Creative Writing MFA applicants forum 2019

[Tresnerv]

Heard back with a rejection from Syracuse on Tues. 

 

Waiting on 5 other programs ? kind of wishing I didn't apply to just the very top programs at the moment. 

[unfortunate ith]

2 hours ago, Tresnerv said:

Waiting on 5 other programs ? kind of wishing I didn't apply to just the very top programs at the moment. 

I definitely feel that. Looking at 3 rejections and 6 still pending. Only now do I realize how arrogant I was in choosing only 9 schools and not even thinking about "safety schools" (although no fully funded MFA can really be considered a safety).

Ah well, valuable information for next year, I suppose.

[Kdish]

.

Edited February 15, 2019 by Kdish
Want to delete but don’t know how

[youeatrice]

On 2/14/2019 at 12:31 PM, AnxiousKenyangirl said:

Heeeyy all. This thread is so dope. I am so glad I discovered it. I have been freaking out so much, I have to remind myself to breathe. I received my first rejection letter yesterday from University of California San Diego and it sent me into a mini panic. Waiting on responses from Arizona, Michigan State, Syracuse, Brown, Rutgers, Miami Ohio, WUSTL and Virginia Tech... Any news on any of those? The next two weeks feel like eternity stretched out. I have to constantly remind myself even if I am rejected by all of them it is not a measure of my abilities lol.

I've heard back from Syracuse (rejection) and Miami Ohio (acceptance) Both for fiction. Still waiting on Arizona, Brown and WUSTL!

[OverzealousMFAApplicant]

Hey guys:

I've received rejections from Ole Miss, Ohio State, and WashU.

[Tresnerv]

People are getting calls from Iowa (fiction)... according to draft. 

[Mirabellex]

Hi everyone!!! So glad I found this I have been so nervous // floundering the past few weeks. Has anyone heard back from Cornell?? I think they should have done acceptance calls yesterday according to past year acceptances...(for fiction)

Edited February 16, 2019 by Mirabellex

[sonervous]

On 2/15/2019 at 1:54 PM, OverzealousMFAApplicant said:

Hey guys:

I've received rejections from Ole Miss, Ohio State, and WashU.

Didn't hear anything from Ole Miss and also same - rejected from Ohio and WashU. 

[Tresnerv]

safe to say not hearing from certain school's at this point means rejection? I'm guessing that since I haven't been in contact with UPitt at all and some people have already interviewed/ are on the waitlist, I have been rejected. lol. 

[thirdshot]

On 2/14/2019 at 4:46 PM, unfortunate ith said:

I definitely feel that. Looking at 3 rejections and 6 still pending. Only now do I realize how arrogant I was in choosing only 9 schools and not even thinking about "safety schools" (although no fully funded MFA can really be considered a safety).

Ah well, valuable information for next year, I suppose.

Would we say that applying to 9 schools is arrogant? I think it’s more a matter of what tier of school you’re applying to. This is my first rodeo though, so I may well be wrong. I spent a couple of years reading the work of poets on faculty at various places and whittling down a list of folks I’d like to work with. 

I applied to 5 programs:

Syracuse (rejected), Michigan, U Wisconsin-Madison, U Idaho-Moscow, Boise State.

[unfortunate ith]

On 2/17/2019 at 1:30 AM, thirdshot said:

Would we say that applying to 9 schools is arrogant? I think it’s more a matter of what tier of school you’re applying to. This is my first rodeo though, so I may well be wrong. I spent a couple of years reading the work of poets on faculty at various places and whittling down a list of folks I’d like to work with. 

I applied to 5 programs:

Syracuse (rejected), Michigan, U Wisconsin-Madison, U Idaho-Moscow, Boise State.

Maybe not the number of programs, but I definitely didn't take tier into consideration. Spent a long time figuring out where I wanted to go without thinking about where I had a realistic shot of getting in.

[Mirabellex]

Has Michigan started to send out notifications??

UPDATE: I received a rejection notification for fiction!! Good luck // congrats to everyone that got in. My last name starts with D (maybe they are sending out alphabetically?) 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Mirabellex

[Thursby]

On 2/16/2019 at 10:25 AM, Mirabellex said:

Hi everyone!!! So glad I found this I have been so nervous // floundering the past few weeks. Has anyone heard back from Cornell?? I think they should have done acceptance calls yesterday according to past year acceptances...(for fiction)

I also applied to Cornell, but haven't heard from them yet. I think they'll probably notify by the end of Feb/beginning of March.

[Mirabellex]

@Thursby thank you for the update!! Much appreciated. 

[mjm7668]

Ahhhhhhh. Been rejected from OSU, UMass Amherst, and Michigan so far. Starting to get discouraged but I just have to keep reminding myself I'm doing this because I love writing and whether or not I get in, I'll continue to write and get better and reapply later! Good luck to all of you!

