2021 Applicants Forum

[Botanica]

13 minutes ago, susweekly said:

Has anyone who’s interviewed for MFA programs share their insights? I know there’s some totally obvious question I’m going to be unprepared for. (For me I always get stuck on, “what questions did you have for us?”)

I would suggest for the age old, "What questions do you have for us?", ask them what areas of opportunities they see within your portfolio/experiences/etc. Also, do some digging into what your program has to offer outside of the coursework and ask them about how to get involved with those things or to expand on what their literary community has to offer (this could be events, activism, teaching opps, publishing, etc).

[mrvisser]

34 minutes ago, eternalwhitenights said:

Breathe. ❤️ You're going to be okay. Also, hugs, and here's the brown paper bag for dry heaving. #solidarity

Is it a program that automatically has full funding or is it one that just has partial funding? Just making sure it's not the troll or anything so you're not hyperventilating unnecessarily. ?

Not everybody gets full funding, and I'm not sure how many people get it. 

[feralgrad]

1 hour ago, teasel said:

give the portfolio to a teacher or mentor you trust, ideally someone who reads contemporary publications and maybe even has an MFA themselves.  Someone who understands what you're trying to accomplish in your writing (not someone who just wants you to write like them).  I think it's really tempting to try and get feedback from friends and family, but unless they read literary magazines it might not be super helpful and just make you second guess your own instinct.

This is great advice, although I think it's more important for poetry. That is, many people can recognize good prose without keeping up with the literary scene. Poetry is much more subject to cultural context/the need to be "fresh." I know you know that, teasel, but I wanted to add this note for fellow prose people who might not have access to a professor or mentor

[feralgrad]

52 minutes ago, susweekly said:

Has anyone who’s interviewed for MFA programs share their insights? I know there’s some totally obvious question I’m going to be unprepared for. (For me I always get stuck on, “what questions did you have for us?”)

Honestly, I took notes. I wrote down answers to likely questions (e.g. what are you reading lately?), as well as a few of my own questions. This is also a strategy I use in job interviews. It may sound strange, but most people seem impressed by the preparation.

[Starbuck420]

3 hours ago, Ydrl said:

Also, hot-take here, I didn’t revise my manuscript after my first submission. I didn’t want to make it worse, as when I go back and edit poems in a hurry/when I’m stressed, they’re somehow worse than the original.

I also think this is a good rule because it could help you better interpret your results. For example: if an unrevised sample gets a waitlist somewhere, and the revised sample gets a straight reject somewhere else, I'm always going to wonder whether the reject was because of the revisions, or in spite of them

[Downtozero]

46 minutes ago, relsidk said:

Soooo say you email an MFA program coordinator (not faculty) once asking about notification timelines, and they don't respond for 2 weeks. You probs shouldn't email again right, and you probs definitely shouldn't email the faculty grad advisor?????

 

Sending good vibes all around this week!

Yeah, don't do this. The answers people have been getting from program admin haven't been reliable anyway, probably because they can't predict exact dates and are overwhelmed with more pressing issues. If it was coming up on the end of March or something maybe, but for now you should just sit tight.

[cecsav]

Is anyone else "attending" AWP this year? I'm so bummed it had to be moved online, since it was supposed to be in KC. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by cecsav

[xyz1231]

Hey hey, longtime lurker here. Accepted to SLC with about 1/3 scholarship. Would really appreciate an honest assessment of the school's reputation, strengths, weaknesses. Is there any world in which it's worth $20,000 per year to attend the program? Is it better to decline and try my luck next cycle?

[mrvisser]

4 minutes ago, xyz1231 said:

Hey hey, longtime lurker here. Accepted to SLC with about 1/3 scholarship. Would really appreciate an honest assessment of the school's reputation, strengths, weaknesses. Is there any world in which it's worth $20,000 per year to attend the program? Is it better to decline and try my luck next cycle?

If you can afford it and really want to go, that's your call, but if I get a partially-funded offer, I'm just trying again next year. There's no universe in which I take on loans for an MFA.

[mrvisser]

Where the Gator people at? There's a University of Florida acceptance on Draft.

Edit: for fiction

Edited March 3, 2021 by mrvisser

[Ydrl]

2 minutes ago, mrvisser said:

Where the Gator people at? There's a University of Florida acceptance on Draft.

