2025 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum

[Leeannitha]

9 hours ago, vilum said:

hi all! been lurking for quite some time and finally posting!

this is my first time applying to an mfa, and to a us university in general, as i am straight out of an economics degree at bocconi (milan, italy). i was wondering if anyone had any idea of my chances getting in, as an international student who's relatively young (22 y/o). i applied to NYU, brown, vanderbilt, michener and JHU. it's not a very big list, but the process was so overwhelming that i feel i couldn't have managed any more!

my pieces are emotionally tolling and my statements show drive and commitment, but at the same time I have no publications nor any experience whatsoever in the field, and my rec letters come from quite famous (albeit, italian) authors.  i don't know if there is any statistic regarding international applicants and if their backgrounds is a factor taken into consideration.

any help is appreciated, if anything to soothe my anxiety. good luck to all!

Good luck! Are you poetry or fiction or nonfiction? Applying to a lot of the same schools 

[Scribe]

On 12/6/2024 at 4:37 PM, programedlove333 said:

Lolll i totally get why you applied to 10 programs, and i honestly wouldve too if so many fully funded programs didnt require mfa students to teach freshman comp lol. Can i ask what schools you applied to?

It's too late for me and wouldn't have affected my decision, but I would have been very interested, and I'm sure others will be today, in which schools didn't require comp teaching. I would think that's areal short list. Not counting Michener (obviously) I only remember there being one or two that didn't require comp instruction. 
I would also recommend people consider applying anyway, depending on why they don't want to teach comp. I was terrified. Still terrified. Didn't know how to do it - still don't - and I fucking love it. (And I hate comp). 

7 hours ago, taliaj said:

Back on my nonsense of "I'm only applying to one school this year and am going to check the portal obsessively until April 15th." Though my sample this year is SO MUCH stronger than last year's, I hope they don't even remember me applying last year because I'm so insecure about what I submitted. I toss and turn at night worried that they'll think my new, better writing is just a fluke and not the result of a lot of hard work in the past year. Like, part of me thinks I should mention this in my personal statement (the working a lot harder this year to get better), but again, I don't want to bring up my last year's application. Anyways. Good luck all!

I was checking portals every day before the deadline closed. It was a Dicken's/Breakfast at Tiffany's thing. 
 

They will not remember. In fact, the possibility of remembering is stronger regarding the work than the name. And the possibility of remembering either the quality of the past work or any specific deficiency is just about zero. And the possibility of them thinking your improvement is a fluke is exactly equal to the possibility they are reading your work while suffering a TBI. 

Get some sleep.

[prufrock_]

I wanted to dunk on places like Iowa and Irvine for being so old school and requiring us to physically mail in our samples. LIke, get with the times! But you know what? There is something very satisfying about dropping 40 pages of prose into the mail.

[carrruly]

How long do you guys think the impact statement should be? Also, are you focusing more on your background and experiences or your goals with the program ?

Mine is about 1k words, ~700 on my background and how I came into writing, ~300 on my writing style and goals/fit for the program. I don't know anyone else applying for MFA and have just been using random blog posts on the app process for guidance  

[prufrock_]

1 hour ago, carrruly said:

How long do you guys think the impact statement should be? Also, are you focusing more on your background and experiences or your goals with the program ?

Mine is about 1k words, ~700 on my background and how I came into writing, ~300 on my writing style and goals/fit for the program. I don't know anyone else applying for MFA and have just been using random blog posts on the app process for guidance  

Not sure exactly what an impact statement is, but here's my general SOP thoughts (if they're the same thing) that i've also gained from reading a billion 'heres how to write sop' articles: aim for two pages, double spaced, tops. so about 500-600 words total. Less focused about how you came into writing and more about your current and future writing.

Autobiography is not your friend, but talking about fiction in an interesting way is -- then you can try to fit yourself into that conversation some way. You're trying to impress someone who is reading 300 sops, so lets be honest, they're gonna be skimming, especially if it's a variation of autobiography they've heard 300 times that month ("I've always loved writing since...").

keep it short, fast, and about what you're offering the program just as much as what you want to take from it.

