2021 Applicants Forum

[Ydrl]

5 hours ago, Graceful Entropy said:

Y'all. I love you, but I can't stress this enough: Please do not engage w/ trolls. 

We call it out (as we have), and then ignore so as not to further the messaging. 
No oxygen, no fuel, no fire.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. This guy’s hilarious.

[Ydrl]

Happy Holidays!

[mrvisser]

Hope all of my new literary friends are having a festive time!

[Graceful Entropy]

Cheers to all celebrating something today, and a happy Friday to those who ain't.

Let's hurry up and finish this year: Can't wait for 2021!

[CanadianKate]

Hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday season!

Think it could be fun to share what we are reading! Trying to load up on some great books to pass the year. 

 

What I'm reading: Just started the New Wilderness (Diane Cook).

[Ydrl]

So Forth by Rosanna Warren

It’s her newest book of poems. I love her so much, what a legend.

[mrvisser]

10 hours ago, archiapelo said:

The Sun Also Rises. It's about this miserable protagonist. The girl he loves is marrying someone else because the protagonist is impotent. The girl sluts around with everyone, and her fiancée knows it, but there is nothing he can do to stop it. He lives with it, miserable too. 

Ah, yes. Poor Jake and his love for Brett.

[mrvisser]

I just finished Lolita, and now I'm rereading A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I haven't read it in a decade so I'm seeing how it holds up against my memory.

[FairleyAlfy]

Averno by Louise Gluck and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I am already a fan of both books, highly recommend. 

[Ydrl]

50 minutes ago, archiapelo said:

Brett is evil. She sleeps with every guy one time, makes them fall in love, and then goes to find a new guy for the sake of variety. She is like Daisy and Tom Buchanan, breaking things and moving on. It is, in part, girls like her that ruined me caused me to hate the whole world and lust for vengeance against the collective.

Spoiler alert! (I haven’t read this yet)

[pattycat]

The holidays have been a nice distraction from grad school apps. Hope everyone had a fun and safe weekend!

I’m currently reading Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women. I also just received several nf books on writing that I’ve been thumbing through: The Paris Review Interviews (wow...Hemingway was kind of a jackass), John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (quite the elitist, but a fun read so far), and Jane Alison’s Meander Spiral and Explode.

[mrvisser]

38 minutes ago, pattycat said:

The holidays have been a nice distraction from grad school apps. Hope everyone had a fun and safe weekend!

I’m currently reading Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women. I also just received several nf books on writing that I’ve been thumbing through: The Paris Review Interviews (wow...Hemingway was kind of a jackass), John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (quite the elitist, but a fun read so far), and Jane Alison’s Meander Spiral and Explode.

Highly suggest adding Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, if you haven't already read it.

[pattycat]

11 minutes ago, mrvisser said:

Highly suggest adding Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, if you haven't already read it.

Thanks for the rec. I just downloaded it. 

[inotherwordz]

I am late to the party here, but looking forward (maybe?) to this admissions cycle.  I applied to Brown, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, UC Irvine, Iowa, UMass Amherst, Michigan, Texas (Michener), UVA and Florida. 

Best of luck to all! 

[mrvisser]

2 minutes ago, inotherwordz said:

I am late to the party here, but looking forward (maybe?) to this admissions cycle.  I applied to Brown, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, UC Irvine, Iowa, UMass Amherst, Michigan, Texas (Michener), UVA and Florida. 

Best of luck to all! 

Welcome! You've got a great list there. Never too late to the party as long as you get here before the crazy rush of decisions in late January. I imagine that's when the shit will really hit the fan.

[pattycat]

2 hours ago, inotherwordz said:

I am late to the party here, but looking forward (maybe?) to this admissions cycle.  I applied to Brown, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, UC Irvine, Iowa, UMass Amherst, Michigan, Texas (Michener), UVA and Florida. 

Best of luck to all! 

Welcome! Great list. And good luck to you, too!

 

[mrvisser]

Just now, archiapelo said:

Which would people choose 

i) Iowa (the only school non-MFA's have even heard of)

or

ii) Michener (free money without having to teach, plus a free third year) ? 

No need to say your first choice is some school that is easy to get into because you have more enlightened criteria.

I have a tough time deciding this myself. Iowa has the name and prestige and all that, but, as you said, less money while also having teaching duties. Also, Austin is an awesome city with excellent weather, and I'd much rather live there than in Iowa City. I'm sure the instruction a student receives in Michener is very comparable to that of the IWW. That being said, I want to teach after MFA, and I think Iowa might look a bit better on a resume when applying to jobs, but who knows? I noticed from some of the department's video interviews that it seems like students are kept on at Iowa in some capacity after they graduate, so maybe there's some employment stability there.