Nooooooooooo

[mnlandre]

22 minutes ago, mrvisser said:

Where the Gator people at? There's a University of Florida acceptance on Draft.

Edit: for fiction

I'm gonna vomit for sure, I got a rejection and a waitlist yesterday and this is one of two programs I haven't heard from

[forthetruththeyburnyou]

Greetings, people of Grad Cafe! I, the mysterious forthetruththeyburnyou, am going to let A Cat out of A Bag and let you know that I am in fact The Workshop's Managing Editor. Pleasure making your acquaintance. Please see below for an exciting message!

 

The Workshop will be hosting a *free* I Applied To MFAs: What's Next? panel for MFA applicants (as well as any of you out there who sat out this cycle, but are thinking of applying down the line) on Sunday, March 14th from 4-5:30PM Eastern.

Our panelists are graduates in poetry, fiction, CNF, and hybrid-genre writing from the University of Alabama, Brown, Cornell, Indiana University, Northern Michigan University, UNC-Wilmington, and Warren Wilson. Members of The Workshop team with MFAs from OSU and CU Boulder will also be in the chat helping answer questions, and the event will be spearheaded by moderator Eshani Surya (U of Arizona). We'll be answering questions on how to proceed once you've heard back from your programs, no matter your results.

 

Full details as well as links to our registration and Q&A forms are up on The Workshop's site at readtheworkshop.com/events/. 

 

We're also on Facebook @readtheworkshop, Twitter @The__Workshop, and Instagram @readtheworkshop. And we can't wait to have you at our I Applied To MFAs: What's Next? panel!

(with special thanks to @feralgrad for suggesting I post on this thread)

Edited March 3, 2021 by forthetruththeyburnyou

[scenetwomenu]

1 hour ago, mrvisser said:

Where the Gator people at? There's a University of Florida acceptance on Draft.

Edit: for fiction

Did they say if it was via phone or email?

[susweekly]

Just interviewed with Joshua Henkin at Brooklyn College. I would be interested to know if he was running the interviews for all the other finalists as well or if y’all interviewed with someone else. 

[Botanica]

Just got accepted (via email) at Georgia College & State with full funding and the Arts & Letters Journal Editing Fellowship! I truly thought this round was going to be a wash - I'm so emotional ?

[mrvisser]

Just now, scenetwomenu said:

Did they say if it was via phone or email?

Looks like he got a phone call from Uwem Akpan

[feralgrad]

34 minutes ago, forthetruththeyburnyou said:

I, the mysterious forthetruththeyburnyou, am going to let A Cat out of A Bag and let you know that I am in fact The Workshop's Managing Editor.

Glad to see the MFA Years is being reborn! I relied on that website a lot as I was applying. Obviously this particular event isn't relevant to me, but I signed up for y'all's email list and will definitely be keeping an eye on the new site!

[Ydrl]

54 minutes ago, forthetruththeyburnyou said:

Greetings, people of Grad Cafe! I, the mysterious forthetruththeyburnyou, am going to let A Cat out of A Bag and let you know that I am in fact The Workshop's Managing Editor. Pleasure making your acquaintance. Please see below for an exciting message!

 

The Workshop will be hosting a *free* I Applied To MFAs: What's Next? panel for MFA applicants (as well as any of you out there who sat out this cycle, but are thinking of applying down the line) on Sunday, March 14th from 4-5:30PM Eastern.

Our panelists are graduates in poetry, fiction, CNF, and hybrid-genre writing from the University of Alabama, Brown, Cornell, Indiana University, Northern Michigan University, UNC-Wilmington, and Warren Wilson. Members of The Workshop team with MFAs from OSU and CU Boulder will also be in the chat helping answer questions, and the event will be spearheaded by moderator Eshani Surya (U of Arizona). We'll be answering questions on how to proceed once you've heard back from your programs, no matter your results.

 

Full details as well as links to our registration and Q&A forms are up on The Workshop's site at readtheworkshop.com/events/. 

 

We're also on Facebook @readtheworkshop, Twitter @The__Workshop, and Instagram @readtheworkshop. And we can't wait to have you at our I Applied To MFAs: What's Next? panel!

(with special thanks to @feralgrad for suggesting I post on this thread)

This is so cool! I’ve already registered and I’m encouraging anyone reading this to register too.

