2025 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum

[nauseated]

In an alternate universe, produced after photocopying this one, dyeing it blue and stretching it through a pasta-machine, all cats have a secret third eye on their foreheads. Corn is genetically modified so that each kernel is the size of an apple. There are unlimited reactions on Gradcafe, Elon Musk is a philanthropist, who is best friends with Greta Thunberg, and together, they organize a successful hunger-strike to stop Big Pharma from gatekeeping an ubiquitous, all-applicable cure for cancer. They do this while wearing Luigi Mangione T-shirts. In this universe, JHU replies to me. 

My life is a joke because as I was typing this, I got my rejection notification on the portal. So if anyone else wants to hurry up a result, they can probably just type a bunch of nonsense to manifest it 

[pananoprodigy]

5 minutes ago, nauseated said:

In an alternate universe, produced after photocopying this one, dyeing it blue and stretching it through a pasta-machine, all cats have a secret third eye on their foreheads. Corn is genetically modified so that each kernel is the size of an apple. There are unlimited reactions on Gradcafe, Elon Musk is a philanthropist, who is best friends with Greta Thunberg, and together, they organize a successful hunger-strike to stop Big Pharma from gatekeeping an ubiquitous, all-applicable cure for cancer. They do this while wearing Luigi Mangione T-shirts. In this universe, JHU replies to me. 

My life is a joke because as I was typing this, I got my rejection notification on the portal. So if anyone else wants to hurry up a result, they can probably just type a bunch of nonsense to manifest it 

This should have been your writing sample fr. Instant As across the board

[neuroticcowboy]

Hey there, does anyone know if federal funding cuts are likely to affect accepted students or students that are currently in a program

[nauseated]

4 minutes ago, pananoprodigy said:

This should have been your writing sample fr. Instant As across the board

My next application sample will be a metafiction exposition into the MFA application process, and to really get the tempo of the panic across I will intersperse the text with an increasing frequency of screenshots of the draft spreadsheet

[itsgivingliterary]

If it makes anyone feel better re fiction at Iowa, I have a friend of a friend who's a student and apparently it was a big year for them--close to 900-1000 applicants? so the competition was even worse than usual.

Also I just got my JHU and UofArizona rejections back to back lol

[_redrabbit7]

45 minutes ago, analog_e said:

Well, I am back from Providence. What a lovely little city-I was stopping every block to marvel at the Queen Anne homes, the skyline is small but so pronounced in its design, it just feels so definitively New England. The bookstores are unreal-I found Deleuze and an LP of Alan Silva's Luna Surface in the same little shop downtown, and Weird Providence in The Arcade sells Michael Cisco and The King in Yellow across from Pynchon. I have what may be a new favorite tattoo, if I can be said to have a favorite from among my tattoos. But, most importantly, Brown was marvelous. What a gorgeous campus. I can't say whether I prefer it to UVA because they are radically different and UVA has ostensibly been my home for so long, but I was immediately obsessed. I do not even care that I didn't get in, because I knew I wouldn't with my transcript in the state it had been in, I just feel doubly confident in my effort to get in next year. I can easily see myself having a content little life for a bit in Rhode Island.

That said, on the eleven hour train ride home I did extensive research into other programs and have a list of 9 others I will also be applying to this time around rather than the ol' Brown or Bust mentality.

I’ve been living in Providence as an international student for nearly three years now and I think I like it here a bit. It’s suitable for a solitary creative life, if that’s something you’re interested in. It’s quiet and boring, nothing much happens outside the Brown-RISD area. There’s a bookstore in Downtown called Symposium; I go there often to get a supply of books. 
 

By the way, I asked my roommate this morning, a current grad in fiction at Brown, and he told me he didn’t think acceptances had been sent out yet. He hadn’t heard anything. He would ask a professor in class today. None of my two other friends in the fiction and poetry tracks had heard anything too. The only acceptance we’ve heard of so far might be an early notice or a hoax. 

