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2021 Applicants Forum


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1 minute ago, Ydrl said:

I applied pretty early, like mid December because I had a bit of money left. It took them until last month to process my transcripts and now my transcript isn't under review.

And well, I suppose I should keep my eye out for an email today haha.

Same, checking my email every five minutes...

Do we know of poetry waitlists have been sent out yet? I need to know if we can still have hope lol 
 

Also, it’s weird that they are still reviewing my transcripts after they sent out acceptances ?

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26 minutes ago, Nervis said:

I have a feeling that basically what happens is they begin by reading the first 1-2 pages of your sample and if it doesn't grab them, they scrap it and move on. If it does, they probably read the whole thing and then the rest of your materials based on that, then gather their faves and have real discussions about them. 90% of applicants probably get discarded faster than they think. I saw some adcoms on twitter really stress to put your best stuff FIRST, and when I inquired if that means they might only read the first couple pages there was no response. I don't think any adcoms want to admit that wading through a massive slush pile requires some really cutthroat, less-than-thorough decision making, but I have a feeling that's what's going on. Of course this is just my best speculation. 

My speculation is ya nailed it. 

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Just now, FairleyAlfy said:

Same, checking my email every five minutes...

Do we know of poetry waitlists have been sent out yet? I need to know if we can still have hope lol 
 

Also, it’s weird that they are still reviewing my transcripts after they sent out acceptances ?

Weird, all of the poetry acceptances for U Florida are missing from Gradcafe???

I don't see any poetry waitlists either???

What's happening anymore, I don't know...

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Just now, Ydrl said:

Weird, all of the poetry acceptances for U Florida are missing from Gradcafe???

I don't see any poetry waitlists either???

What's happening anymore, I don't know...

Right?! I think I saw one poetry acceptance in a comment on a thread, but I can’t remember which one, but no waitlists for poetry...looking from past years though, they seem to send their waitlists way earlier than rejections so I’m not too hopeful...unless 2021 is just a weird year for them. 

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Just now, FairleyAlfy said:

Right?! I think I saw one poetry acceptance in a comment on a thread, but I can’t remember which one, but no waitlists for poetry...looking from past years though, they seem to send their waitlists way earlier than rejections so I’m not too hopeful...unless 2021 is just a weird year for them. 

Tbh, this year's been really weird. Not a fan, 10/10 would not recommend.

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5 hours ago, hot_toddy said:

Ah ok I really don't want to take out student loans so I only did the fully funded ones. I am on one waitlist so I suppose there is still hope but I think my odds are slim. Frustrating because my girlfriend has gotten into almost all of her grad school programs and I'm pretty sure her parents think I am an underachiever. Difficult to explain to people how competitive these dumb programs are. 

Me too. I'm working on my "Plan B" and then am planning to try again next year. Where are you waitlisted? What genre? If you are waitlisted this year, I would certainly reapply there next year if it doesn't work out. That is my plan at the moment even though the dust hasn't settled.

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22 minutes ago, CrankyGinger said:

Have there been any NYU fiction acceptances seen? I haven't heard a peep about anyone getting in, yet. 

A ton went out in mid-late February. They've been done with first-round acceptances for weeks/have sent out mass emails to their acceptees but no waitlist/rejections. It's all on Draft and some on the actual Grad Cafe listings as well. 

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9 minutes ago, Nervis said:

A ton went out in mid-late February. They've been done with first-round acceptances for weeks/have sent out mass emails to their acceptees but no waitlist/rejections. It's all on Draft and some on the actual Grad Cafe listings as well. 

Haha I called upon the rejection gods and just received my notification! Boom goes the dynamite?

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Yeah, I must've been visiting Neptune when I started my applications, sequencing my portfolio in fucking chronological order, as if somehow I imagined these people reading would go, "Oh, dope, he's got them in the order he wrote them, so we can see his progression and versatility as a writer!"  WHAT A MORON.

I'm not sure why I even bothered applying to grad school.  I went to the Peace Corps and almost immediately realized the bureaucracy and the red tape were going to annihilate all of my good intentions and obliviate (yes, that's right) any possible justification for the "work" they wanted me to do.  Spoiler alert: I was right, but at least I made a group of friends that will stick with me for my lifetime and explored a country I would've never otherwise.

I'm so tired of hearing about grad schools being swamped with applications.  So tired of emails and letters from these schools that read more pedestrian than a high-schooler with a half-decent grasp of the English language.  It's your motherfucking job: the least each of those individual can do is honor each and every person that submits their time and money (!) and their emotional state (!!!) for the 2-3 months they wait to hear back...  just to receive some loosely-connected, borderline-offensive letter full of the same word salad populated by gobbledygook that politicians use every time they open their mouths.