[carrruly]

3 minutes ago, prufrock_ said:

Not sure exactly what an impact statement is, but here's my general SOP thoughts (if they're the same thing) that i've also gained from reading a billion 'heres how to write sop' articles: aim for two pages, double spaced, tops. so about 500-600 words total. Less focused about how you came into writing and more about your current and future writing.

Autobiography is not your friend, but talking about fiction in an interesting way is -- then you can try to fit yourself into that conversation some way. You're trying to impress someone who is reading 300 sops, so lets be honest, they're gonna be skimming, especially if it's a variation of autobiography they've heard 300 times that month ("I've always loved writing since...").

keep it short, fast, and about what you're offering the program just as much as what you want to take from it.

this is extremely helpful advice! and yes I meant SOP, idk why I said impact statement.

Thank you thank you thank you !

[Mystic_Sunshine]

16 hours ago, prufrock_ said:

I wanted to dunk on places like Iowa and Irvine for being so old school and requiring us to physically mail in our samples. LIke, get with the times! But you know what? There is something very satisfying about dropping 40 pages of prose into the mail.

I've still gotta mail mine  I didn't know Irvine required it too. I wanted to apply to that program, but sadly I can't do Cali living.

Edited December 11 by Mystic_Sunshine

[analog_e]

Sorry if this is unwelcome or inappropriate for this space, which seems mostly oriented around the actual process of applying, but I am curious what other folks aspiring to these programs are writing-genres (if any), what you're doing stylistically, what you're exploring, who are your influences. I'm not really sure what folks who apply to MFA programs actually write, aside from Moshfegh-it just seems like the thing to do post-graduation as someone who really only cares about writing and playing fiddle.

It's difficult to pin down what I am doing, but usually my work is obsessed with language-the way the subject is bound up in and inextricable from definition, how we speak ourselves out of agency, trying to achieve forms of ostranenie-consciousness, trauma, outsider experience, and confinement. It tends to be queer and to some extent informed by theory-queer theory, photography/film theory, critical theory, etc-and fairly hallucinogenic, dense, and indifferent to formal constraints. I usually do weird things with dialogue, either embedding it in the language without differentiation or constructing large unlineated paragraphs of conversation. Obscenely long sentences strung together by elaborate sequences of dashes and commas and parentheticals and ellipses are very precious to me. Sometimes things get meta. I usually incorporate my weird hyperfixations into whatever I am writing, so like one saxophonist's name might appear repeatedly, sometimes diving into analysis of his technique or which albums best capture his sound. I wrote a scene the other day where a feverdream memory of a jello commercial I saw when I was 11 plays out as an execution sequence in medieval Paris. That sort of thing. It's all pretty weird, likely has no market value, and may not be at all what esteemed literary programs like Brown are looking for, but who knows, maybe they'll take a chance on my messy little oddities. Oh, as far as influences: Bataille, Pynchon, Michael Cisco, Djuna Barnes, Jean Toomer, Deleuze, Virginia Woolf, and I am sure others all to varying degrees have made their mark on how I write.

[jinny-r]

57 minutes ago, analog_e said:

... I am curious what other folks aspiring to these programs are writing-genres (if any), what you're doing stylistically, what you're exploring, who are your influences.

Mine is also concerned about language: writing against monolingualism and writing in translation, grounded in my country's postcolonial history with Spanish and English, New Criticism and the workshop empire, and our multilingual culture shaping how I communicate with my hierarchy of audience. I trace my tradition to Nick Joaquin's tropical gothic, which employs English as if the mother tongue lurks inside it. I touch a bit on this in my SOP/academic statements, mentioning existing body of work I've already put out. It makes me nervous, if my poetics will be deemed acceptable by US universities. But oh well. It is what it is.

