theotherlily

Wait, you got an email? (didn't apply last year, I feel like when I applied before I got a letter.)

Also, Zissou, I'm only waiting on Julliard, and I've moved so many times this past year that I'm definitely not going to get my rejection letter. Any intel would be great from a life-planning perspective.

@Sealou- You can recycle almost everything else, but you definitely need a new writing sample. You should probably also revamp your personal statement, but unless there was something really really wrong with them, or you get a great new recommender in your life, I wouldn't replace your letters of rec. And use those GRE scores till they run out! Why waste money?

Although, I do have to say, I have friends in Iowa's program, and it seems like it's a fantastic place that they've gotten a lot out of. I suspect that they are further along than they are willing to admit.

That's the thing- it's not the decision deadline for other schools, it's the decision deadline for IOWA. The University of Iowa signed the April 15th agreement. So if you get a funded offer from them, you have till 4/15 to accept it. I don't know how many people Iowa accepts, but maybe they get their funded acceptances out earlier? Yale has reported getting 500-600 applications. Julliard gets 300-400 (which includes tons of recent MFA grads). But every other number I've heard quoted has been much, much lower. Like 60 applications for really fantastic, well known and well-funded programs that get like, 800 fiction application. 35 for less well-known but still successful and well funded programs. I've never heard a self-report on Iowa's numbers.

There's sort of a "grad students rights" document signed by a whole bunch of grad schools- it states that students have until 4/15 to commit to a school. Not every school has signed it, but most have, so it's kind of an industry standard. That means that most programs try to make offers well in advance of the deadline so that prospectives can visit and be love bombed. And I know that UT has made all its offers, so has Yale and Ohio, and Brown, and UI Carbondale and Columbia and NYU and Brooklyn, and if you hang out on the general MFA Draft '14 board, the vast majority of fiction/poetry schools (including Iowa) did their interviews and initial notifications in February/March, and are well into the musical chairs wait list game. It seems sort of crazy on Iowa's part to be waiting this long. There aren't that many playwriting applications. If IWW can handle the insane amounts of fiction applications by March, the playwriting section should be able to cope with its much lower numbers.

4/15 is the deadline to commit at most schools. I buy it out of Julliard cause they don't grant a degree, but dang Iowa! They have to be stretching the truth on this one, or else they are just committing to letting EVERY OTHER SCHOOL pick first.

"Better" is the wrong question to ask. You want to think less about what's "better" and more about what's right for you. I'd tell anyone who got a place at both schools to pick Brown, without hesitation, citing funding and fit. (If you get into Brown, it's probably the right place for you- less true of Columbia.) However, that's not what you asked. You asked about where you should spend your application dollars. Given that you are applying to "dozens" of schools, it's kind of weird that you are balancing Columbia against Brown. I have to assume that they are the two schools occupying the "Ivy League" slot in your MFA roster, because otherwise the schools have nothing in common. Brown is fully funded. Columbia is the most expensive MFA you can get. Brown is incredibly selective. Columbia is probably the least selective well-known MFA out there. Brown is VERY experimental. Columbia is more NYC-literary-commercial. If you're a "Brown" kind of writer, then it's a dream school, and you should apply even though it is a crazy long shot. If you can deal with Columbia's tuition, and you want to live in NYC and shoot for book deals, it's as close to a "safety school" as you can get with an MFA (caveat, there are no safety mfa schools). Anyway, it seems right now like you have a lot of research ahead of you. Luckily, you've got time. I'd encourage you to start by articulating your own goals, work and situation. The question you posted here is both too general and too specific to be helpful. There's a lot of back reading to do, and fb groups to lurk on. Also, look into fee waivers to save money at application time. https://www.cic.net/students/freeapp/introduction

I wouldn't think about it as striking a balance between passion and desperation. I'd think about it as making it clear that a school is one of your top choices while also demonstrating that you can act appropriately. It's like dating a sane person, if any of you have ever done that: don't hide your interest in an attempt to seem cool, but don't act like a psycho stalker. Smith encouraged starsandsound to write an email, so it was appropriate even if it was gushing-( btw congrats STarsandsound, I somehow missed your celebration post! yay! You must have showed a lot of awesome in the plays that you submitted. I think not having a full-length play is a substantial handicap, since you have to write full-lengths in most programs. I know someone who got into Ohio with no full-lengths in her portfolio, but the program head MADE HER WRITE A FULL-LENGTH before offering her admission. (She also had a friend in the program advocating for her.)) I agree that it's good to have some contact with the schools besides the app. I think that (most of the time) it's less about standing out than about proving that you are trustworthy and together. Your writing should make you stand out but if you're going to commit to someone for three years, it's really useful to have a sense of them as a solid person who knows how to operate in the theatre world. Here are some random points on how to do it. 1. Leverage any genuine personal connections that you have. Have you worked with an alumn of the program? Take them out for coffee and ask them questions, and see if they'd be willing to write the program head and say "Hey, this great playwright I know is applying." 2. If the teachers have any readings or talkbacks in your area (anything where they are supposed to interact with the public anyway), attend and introduce yourself. "Hi, I'm a playwright. I'm actually thinking about applying to x school." Don't follow them or approach them if they're not in "required interaction with the public mode." 2. If you have time, visit in the fall, but don't be a high-maintenence visitor. A good trick is to write one of the teachers and say "I'm coming into town on x weekend, are there any classes I can sit in on, or can I drop by the office to talk about the program?" Most of the small, funded programs don't have info weekends, so if you write and say "I'd like to come visit- do you have any programs? When's a good time? Can I stay with a student?" it's like you are asking them to arrange a whole thing just for you. If they DO have an info weekend, or if they want you to stay with a student, they'll reach out. Caveat: if you are a finalist, or you are wait listed, DEFINITELY visit in the spring, and feel free to ask for more help. 3. Follow the program's lead. If you get a chilly response, chill out, and stick to following the application guidelines. Keep in mind that schools are very different. Yale gets over 500 applicants. A lot of other schools will get less than 50 (if that doesn't sound like a lot, remember that 3/50 is six percent, which is a very low acceptance rate.) Again, if a school perceives that you're going to keep asking them to hold your hand throughout the application process, you are going to get iced out, especially if they have a lot of low-knowledge applicants (which is going to be true of a famous drama school like Yale- I don't mean dumb applicants, I mean people who haven't done a lot of research and are only applying to the most visible schools). It's like hitting on someone. Never be afraid to take the first step boldly, but only escalate when you get the green light. 4. If a program has a march deadline, APPLY EARLY.