Edited March 12 by _redrabbit7

[analog_e]

9 minutes ago, _redrabbit7 said:

I’ve been living in Providence as an international student for nearly three years now and I think I like it here a bit. It’s suitable for a solitary creative life, if that’s something you’re interested in. It’s quiet and boring, nothing much happens outside the Brown-RISD area. There’s a bookstore in Downtown called Symposium; I go there often to get a supply of books. 
 

By the way, I asked my roommate this morning, a current grad in fiction at Brown, and he told me he didn’t think acceptances had been sent out yet. He hadn’t heard anything. He would ask a professor in class today. None of my two other friends in the fiction and poetry tracks had heard anything too. The only acceptance we’ve heard of so far might be an early notice or a hoax. 

Symposium is where I found the Deleuze and Alan Silva! Alongside like five other books.

I really appreciate that update on acceptances, it gives me some measure of hope that it's not too late, even if I do figure this year was too egregious a longshot (I applied with a 2.4 GPA 😅...it is now a 3.2 but the committee does not know that)

[nauseated]

Just now, analog_e said:

Symposium is where I found the Deleuze and Alan Silva! Alongside like five other books.

I really appreciate that update on acceptances, it gives me some measure of hope that it's not too late, even if I do figure this year was too egregious a longshot (I applied with a 2.4 GPA 😅...it is now a 3.2 but the committee does not know that)

that's an incredible and really significant jump though, good job!! 

[_redrabbit7]

Just now, analog_e said:

Symposium is where I found the Deleuze and Alan Silva! Alongside like five other books.

I really appreciate that update on acceptances, it gives me some measure of hope that it's not too late, even if I do figure this year was too egregious a longshot (I applied with a 2.4 GPA 😅...it is now a 3.2 but the committee does not know that)

Oh, nice! 
 

I don’t think your GPA should be an issue. I applied in 2023 without a bachelor’s and was waitlisted for the cross-disciplinary track, although I’d used the transcript of an MFA I was still undergoing at the time. As for that MFA too, which was in painting, I’d gotten in without a bachelor’s at all. I think it’s always about the writing sample. 

[misssalem]

18 minutes ago, _redrabbit7 said:

I’ve been living in Providence as an international student for nearly three years now and I think I like it here a bit. It’s suitable for a solitary creative life, if that’s something you’re interested in. It’s quiet and boring, nothing much happens outside the Brown-RISD area. There’s a bookstore in Downtown called Symposium; I go there often to get a supply of books. 
 

By the way, I asked my roommate this morning, a current grad in fiction at Brown, and he told me he didn’t think acceptances had been sent out yet. He hadn’t heard anything. He would ask a professor in class today. None of my two other friends in the fiction and poetry tracks had heard anything too. The only acceptance we’ve heard of so far might be an early notice or a hoax. 

Thanks so much for sharing this perspective. I'm really hoping acceptances are still waiting to be sent out. Staying positive ✨️ 

[analog_e]

7 minutes ago, nauseated said:

that's an incredible and really significant jump though, good job!! 

thank you! It's amazing how much better one becomes at turning in high quality work on time after quitting the hard drugs and taking the right legal ones

3 minutes ago, _redrabbit7 said:

Oh, nice! 
 

I don’t think your GPA should be an issue. I applied in 2023 without a bachelor’s and was waitlisted for the cross-disciplinary track, although I’d used the transcript of an MFA I was still undergoing at the time. As for that MFA too, which was in painting, I’d gotten in without a bachelor’s at all. I think it’s always about the writing sample. 

this is even more reassuring-I figured it would at least matter a bit, but I feel very confident in the quality of my sample even if it is the middle of a novel

[_redrabbit7]

9 minutes ago, analog_e said:

thank you! It's amazing how much better one becomes at turning in high quality work on time after quitting the hard drugs and taking the right legal ones

this is even more reassuring-I figured it would at least matter a bit, but I feel very confident in the quality of my sample even if it is the middle of a novel

I submitted a novel excerpt too. And every single time I got a rejection from a school I go back to read it and it reads like shit. 🤦🏾‍♂️

Edited March 12 by _redrabbit7

[analog_e]

4 minutes ago, _redrabbit7 said:

I submitted a novel excerpt too. And every single time I got a rejection from a school I go back to read it and it feels like shit. 🤦🏾‍♂️

Things I write well: Complex novels

Poetry

Things I do not write well: short fiction that isn't just ostensibly a prose poem and really works better being judged as poetry

I hate writing short fiction idk what it is

[_redrabbit7]

4 minutes ago, analog_e said:

Things I write well: Complex novels

Poetry

Things I do not write well: short fiction that isn't just ostensibly a prose poem and really works better being judged as poetry

I hate writing short fiction idk what it is

Oh, wow. I don’t write short fiction too!