No.

Read every page we slaved over, even if they're no good to you.  You are literally paid to do this.  And not a single speck of creativity or worth or even a future can be found on a solitary page of writing.  They know that, or at least they should.  But they don't care, and no one's ever called them out to.

I'm not as angry as I read here; I'm just tired of living a life where I have to pretend 2 pages of a "statement of purpose" is all of me, knowing they're not, knowing the people reading know they're not, and knowing full well most will never even get past the first paragraph.

Just have us send the portfolios.  Interview us if you're interested.  Say thank you and maybe throw in some helpful advice (since, you know, this is your profession and you've just decided my writing's still not "up to par").  A little goes such a long way...

Oh, you don't have time to read all those pages?  Or make those calls?  Oh my goodness, just like we don't have the time to read 500,000 pages during grad school while also juggling a job or a class we're teaching and perhaps even some semblance of a social life so we can also continue exploring and learning about characters and living through interacting with others?  MAKE.  THE.  TIME.  This is your fucking job, and our fucking future (Fuck is unabashedly my favorite word in all dictionaries across all languages, in forever, and for always, in fucking eternity).

Aaaaaanyway, at least I got my rejection letter from Iowa.  So Boston U's decision is all that's left.

Suck it, grad schools.

 

Love,

Manny

Edited by oubukibun
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Anyone seen anything from CU for fiction yet on Draft? I’ve only seen reports for CNF. I have a feeling CU may admit less than usual this yr bc they said on their “open house” they took in more than usual last yr bc of deferrals. It was amusing, though, when the dean of admissions and finance was asked by someone what their acceptance rate was and she does a panicked deer headlight freeze/blink and mumbles “I’ll have to check on that...” like that number down to decimal point percent isn’t seared into her brain...

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On another note, this morning while I was at work I got a call from an unknown number and got so excited! Unfortunately, my work is uh... posing naked for art classes, and I was mid-pose, so I missed the call. When I tried calling back later, I didn't get a response. I'm assuming it wasn't an MFA program, but oh, I wish it was... How funny would it be if I got the call while standing naked in front of a bunch of art students??

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24 minutes ago, scully7584 said:

Me too. I'm working on my "Plan B" and then am planning to try again next year. Where are you waitlisted? What genre? If you are waitlisted this year, I would certainly reapply there next year if it doesn't work out. That is my plan at the moment even though the dust hasn't settled.

I was waitlisted at Tennessee in fiction. But this whole thing ended up a bit of a mess. I sent the story I meant to lead with to my old creative writing teacher who told me he liked the first line but that I should delete everything else in the next two pages. This was a couple of weeks before the first apps were due. I'm new to prose I mostly write screenplays but it was still much harsher than I had expected. Did some frantic rewrites but I think maybe next year is gonna be my best bet. Best of luck to you though!

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8 minutes ago, tippybug said:

NYU rejections seem to be going out... Not really ready for this!!! :(

Yep, got mine! This is my first rejection, and based on the rejection letter I’ve seen around here/Draft, this is a pretty cold one. 

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10 minutes ago, oubukibun said:

Yeah, I must've been visiting Neptune when I started my applications, sequencing my portfolio in fucking chronological order, as if somehow I imagined these people reading would go, "Oh, dope, he's got them in the order he wrote them, so we can see his progression and versatility as a writer!"  WHAT A MORON.

I'm not sure why I even bothered applying to grad school.  I went to the Peace Corps and almost immediately realized the bureaucracy and the red tape were going to annihilate all of my good intentions and obliviate (yes, that's right) any possible justification for the "work" they wanted me to do.  Spoiler alert: I was right, but at least I made a group of friends that will stick with me for my lifetime and explored a country I would've never otherwise.

I'm so tired of hearing about grad schools being swamped with applications.  So tired of emails and letters from these schools that read more pedestrian than a high-schooler with a half-decent grasp of the English language.  It's your motherfucking job: the least each of those individual can do is honor each and every person that submits their time and money (!) and their emotional state (!!!) for the 2-3 months they wait to hear back...  just to receive some loosely-connected, borderline-offensive letter full of the same word salad populated by gobbledygook that politicians use every time they open their mouths.

No.

Read every page we slaved over, even if they're no good to you.  You are literally paid to do this.  And not a single speck of creativity or worth or even a future can be found on a solitary page of writing.  They know that, or at least they should.  But they don't care, and no one's ever called them out to.