[programedlove333]

1 hour ago, jinny-r said:

Mine is also concerned about language: writing against monolingualism and writing in translation, grounded in my country's postcolonial history with Spanish and English, New Criticism and the workshop empire, and our multilingual culture shaping how I communicate with my hierarchy of audience. I trace my tradition to Nick Joaquin's tropical gothic, which employs English as if the mother tongue lurks inside it. I touch a bit on this in my SOP/academic statements, mentioning existing body of work I've already put out. It makes me nervous, if my poetics will be deemed acceptable by US universities. But oh well. It is what it is.

Omg this sounds so interesting......definitely interested in how these ideas appeared in your writing sample. Similar to you guys, my writing is definitely influenced by the limits of the English language and what I can do within these confines. My influences for my writing are Toni Morrison, Raven Leilani, and James Baldwin: all writers interacting with different types of intimacy. My SOP was about the case of Andrea Yates and the notion of imperfect care, and my writing sample follows three characters: Michael and Candy who both work at an STD clinic, and Felix, Michael's boyfriend. 

[curfew]

15 hours ago, analog_e said:

 It's all pretty weird, likely has no market value, and may not be at all what esteemed literary programs like Brown are looking for, but who knows, maybe they'll take a chance on my messy little oddities. Oh, as far as influences: Bataille, Pynchon, Michael Cisco, Djuna Barnes, Jean Toomer, Deleuze, Virginia Woolf, and I am sure others all to varying degrees have made their mark on how I write.

I think this is just the coolest stuff! I would love to read your work or excerpts of it -- especially the jello-guillotine sequence:D. Strangeness is a quotient coherent to all the great lyric works, and to much of the radical works that variegate the condition of the genre further [thinking, loosely, of Melville's spermaceti and Stubb monologues, or of Kafka and Gogol prose pieces]. But I'm sounding wispy. All of these writers are fantastic lodestars; do you like the writings of Yoko Tawada, Hélène Cixous, Kobo Abe or Jan Zwicky?

Edited December 12 by curfew

[analog_e]

Sorry, finals and I still have two essays to go...

4 hours ago, curfew said:

I think this is just the coolest stuff! I would love to read your work or excerpts of it -- especially the jello-guillotine sequence:D. Strangeness is a quotient coherent to all the great lyric works, and to much of the radical works that variegate the condition of the genre further [thinking, loosely, of Melville's spermaceti and Stubb monologues, or of Kafka and Gogol prose pieces]. But I'm sounding wispy. All of these writers are fantastic lodestars; do you like the writings of Yoko Tawada, Hélène Cixous, Kobo Abe or Jan Zwicky?

Yoko Tawada: aware of her as someone who works with interest in meaning between languages but have not read her work-my Japanese is nowhere near up to par and I don't know any German and it seems pretty vital to read her in one of the two; Hélène Cixous: I read one of her essays for a class, something Medusa, proposing a new form of women's writing but beyond that am unfamiliar; Kobo Abe I have seen the film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes because I'm a real Japanese New Wave nerd; Jan Zwicky I am unfamiliar with. Looks like I have some names to add to my ever mounting to read list. I am taking a women in Japanese literature course next semester for which I am excited, as the only Japanese authors I have really read are Mishima (and how I love Mishima) and Sayaka Murata (who is probably the only artist whose representation of autistic perspective has been resonant to me-Earthlings is really precious to me)

 

15 hours ago, programedlove333 said:

Omg this sounds so interesting......definitely interested in how these ideas appeared in your writing sample. Similar to you guys, my writing is definitely influenced by the limits of the English language and what I can do within these confines. My influences for my writing are Toni Morrison, Raven Leilani, and James Baldwin: all writers interacting with different types of intimacy. My SOP was about the case of Andrea Yates and the notion of imperfect care, and my writing sample follows three characters: Michael and Candy who both work at an STD clinic, and Felix, Michael's boyfriend. 

 I am not familiar with that case, but am familiar with Toni Morrison and nominatively familiar with James Baldwin. Glad to see I am not the only one here trying to push against bounds.