It’s free, it’s good information, and you don’t get invitations like this all that often. Also it means we could maybe chat afterwards in real-time? Maybe?

[forthetruththeyburnyou]

3 minutes ago, Ydrl said:

This is so cool! I’ve already registered and I’m encouraging anyone reading this to register too.

It’s free, it’s good information, and you don’t get invitations like this all that often. Also it means we could maybe chat afterwards in real-time? Maybe?

Yay, thank you for signing up and for encouraging! 

 

When you say we could maybe chat afterwards, do you mean me or the panelists? 

[Ydrl]

13 minutes ago, forthetruththeyburnyou said:

Yay, thank you for signing up and for encouraging! 

 

When you say we could maybe chat afterwards, do you mean me or the panelists? 

Anybody who feels like it I suppose.

[forthetruththeyburnyou]

On 3/3/2021 at 11:50 AM, Ydrl said:

Anybody who feels like it I suppose.

Gotcha! We'll be having a Q&A following the panel, but unfortunately our panelists aren't going to be able to stick around after that for an informal discussion. 

Last spring when I participated as a panelist, someone in the audience utilized the contact  form on my website to reach out to me with follow up questions, so that might be the best way to go about reaching out to anyone you'd like to learn more from. 

Happy to answer any further questions about the webinar! 

[dooooodle]

18 hours ago, Embrittled-by-Wait said:

Hey, fellow-MFA applicants!

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. (Sorry in advance for the maudlin username -- it's less a summation of my current mindset, and more I couldn't think of anything.)

I'm kinda dogged by twin insecurities ATM, which have at last caused me to buckle and write this post:

1) Was wondering if anyone heard from JHU. There's been little on this thread (or, well, in the ether) about their Writing Seminars, about when they normally post decisions, &c., so I was curious what you all knew.

2) And then, is it foolish at this point to think Iowa isn't done making phone calls? Are they staggered, or should I assume, having heard tell of one-two acceptances, that they've all gone out?

I'm on tenterhooks like the rest of you. Just wanted to inquire, as well as join you in wallowing in the wait, commiserate a little (with those commiserating -- for those who got in somewhere, congrats!), maybe hear from a couple vet appliers. It's my first go; be gentle!

Just gained access to Draft and there was an Iowa update this morning. Whoever called and asked last week clarified that fiction and poetry acceptances should be done by the end of THIS week (I don't know if that means Friday or Sunday). So, you're not foolish! Hope that helps.

[babypoet2k]

11 minutes ago, dooooodle said:

Just gained access to Draft and there was an Iowa update this morning. Whoever called and asked last week clarified that fiction and poetry acceptances should be done by the end of THIS week (I don't know if that means Friday or Sunday). So, you're not foolish! Hope that helps.

just gonna clarify on a small technicality: they called last week, and got this info. i was having a bit of a panic so i confirmed today (the wording seemed a bit confusing). either way, seems to be that this week is going to be a big one with iowa. ❤️

[goodcynara]

3 hours ago, forthetruththeyburnyou said:

Greetings, people of Grad Cafe! I, the mysterious forthetruththeyburnyou, am going to let A Cat out of A Bag and let you know that I am in fact The Workshop's Managing Editor. Pleasure making your acquaintance. Please see below for an exciting message!

 

The Workshop will be hosting a *free* I Applied To MFAs: What's Next? panel for MFA applicants (as well as any of you out there who sat out this cycle, but are thinking of applying down the line) on Sunday, March 14th from 4-5:30PM Eastern.

Our panelists are graduates in poetry, fiction, CNF, and hybrid-genre writing from the University of Alabama, Brown, Cornell, Indiana University, Northern Michigan University, UNC-Wilmington, and Warren Wilson. Members of The Workshop team with MFAs from OSU and CU Boulder will also be in the chat helping answer questions, and the event will be spearheaded by moderator Eshani Surya (U of Arizona). We'll be answering questions on how to proceed once you've heard back from your programs, no matter your results.

 

Full details as well as links to our registration and Q&A forms are up on The Workshop's site at readtheworkshop.com/events/. 

 

We're also on Facebook @readtheworkshop, Twitter @The__Workshop, and Instagram @readtheworkshop. And we can't wait to have you at our I Applied To MFAs: What's Next? panel!

(with special thanks to @feralgrad for suggesting I post on this thread)

Can't wait for this. Thank you so much!