I'm not as angry as I read here; I'm just tired of living a life where I have to pretend 2 pages of a "statement of purpose" is all of me, knowing they're not, knowing the people reading know they're not, and knowing full well most will never even get past the first paragraph.

Just have us send the portfolios.  Interview us if you're interested.  Say thank you and maybe throw in some helpful advice (since, you know, this is your profession and you've just decided my writing's still not "up to par").  A little goes such a long way...

Oh, you don't have time to read all those pages?  Or make those calls?  Oh my goodness, just like we don't have the time to read 500,000 pages during grad school while also juggling a job or a class we're teaching and perhaps even some semblance of a social life so we can also continue exploring and learning about characters and living through interacting with others?  MAKE.  THE.  TIME.  This is your fucking job, and our fucking future (Fuck is unabashedly my favorite word in all dictionaries across all languages, in forever, and for always, in fucking eternity).

Aaaaaanyway, at least I got my rejection letter from Iowa.  So Boston U's decision is all that's left.

Suck it, grad schools.

 

Love,

Manny

Dude, I hear you. It kinda sucks. But if you want to get cynical about it, I was shocked to discover recently there are actually paid consultants out there who can “help” you put together your MFA app. Seeing that really depressed me. 

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Seriously wigging out. No response from NYU yet for me. I wonder if it means I'm... not rejected??? So far I'm 3r/0a/5p, but of those 5 pending is NYU and IWW, which I was assuming meant rejection. I've heard nothing good about the NYU waitlist, but it would really improve my spirits to not get straight r's this season.

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15 minutes ago, oubukibun said:

Aaaaaanyway, at least I got my rejection letter from Iowa.  So Boston U's decision is all that's left.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear. I've gotten a slew of rejections as well. Did Iowa's come via the mail? Or email/portal...

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7 minutes ago, oubukibun said:

Yeah, I must've been visiting Neptune when I started my applications, sequencing my portfolio in fucking chronological order, as if somehow I imagined these people reading would go, "Oh, dope, he's got them in the order he wrote them, so we can see his progression and versatility as a writer!"  WHAT A MORON.

I'm not sure why I even bothered applying to grad school.  I went to the Peace Corps and almost immediately realized the bureaucracy and the red tape were going to annihilate all of my good intentions and obliviate (yes, that's right) any possible justification for the "work" they wanted me to do.  Spoiler alert: I was right, but at least I made a group of friends that will stick with me for my lifetime and explored a country I would've never otherwise.

I'm so tired of hearing about grad schools being swamped with applications.  So tired of emails and letters from these schools that read more pedestrian than a high-schooler with a half-decent grasp of the English language.  It's your motherfucking job: the least each of those individual can do is honor each and every person that submits their time and money (!) and their emotional state (!!!) for the 2-3 months they wait to hear back...  just to receive some loosely-connected, borderline-offensive letter full of the same word salad populated by gobbledygook that politicians use every time they open their mouths.

No.

Read every page we slaved over, even if they're no good to you.  You are literally paid to do this.  And not a single speck of creativity or worth or even a future can be found on a solitary page of writing.  They know that, or at least they should.  But they don't care, and no one's ever called them out to.

I'm not as angry as I read here; I'm just tired of living a life where I have to pretend 2 pages of a "statement of purpose" is all of me, knowing they're not, knowing the people reading know they're not, and knowing full well most will never even get past the first paragraph.

Just have us send the portfolios.  Interview us if you're interested.  Say thank you and maybe throw in some helpful advice (since, you know, this is your profession and you've just decided my writing's still not "up to par").  A little goes such a long way...

Oh, you don't have time to read all those pages?  Or make those calls?  Oh my goodness, just like we don't have the time to read 500,000 pages during grad school while also juggling a job or a class we're teaching and perhaps even some semblance of a social life so we can also continue exploring and learning about characters and living through interacting with others?  MAKE.  THE.  TIME.  This is your fucking job, and our fucking future (Fuck is unabashedly my favorite word in all dictionaries across all languages, in forever, and for always, in fucking eternity).

Aaaaaanyway, at least I got my rejection letter from Iowa.  So Boston U's decision is all that's left.

Suck it, grad schools.

 

Love,

Manny

Y'know, I felt this way last year. I understand your frustration, this process sucks, adcoms suck, waiting sucks, applying sucks, rejections, waitlists, unfunded acceptances suck. Basically everything sucks until you try enough times to get in.

