2025 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum

[runlolarun]

On 2/20/2025 at 8:54 AM, lurkingwriter3 said:

Feels like a gut punch seeing an acceptance and having a silent phone🫣

Okay I found the two (?) acceptances on draft once I calmed down and slowly looked, lol.

[nauseated]

1 hour ago, tomat0tomat0 said:

personally im assuming that both iowa & rutgers newark are soft rejections atp (i guess waitlists are still possible but i'm doubtful) (for fiction at least)

side note: anybody else never receive anything from johns hopkins? of course by this point i assume nothing = rejection , but still i find it weird (and kinda rude!) that i never even got an email? my portal still just says "submitted" as well

 

yep, nothing from JHU

[tomat0tomat0]

2 minutes ago, nauseated said:

yep, nothing from JHU

not to sound clinically insane but i vaguely remember you saying you lived in a time zone many hours ahead of the us. are you also an international applicant? maybe that has smth to do with why both our results are delayed; maybe they send out the international rejections later for some reason? lol just speculation but it's sunday and i have nothing else to do so...

[nauseated]

5 minutes ago, tomat0tomat0 said:

not to sound clinically insane but i vaguely remember you saying you lived in a time zone many hours ahead of the us. are you also an international applicant? maybe that has smth to do with why both our results are delayed; maybe they send out the international rejections later for some reason? lol just speculation but it's sunday and i have nothing else to do so...

hahaha not insane at all and that makes sense, I didn't even think of that! very likely, since I'm based somewhere in south asia 

[prufrock_]

I'm not international and JHU hasn't sent my rejection yet. 

 

I like Hank's idea that I offended them by even applying.

[DJ Lambchop]

Does JHU actually just not send out all their rejections and instead make people assume?

[Hjanep]

I think JHU is waiting for Iowa etc results to roll out to have a more firm idea if they need to elongate their waitlist before they reject the rest of us

[Chex]

I think JHU has sent all acceptances and waitlists, those yet to hear back are soft Rs, and the rejection notifications are delayed due to unrelated admin/logistics reasons. I believe more people will get their hard Rs this week or by the first week of March.

[prufrock_]

4 minutes ago, Chex said:

I think JHU has sent all acceptances and waitlists, those yet to hear back are soft Rs, and the rejection notifications are delayed due to unrelated admin/logistics reasons. I believe more people will get their hard Rs this week or by the first week of March.

I agree with this. Last year it took them 3+ weeks to send out all rejections, but no waitlists/acceptances came out after that first batch (or at least they weren't reported).

[Guest]

Has anyone who has done an interview recently had an offer afterward?If so, I am assuming they sent an email afterward making the offer?Could anyone who has been through this say something about their experience? Thanks so much.

Edited February 23 by Guest
correction

[pananoprodigy]

Dear MFA Gods: If I get into my top choice I vow to give anyone who asks me free notes on their SOPs and samples next cycle. 

So mote it be

So mote it be 

So mote it be

[exvat]

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have said, "I'd be fine not getting into grad school if Kendrick Lamar wins all five Grammys."

[pananoprodigy]

15 minutes ago, exvat said:

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have said, "I'd be fine not getting into grad school if Kendrick Lamar wins all five Grammys."

You offered the world a tremendous gift, but at what cost? 

[Jane Wyman]

I haven't gotten any positive signs yet and am starting to panique ... I'm leaving my current program regardless for a variety of reasons, but it's not going to look great if I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm leaving for personal reasons, best of luck to all." 

Does anyone know the etiquette in this situation?

[exvat]

55 minutes ago, pananoprodigy said:

You offered the world a tremendous gift, but at what cost? 

I look forward to the karmic payoff at some point 😂 

[pananoprodigy]

1 hour ago, Jane Wyman said:

I haven't gotten any positive signs yet and am starting to panique ... I'm leaving my current program regardless for a variety of reasons, but it's not going to look great if I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm leaving for personal reasons, best of luck to all." 

Does anyone know the etiquette in this situation?

Is taking a formal leave of absence an option?  