[thirdshot]

Yeah, received my rejection from Michigan bright and early this morning. Three more schools to hear from... would agree I’m feeling a bit discouraged. In fairness, I did aim pretty high. ??‍♂️

[sonervous]

Has Iowa finished calling people? I haven't received any call or email from them. They are a long long shot but the wait is killing me.

[Tresnerv]

10 hours ago, sonervous said:

Has Iowa finished calling people? I haven't received any call or email from them. They are a long long shot but the wait is killing me.

Wondering about this as well--as in the past there have been several waves of calls. 

[Thursby]

Got hosed on the UW Madison app...

[archangel_]

Since we've been flooded with a lot of responses this past week and will be flooded with more tomorrow and the coming week, just a reminder to everybody who's been refreshing this thread and the results page a million times an hour,  in case you need to hear this:

You are a writer.

You will always be a writer.

Nothing these results say will change that.

You're dedicated. You're passionate. Nobody spends hundreds (or even thousands) on application fees for the heck of it. Writing is probably not your day job, but you do it anyway, don't you? You squeeze it into your free time, lose sleep, suffer your shit 9-5 just so you can get home and put words on the page. Nobody is forcing you to do this. You do this because you LOVE it. Because you'd probably stop breathing before you'd stop writing.

It is statistically more likely that you will be mugged than get into a good number of the top MFA programs in the country, based on the applicant size last year and the number of admitted students. Rejection does not mean that you are the worst. It does not mean that you are a failure. It means that there is an EXTREMELY limited number of spots in any given MFA program, and these programs have an insanely difficult task in selecting from a massive pool of talented people based on a single writing sample. It's irrational to read a rejection as "I didn't deserve it" or "I'm no good." The fact is that loads and loads of people (yes, yourself included) are good, insanely good, wildly good, and writing is an artform, not a perfectly quantifiable and measurable skill. There is no secret formula you're missing. Cohorts are assembled in a lot of ways. Ask folks who have read applications before and they will tell you -- there's a lot that goes into the decisions, and it's not exactly replicable from program to program. There's no point to wondering what you did "wrong" because "wrong" isn't the point. You're good, okay? You're super good. And this is who you are, and this is what you do. You write. No matter what those results say, you won't stop writing. You'll keep writing because you are a writer.

I completely get it. Look, it is natural for us to pin our dreams to things that are literally Our Dreams. Reading that rejection SUCKS, no getting around it. I got rejected across the board last year. I spent my rent on application fees, tanked my budget while telling myself it would all be worth it, and then felt like a shitty fraud as the rejections rolled in. I made the fatal mistake of taking every single one of those rejections personally. I would read the email, have a long and hard sob at my desk, and then decide I was terrible. I refreshed this website more times than I'd like to admit, rode a lot of gnarly anxiety waves, and when that final letter from Iowa arrived in March saying the game was up, I was donezo. With everything. It was a Big Bad Very Shit Time and I wish that at some point somebody had pulled me aside and said hey pal, look, it's not you. It ain't personal. There is no Committee of People Who Decide Who Is a Real Writer and you did not just Fail Spectacularly Before Said Committee. 

I did not stop writing. You won't stop writing either. I'm waiting on all but one of my results, and there's a darn good probability that I've got at least one rejection in my future. I mean, that's just statistics. Can't really argue with statistics. When that rejection comes, eh. It won't feel great, sure, because I really wanted it. But it is not the final decider on my work, or my worth as a writer, or my potential.

The only person who owns your future is you. Not an admissions committee (who are honestly just doing their best with a process that is really truly tough on everybody) and not an admissions result. 

You wrote before this. You will write when this is all said and done. You will keep writing. You are a writer, period.

[notocashews]

This was so kind and wonderful to read. Thank you, archangel, for taking the time to write this for the rest of us. 

[Conure]

I agree, that was really what I needed to hear right now myself. I got rejected by Iowa last year too. It hurt, yes, but I knew it was a long shot and that given some personal circumstances, it was probably for the best. I applied to five programs this year and have so far gotten into one. I am still so over the moon, but I know that this whole game really is so unpredictable. The rest of the results could be rejections, and while that will hurt, I'm glad I went through with it this year. I almost didn't even bother applying at all this year. 

[OverzealousMFAApplicant]

Thank you for this. We tie our self worth to these results. Completely irrational.

[wheeeeeeeeee]

Rejected by Virginia Tech today.

[mightyalrighty]

Also got rejected by Virginia Tech on Monday.

Waitlisted at University of South Carolina--got an email from the coordinator two weeks ago.

Still waiting to hear from Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, College of Charleston, University of Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina State.

Good luck to everyone!