Let me ask you this: Would you want this entire process to take an entire year / a year and half rather than a couple months? Because realistically, if every adcom read every manuscript to completion, it could take that long for every schools to be out instead of by April 15th. Purgatory season would be way, way longer, and we're already maxed out on stress. My anxiety is bad enough already.

Look me in my chihuahua eyeballs and tell me that everyone should wait for over a year for answers.

If you want this, go a second round. The idea of getting all worked up like this and not committing to trying again is making me queasy.

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Hiya,

Yes, via mail.  Postmarked the 5th.  Took a while 'cause I'm in South Florida.

I knew I was rejected, and being rejected doesn't hurt.  It's the callousness of being the cog in the machine when they're asking you to stand out somehow and giving you no indication you were even heard at all as you tried (to no avail, mostly) to do just that.

I was nothing but myself in my application for all 4 schools...  So to have each school confirm such a lack of identity or care or even a basic understanding of what it's like to be on the other side of pond in even just an email that doesn't read like an automated bot...

That's the real killer.

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2 minutes ago, Boomer not Ok said:

there are actually paid consultants out there who can “help” you put together your MFA app. Seeing that really depressed me. 

Uh, don't. Your (ex)professors/community workshop leaders/workshop peers can do that shit for free. Also, if the paid consultants really had your best interests at heart, they more than likely wouldn't ask for your money. It sucks, it fucking suck to get rejected, and it sucks to hear that you should keep writing and that's what'll make or break your application but it's true.

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6 minutes ago, Ydrl said:

Y'know, I felt this way last year. I understand your frustration, this process sucks, adcoms suck, waiting sucks, applying sucks, rejections, waitlists, unfunded acceptances suck. Basically everything sucks until you try enough times to get in.

Let me ask you this: Would you want this entire process to take an entire year / a year and half rather than a couple months? Because realistically, if every adcom read every manuscript to completion, it could take that long for every schools to be out instead of by April 15th. Purgatory season would be way, way longer, and we're already maxed out on stress. My anxiety is bad enough already.

Look me in my chihuahua eyeballs and tell me that everyone should wait for over a year for answers.

If you want this, go a second round. The idea of getting all worked up like this and not committing to trying again is making me queasy.

Well, it took 9 months from the application to the acceptance in the Peace Corps; I swear they knew everything there was to know about me outside of a colonoscopy.

If it takes a year, so be it, because if it means each school has truly curated THE class they wanted, and not just a hopscotch of what they actually read or were told to be interested in...

I don't mind the waiting.  I mind the rudeness of automatedness (which is most likely not a word recognized by any dictionary, but whatevs).

OH.  I never said I'd quit, haha; I have my list of schools for Round 2: Electric Boogaloo.  But I'm a firm believer that if you don't speak out (choose your format, of course) what is inside of you, regardless of how many times it's been said, then you have no business calling yourself alive.

Edited by oubukibun
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11 minutes ago, hot_toddy said:

I was waitlisted at Tennessee in fiction. But this whole thing ended up a bit of a mess. I sent the story I meant to lead with to my old creative writing teacher who told me he liked the first line but that I should delete everything else in the next two pages. This was a couple of weeks before the first apps were due. I'm new to prose I mostly write screenplays but it was still much harsher than I had expected. Did some frantic rewrites but I think maybe next year is gonna be my best bet. Best of luck to you though!

For sure. I feel similarly. Trying to be positive and chalk this up to a learning experience for next year. Now we know how this all works... mostly.

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Just now, oubukibun said:

Hiya,

Yes, via mail.  Postmarked the 5th.  Took a while 'cause I'm in South Florida.

I knew I was rejected, and being rejected doesn't hurt.  It's the callousness of being the cog in the machine when they're asking you to stand out somehow and giving you no indication you were even heard at all as you tried (to no avail, mostly) to do just that.

I was nothing but myself in my application for all 4 schools...  So to have each school confirm such a lack of identity or care or even a basic understanding of what it's like to be on the other side of pond in even just an email that doesn't read like an automated bot...

That's the real killer.

I completely get it. Feel everything you're feeling, but don't give up because of this round. Look at me: I've pretty much given up any hope of getting in to the 11 schools I applied to. Now admittedly they were mostly all hoity-toity and I might have been kidding myself in the first place, but it's a learning experience for the next round. I'll mix in more state schools and apply to some of the harder to get in ones too. And I've also learned from these posts I should not have led with my experimental Prologue in a lot (not all) of my submissions. LMAO. Anyways, it's rough. I'm trying to plan my year in case I don't get in anyway to still write my ass off and still find peace regardless. Because honestly if you're a writer, you fucking know. No one can tell you otherwise. And it'll happen. 

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