 

17 hours ago, jinny-r said:

Mine is also concerned about language: writing against monolingualism and writing in translation, grounded in my country's postcolonial history with Spanish and English, New Criticism and the workshop empire, and our multilingual culture shaping how I communicate with my hierarchy of audience. I trace my tradition to Nick Joaquin's tropical gothic, which employs English as if the mother tongue lurks inside it. I touch a bit on this in my SOP/academic statements, mentioning existing body of work I've already put out. It makes me nervous, if my poetics will be deemed acceptable by US universities. But oh well. It is what it is.

This sounds like fascinating work and I can't imagine a serious program not being interested, though I am sure some are more conservative than others, and those are programs you wouldn't want to attend anyhow. My exploration of languages beyond English ends at French, and I am not exploring it from nearly as personal a perspective as you-I just throw a lot of French into my writing because I enjoy writing in French, and it allows me to say things in new and interesting ways and facilitates a defamiliarization, which is not nearly as interesting as operating within post-colonial multilingualism. I would love to read your work sometime, though I do not speak Spanish and the only bilingual English-Spanish work I have read, Canicula, required a non-trivial amount of work to make sense of at points (it was worth it, though, as the novel would not have been as poignant without the Spanish).

[bibsy]

hey, folks! question: how are you advising your recommenders to address their recommendation letters? i had one professor ask specifically to whom they should be addressing each letter, but everyone else has kept it broad. would you recommend i hunt down specific names for her, or should i ask her to make the address more general?

[Scribe]

23 hours ago, Mystic_Sunshine said:

I've still gotta mail mine  I didn't know Irvine required it too. I wanted to apply to that program, but sadly I can't do Cali living.

I have to ask...Cali living? Is it strictly a geographic issue? Distance from some particular? Because it sounds like a cultural or geographic (climate, earthquakes, etc) thing? Just curios. 

21 hours ago, analog_e said:

Sorry if this is unwelcome or inappropriate for this space, which seems mostly oriented around the actual process of applying, but I am curious what other folks aspiring to these programs are writing-genres (if any), what you're doing stylistically, what you're exploring, who are your influences. I'm not really sure what folks who apply to MFA programs actually write, aside from Moshfegh-it just seems like the thing to do post-graduation as someone who really only cares about writing and playing fiddle.

It's difficult to pin down what I am doing, but usually my work is obsessed with language-the way the subject is bound up in and inextricable from definition, how we speak ourselves out of agency, trying to achieve forms of ostranenie-consciousness, trauma, outsider experience, and confinement. It tends to be queer and to some extent informed by theory-queer theory, photography/film theory, critical theory, etc-and fairly hallucinogenic, dense, and indifferent to formal constraints. I usually do weird things with dialogue, either embedding it in the language without differentiation or constructing large unlineated paragraphs of conversation. Obscenely long sentences strung together by elaborate sequences of dashes and commas and parentheticals and ellipses are very precious to me. Sometimes things get meta. I usually incorporate my weird hyperfixations into whatever I am writing, so like one saxophonist's name might appear repeatedly, sometimes diving into analysis of his technique or which albums best capture his sound. I wrote a scene the other day where a feverdream memory of a jello commercial I saw when I was 11 plays out as an execution sequence in medieval Paris. That sort of thing. It's all pretty weird, likely has no market value, and may not be at all what esteemed literary programs like Brown are looking for, but who knows, maybe they'll take a chance on my messy little oddities. Oh, as far as influences: Bataille, Pynchon, Michael Cisco, Djuna Barnes, Jean Toomer, Deleuze, Virginia Woolf, and I am sure others all to varying degrees have made their mark on how I write.

First off, you are a huge nerd. 

Second, people do this. All the time. There's a program for you. People have often said someone like Faulkner would never get published to day and sent out manuscripts of other celebrated "classic" writers and then claimed the rejections proved something. Ridiculous. People work their way to acceptances, both in educational and professional spaces. Your text will be trusted somewhere. Once it's accepted more broadly, a willingness to trust it developes and then more acceptance (and more rejection). Wild Palms wouldn't get published from a cold submission today. A Rose for Emily would. and once it did, the Sound and the Fury, and then Wild Palms. 