[feralgrad]

1 hour ago, archiapelo said:

Well, mrvisser, the good news is that you probably won’t have to resolve the dilemma

Been close to a decade since I had to bust out this image!

 

[mrvisser]

I mean, it's true that statistically, anyone you're talking to is unlikely to get into both Iowa and Michener, but there's probably a more tactful way to say it, and given he hasn't read anything I've written outside of this website, it's a silly road to go down.

I guess this is what I get for genuinely trying to engage in conversation.

[feralgrad]

6 minutes ago, mrvisser said:

I guess this is what I get for genuinely trying to engage in conversation.

Admittedly, it's pretty bizarre to ask a question and then insult someone for answering it. Like how is that a good use of your time on this planet?

[Ydrl]

12 hours ago, archiapelo said:

Here is the problem. High art basically means art that no one wants to look at. The market for literary fiction consists of creative writing professors and all-female book clubs. That is it.

It is not economical to spend 10,000 hours writing a book when at most you will sell 10,000 copies. So the government subsidizes it. It pays a decent salary for a tenure track creative writing professor. That salary is double what the same teacher gets if non-tenure track, when he is paid to teach but not to write. It is not that different than subsidizing an Archeology professor for writing in journals that only 10,000 professors worldwide read.

MFA schools finally concluded that they can be lower ranked and get the best students if they stop charging tuition. The MFA student has no financial prospects, so he will take the lower rank for the money.

This is why Michener shot up the ranks and frankly I predict it will be ranked number one soon enough. (Mrvisser's dilemma will solve itself.) The only two good schools still charging are Columbia and NYU because they have the very high expense of New York City, and get no state funding. But they are going to continue dropping in the ranks until they finally stop charging. I predict that is coming soon.

Michener can give the most generous funding because James Michener donated $21 million. That is enough to fund 12 students in perpetuity. The only way Iowa can stop Michener from becoming number one is if Iowa raises more funds or shrinks its class size so that it gives Michener level funding (free tuition without teaching). It is also possible that students, it will turn out, don’t mind teaching, and Michener won’t climb further.  I think students do mind teaching and they do want a third year, so Michener will be number one soon enough. Iowa won't find it so easy to raise more money; even shrinking the class size really runs into so many bureaucratic hurdles. 

Calm down please ? The world will seem a little nicer to you once you take a breath and look at it with fresh eyes.

[FairleyAlfy]

Has everyone finished applying? Are we all in the excruciating wait mode? I've been trying a bunch of different distractions. It doesn't help that I lost my job because of the pandemic. On the plus side, I got a typewriter for Christmas!! I adore writing on it so far. Another silver lining is that we only have two more days of 2020!!

[mrvisser]

Just now, FairleyAlfy said:

Has everyone finished applying? Are we all in the excruciating wait mode? I've been trying a bunch of different distractions. It doesn't help that I lost my job because of the pandemic. On the plus side, I got a typewriter for Christmas!! I adore writing on it so far. Another silver lining is that we only have two more days of 2020!!

I've been done for several weeks now, which is both great and awful, since it gives me all the more time to think about it. I also lost my job during the pandemic's early stages, so I've had a lot of days with no real obligations to keep me busy. I try to get distracted from MFA stuff, but that's getting more difficult with Washington State settling into its winter. And so it is that I go down the rabbit hole of looking at apartments in all the cities I could possibly be moving to for school.

[FairleyAlfy]

1 minute ago, mrvisser said:

I've been done for several weeks now, which is both great and awful, since it gives me all the more time to think about it. I also lost my job during the pandemic's early stages, so I've had a lot of days with no real obligations to keep me busy. I try to get distracted from MFA stuff, but that's getting more difficult with Washington State settling into its winter. And so it is that I go down the rabbit hole of looking at apartments in all the cities I could possibly be moving to for school.

Yikes! Hang in there! I mean lots of people look at apartments in the area of the programs they've applied. You're not alone in that! I have not fallen down that rabbit hole yet. haha I have found other rabbit holes though. I have researched several past students of the MFA programs I've applied and read all the writing I could get my hands on. It's a way of comparing my own style to previous students, but the research just ends up making me extremely self-conscious. Hang in there! 

[mrvisser]

Haha I'm doing fine. I'm not losing my mind yet, just bored. That's why I like this forum, just to remember that we're all full of anticipation and wondering whether we'll get in. In a non-pandemic year the waiting period would be much easier, although I guess that could be said about anything else, too. I wonder whether COVID will make for shorter or longer turnaround on application decisions.