period, and factors totally outside the applicant’s control. It feels the process must be similar, but with even more applicants, for MFAs. Rejections are not an indication of quality or promise when you can only admit the smallest percent! Keep at it! my fingers are crossed for everyone!

I'm also floored by this! Sending around your transcript, without your permission (as if the transcript is a metric for anything??) is particularly awful. To add on to what others have said (I've heard the same from truly everyone: the writing sample is 100% the most important part of your application) I think one of the most damming parts of this is that your recommender couldn't conceive of the strengths of a writer coming from a disparate field, or of one of their former students having the curiosity and dedication to switch fields. that's a natural and exciting decision. One of the best things about writing is that people come to it from wide experiences. To deter someone from that, esp as an educator is..quite wild. Also heck, we all know there's basically "no way" most of us are getting into these programs ! They are all insanely selective! but here we are trying, and cheers to that. Hopeful that you can find someone else--there is still time! And recommenders I find often crank out the letters in the week prior to the first deadline anyway. Sending good wishes--you've got this!