There's a place for you. 

20 hours ago, jinny-r said:

Mine is also concerned about language: writing against monolingualism and writing in translation, grounded in my country's postcolonial history with Spanish and English, New Criticism and the workshop empire, and our multilingual culture shaping how I communicate with my hierarchy of audience. I trace my tradition to Nick Joaquin's tropical gothic, which employs English as if the mother tongue lurks inside it. I touch a bit on this in my SOP/academic statements, mentioning existing body of work I've already put out. It makes me nervous, if my poetics will be deemed acceptable by US universities. But oh well. It is what it is.

Also a big nerd.

Don't be concerned about US or any other University's acceptance. They don't read your work. 

19 hours ago, programedlove333 said:

Omg this sounds so interesting......definitely interested in how these ideas appeared in your writing sample. Similar to you guys, my writing is definitely influenced by the limits of the English language and what I can do within these confines. My influences for my writing are Toni Morrison, Raven Leilani, and James Baldwin: all writers interacting with different types of intimacy. My SOP was about the case of Andrea Yates and the notion of imperfect care, and my writing sample follows three characters: Michael and Candy who both work at an STD clinic, and Felix, Michael's boyfriend. 

I'm interested in much of this too, but only interested. I didn't even think to mention it in my SOP's because it'd more of an acceptance issue with me. I don't concern my fiction with it. Actually, I don't concern my fiction with anything. But my own understandings influence everything. It's horrible. So, as a word of advice, don't get too stuck about creating escapes from those limits or working within the constraints (except when it's fun or you think you have something of course). What I mean is, don't stress out over fixing the world with your writing. Those limits are where and why we make art, right? To communicate something through the art where the medium is limited. We make something greater than the sum of the words. 

 

There's a place for all of you guys. There's more than one person here doing stuff akin to you or at least with the same influences. Then there's our director who his a grammarian who doesn't believe in rules. Figure that one out. (It's as beautiful as you think.)

Expand and expound. 

[Zoef]

Very likely someone else has asked this question, so sorry if this is a repeat!

Has anyone else been unsure of being under page count? Most programs I’m applying to have a max for the writing sample, but some give a range of 30-40. If I feel best about my 20 pages, should I risk being under the page count? Or do I add another story that I don’t believe in as much?

[analog_e]

4 minutes ago, Zoef said:

Very likely someone else has asked this question, so sorry if this is a repeat!

Has anyone else been unsure of being under page count? Most programs I’m applying to have a max for the writing sample, but some give a range of 30-40. If I feel best about my 20 pages, should I risk being under the page count? Or do I add another story that I don’t believe in as much?

From what I have read elsewhere (past MFA threads, potentially his one), look for the language-if it is a suggested page count or a hard range. I know at least for Brown, which is 30-40, people have gotten in submitting fewer. Prevailing advice seems to be submit your best work and do not compromise with anything that might weaken your portfolio.

Edited December 13 by analog_e

[Chex]

On 12/12/2024 at 2:02 AM, analog_e said:

Sorry if this is unwelcome or inappropriate for this space, which seems mostly oriented around the actual process of applying, but I am curious what other folks aspiring to these programs are writing-genres (if any), what you're doing stylistically, what you're exploring, who are your influences...

...usually my work is obsessed with language-the way the subject is bound up in and inextricable from definition, how we speak ourselves out of agency, trying to achieve forms of ostranenie-consciousness, trauma, outsider experience, and confinement. It tends to be queer and to some extent informed by theory-queer theory, photography/film theory, critical theory, etc-and fairly hallucinogenic, dense, and indifferent to formal constraints...

What a great question! Your answer + all the other answers in this thread are brilliant and insightful. IMHO, this would make a really good approach to John's Hopkins' unique SOP literary critique of your sample/writing in general ). I'll be thinking about this one for a while. 

4 hours ago, Zoef said:

Very likely someone else has asked this question, so sorry if this is a repeat!