Cathergirl you are awesome! Good tip on the playpen summer internship. The deadline is 4/1 though so you'd better hop to it if you're interested.

It is better to tell them that you need more time to decide. If you pull out after accepting, it causes a lot of problems, and there's no need to piss people off. If they are CGSR compliant, they are supposed to give you until 4/15 to decide. Check here to see if the schools in question have signed the resolution: https://www.cgsnet.org/april-15-resolution If they have signed the resolution, don't stomp in and say "you have to give me till 4/15 to decide." Just go into negotiations with the knowledge that 4/15 is what they owe you. Just write them and say, very nicely "I need to find out some more information from other schools before making my decision. I should be able to tell you by 4/15, but I will tell you as soon as I have the information that I need." If they haven't signed the resolution, do the same thing. If they are going to yank your acceptance because you are waiting to get financial information from another school, you don't want to be there anyway.

p.s. don't forget to read the comments in the Adam S. linked blog post.

@cathergirl I pm'd you, but then I went into the private message section and realized I had messages from a year ago that I hadn't even read yet, so I'm asking again on the forum! My friend has an acceptance at another school, but he still hasn't heard anything from Ohio, and when he sent a message to Charles the reply was kind of cryptic, so he's trying to figure out how their wait list works: Are you saying that you found out about the wait list on Monday, and then got accepted on Wednesday? @glenwood- at the risk of compromising my ability to talk smack, I'm at Michener UT. @barista and lurker32- I feel like I was way too harsh in my assessment of Columbia- I mean, I stand by my advice, but I was phrasing it the way I would talk to someone I knew- not a stranger. If my friend had a fully funded offer at NYU and was considering an unfunded offer at Columbia instead, I would lobby hard for the funded offer. Obviously Columbia has a lot of strengths as a program, but unless you are independently wealthy, I don't think it's offering enough above what NYU can offer while being funded. As for the alumni- Clarence Coo does seem to be doing really, really fantastically well. As for the rest, I don't think Mark Schulz and Winter Miller are early career (I think Schulz got his MFA in the early 2000s, when the program was different), and Jenny Schwartz, having gone through a different program, isn't really someone to consider- she went to Julliard afterwards for playwriting. I'd forgotten that Adam S. was a Columbia alum since I always think of him as a Julliard person. At any rate, here are some of Adam's ambiguous thoughts on having gone into major debt for his MFA: http://aszym.blogspot.com/2009/01/daisey-on-mfas-for-theater-artists.html I do think it is cool that they are actively recruiting internationally. I mean, that might have something to do with the price tag, but I've often thought that my own program needs to do more active recruiting instead of waiting for people to come to us- we could have a much more diverse class if we worked harder at it. also @Barista- there's a ton of summer stuff, but I think you've missed the majority of the deadlines for this summer. I can't think of anything that you can still apply to. Certainly everything Cathergirl listed is gone... I think OOB is over also, but there's some kind of warning on their website, so I'm not gonna check.

Cather, congrats! It's a really cool program. (p.s., when did they tell you that you were on the wait list, and do you know if they've got their whole class set yet?)

@lavender- I didn't want to badmouth your advice- it's always good to keep writing and learning!- but the person who asked about getting more experience had my school as his/her top choice. I know what my school values- they really like to see you getting out there and making things happen. Plus, the op was recently out of undergrad- so it isn't classroom experience that s/he is missing. Also, I don't know much about the two retreats/classes that you recommended, but I definitely got the sense that they were playwriting components in retreats that were more focused on fiction/poetry. In general, I think people looking to make connections in theatre should prioritize events, conferences and classes that are theatre-focused, not writing focused. If you're doing some professional development, and most of the people around you are poets and fiction writers rather than directors, actors producers and designers, you aren't optimizing those PD dollars. I'm also a big believer in making local connections, even though most of my career has involved travel, that wasn't by choice!