[Cosmicinkwell]

I never thought I'd hate weekends so much... gimme that clarity! I need to knowwwwwwwww

[pananoprodigy]

7 minutes ago, Jane Wyman said:

@pananoprodigy I'm teaching and taking classes through the end of the semester, then was going to write a resignation letter, but I'm not sure if that's correct.

Doesn't a leave of absence imply you're coming back? This is a genuine question, as I'm unfamiliar with the protocol. I don't want to return under any circumstances, but if this would be more graceful, I'm open to it.

Hmm, in that case I'm not sure. If there are no faculty members in the department that you'd feel comfortable talking to about it, I wonder if your university has a general graduate advisor or academic office that you could reach out to. That's probably where I'd start if I were you. 

[inthesameboat]

On 2/21/2025 at 2:14 PM, brokenjewelrybox said:

I'm so stressed out about Syracuse too!! Still haven't been rejected, but I feel like there's no way they sent out rejections before acceptances? Then again, there aren't any acceptances or waitlists on the spreadsheet. God I'm nervous. Lol. 

I'm also waiting on word from Syracuse (fiction). Wondering if they just forgot to send out a batch of rejections? My portal still says "submitted" (but my 2022 rejected application also just says "submitted," so I'm not sure how useful the portal status is---any intel on this?). Trying not to get my hopes up too high because there's a chance my rejection just landed in the ether... Mistakes do happen...

[Cosmicinkwell]

Are we thinking WashU is just like... not doing an MFA this year? They're sooooo late. And I heard they might be affected by cuts.

[exvat]

6 minutes ago, Cosmicinkwell said:

Are we thinking WashU is just like... not doing an MFA this year? They're sooooo late. And I heard they might be affected by cuts.

I hate to imagine it, but it does seem likely that some MFA programs might get shut down completely in all this chaos. Hopefully nobody here would be affected. My coworker's hearing rumors that her own university's Clinical Psych grad program may get the ax, and I'm like... If therapist factories aren't even safe, then poet factories for sure aren't...

[Cosmicinkwell]

Just now, exvat said:

I hate to imagine it, but it does seem likely that some MFA programs might get shut down completely in all this chaos. Hopefully nobody here would be affected. My coworker's hearing rumors that her own university's Clinical Psych grad program may get the ax, and I'm like... If therapist factories aren't even safe, then poet factories for sure aren't...

Bleak...

[exvat]

12 minutes ago, Cosmicinkwell said:

Bleak...

I hope it doesn't happen, but the news is pretty bleak. The stuff going down at Penn is just awful.

[rapunzel]

so with the way things are shaping up it looks like i'm going to be seeing some of y'all again for next year's forum, so i wanted to reflect on the process this year (i'm a first time applicant) and thank y'all again for building such a supportive community!

i don't know if anyone else had a similar experience, but i think it's pretty common: going back to your sample submissions and cringing and thinking, i could definitely have done better. honestly if i learned anything from these past few months and from that cringe feeling it's that i don't think i was fully ready to apply this year, even though i might have thought i was back in november. of course we're all going to be improving in our writing for the rest of our lives, so that's not the best metric of whether or not we're "ready," but i think there's a point at which your improvement on your own kind of slows down and that's when something like an mfa is probably the most helpful. if i did get in somewhere this year, now that i have the chance to really reflect on all this, i don't know if i would be capable of making the best use of it. i have learned, though, that putting myself through the mfa (at least in the abstract) is still really important to me, and i'm hoping to push myself a lot more this year and assess whether or not i'm "ready" in the fall. 

anyway, thank you all for your support these past few months! there really is something about suffering in purgatory together

[prufrock_]

46 minutes ago, exvat said:

I hate to imagine it, but it does seem likely that some MFA programs might get shut down completely in all this chaos. Hopefully nobody here would be affected. My coworker's hearing rumors that her own university's Clinical Psych grad program may get the ax, and I'm like... If therapist factories aren't even safe, then poet factories for sure aren't...

Yeah, reading that article about Penn terrified me. I can't imagine quitting my job, breaking my lease, and getting ready to move just for the rug to be pulled last minute.

 

and it might happen at any time for the duration of the program.