Has anyone else been unsure of being under page count? Most programs I’m applying to have a max for the writing sample, but some give a range of 30-40. If I feel best about my 20 pages, should I risk being under the page count? Or do I add another story that I don’t believe in as much?

Go with your best. 20 pages is a reasonable number. 

[Chex]

11 hours ago, bibsy said:

hey, folks! question: how are you advising your recommenders to address their recommendation letters? i had one professor ask specifically to whom they should be addressing each letter, but everyone else has kept it broad. would you recommend i hunt down specific names for her, or should i ask her to make the address more general?

"Dear Selection Committee" or "Dear Admission Committee". Broad, no personalisation because that's more work for recommenders and gives room for mix-ups (sending the wrong letter to the wrong program). Mine submitted the same letter to every program. 

[beet_root]

On 12/11/2024 at 9:20 PM, programedlove333 said:

Omg this sounds so interesting......definitely interested in how these ideas appeared in your writing sample. Similar to you guys, my writing is definitely influenced by the limits of the English language and what I can do within these confines. My influences for my writing are Toni Morrison, Raven Leilani, and James Baldwin: all writers interacting with different types of intimacy. My SOP was about the case of Andrea Yates and the notion of imperfect care, and my writing sample follows three characters: Michael and Candy who both work at an STD clinic, and Felix, Michael's boyfriend. 

I put down Raven Leilani as one of my influences as well! Luster rocked my shit.

[curfew]

22 hours ago, analog_e said:

as the only Japanese authors I have really read are Mishima (and how I love Mishima)

just began Sea of Fertility -- wonderful stuff

[Chex]

Submitted the last of my applications today. And that's 8 applications done, or, more accurately, 7.5 (given that the one for Ole Miss is only Phase 1 of 2).

Now comes the best and worst part: waiting.

Solidarity to everyone still applying. May the new year bring us great news.

[Jane Wyman]

I'm freaking out. I FedExed my manuscript to Iowa on Thursday because I was concerned about getting it there on time. It was supposed to arrive today at 1:30 p.m. but it's been delayed due to ice, and won't get there until Monday. There is a date stamped on the package showing that it was sent Thursday or Friday, but it's not a traditional postmark. Do you think they'll still accept it?

Edited December 14 by Jane Wyman

[prufrock_]

3 minutes ago, Jane Wyman said:

I'm freaking out. I FedExed my script to Iowa on Thursday because I was concerned about getting it there on time. It was supposed to arrive today at 1:30 p.m. but it's been delayed due to ice, and won't get there until Monday. There is a date stamped on the package showing that it was sent Thursday or Friday, but it's not a traditional postmark. Do you think they'll still accept it?

Yes, I think they will accept that as a post mark. Also if you've already uploaded the script to the portal during the online application, then you have backup proof of beating the deadline.

 

My iowa submission is also late, I'm guessing due to the storms. USPS even took off my ETA on my tracking completely!

[Mystic_Sunshine]

On 12/12/2024 at 6:08 PM, Scribe said:

I have to ask...Cali living? Is it strictly a geographic issue? Distance from some particular? Because it sounds like a cultural or geographic (climate, earthquakes, etc) thing? Just curios. 

On 12/11/2024 at 8:02 PM, analog_e said:

None of the above! I have four dogs. And in most counties in California you have to register as a kennel if you have four dogs. I'm not actually sure how logistically difficult it is/isn't. but it seemed like a potentially stressful process. 

The dogs decided a lot of places I did/didn't apply. 

[Jane Wyman]

6 minutes ago, prufrock_ said:

Yes, I think they will accept that as a post mark. Also if you've already uploaded the script to the portal during the online application, then you have backup proof of beating the deadline.

 

My iowa submission is also late, I'm guessing due to the storms. USPS even took off my ETA on my tracking completely!

Whew, thanks! And sorry your submission is late, too. I guess there's an ice storm messing up the mail planes.

Edited December 14 by Jane Wyman