I don’t think my writing is complex, but it’s long and verbose, because it’s autofiction, oftentimes with no narrative arc or plot. Think Karl Ove Knausgaard or Teju Cole or W. G. Sebald. 

I don’t write poetry. 

[shelbo]

hi! has anyone heard anything back from university of south carolina?? they're one of the last schools I'm waiting for, other than brown and UH, and I really would love to get in there! i did get an email from them asking me to set up an account for financial aid at the end of february and another email last week saying that they've accessed my fafsa, and i'm really unsure what to make of that. should i read it as a potential acceptance, or do they do that with everyone? just wanted to see if anyone else has gotten the same thing/has advice!

[analog_e]

Just now, _redrabbit7 said:

Oh, wow. I don’t write short fiction too!

I don’t think my writing is complex, but it’s long and verbose, because it’s autofiction, oftentimes with no narrative arc or plot. Think Karl Ove Knausgaard or Teju Cole or W. G. Sebald. 

I don’t write poetry. 

I've been told my writing is for people with graduate degrees, though I don't know how true that really is. It's really pretty readable, even if a little difficult at times. I think a lot about what DFW said in an interview about seeing Blue Velvet breaking him out of being an avant-gardist and just comfortably finding his voice as something distinct. That's really all I'm playing at. The intention is never to be difficult, just to express something how it needs to be expressed.

I didn't start writing poetry until this year because of workshop at UVA with Lisa Spaar, whom I adore. It's been a fun process, and I have written some quality prose poetry, but the lined stuff is mostly a little wanting still even if one of them got into the UVA lit mag. I'm hoping to get it to the point where I feel comfortable enough to apply for poetry and fiction next year, because as far as workshops are concerned, I find it much easier to give critical feedback and insight on poems.

[rapunzel]

everyone saying they're good with novels--HOW. i think short fiction works for me because i can hold the whole thing in my head while i'm writing, whereas with a novel there's obviously so much space and so much i feel like i have to say that i'm truly incapable lol

[everything bagel lover]

8 minutes ago, shelbo said:

hi! has anyone heard anything back from university of south carolina?? they're one of the last schools I'm waiting for, other than brown and UH, and I really would love to get in there! i did get an email from them asking me to set up an account for financial aid at the end of february and another email last week saying that they've accessed my fafsa, and i'm really unsure what to make of that. should i read it as a potential acceptance, or do they do that with everyone? just wanted to see if anyone else has gotten the same thing/has advice!

Hi! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but U of South Carolina acceptances and waitlists have already gone out. Idk about UH, I will check the draft and update!

edit: For Houston, there's one post on the draft that says someone got a notification about housing and assumed that means they were accepted but they seemed unsure and I don't recall if I've read anything on the forum but hopefully someone else can chime in if they have!

Edited March 12 by everything bagel lover
new info

[shelbo]

4 minutes ago, everything bagel lover said:

Hi! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but U of South Carolina acceptances and waitlists have already gone out. Idk about UH, I will check the draft and update!

edit: For Houston, there's one post on the draft that says someone got a notification about housing and assumed that means they were accepted but they seemed unsure and I don't recall if I've read anything on the forum but hopefully someone else can chime in if they have!

thanks for your response! the draft doesn't seem to have anything for USC for this cycle, just for 2024, so I assumed nothing had been sent out. really weird that they made me create an account for fafsa and everything if they were just going to deny me. 

[exvat]

9 minutes ago, analog_e said:

Things I write well: Complex novels

Poetry

Things I do not write well: short fiction that isn't just ostensibly a prose poem and really works better being judged as poetry

I hate writing short fiction idk what it is

Wanna say I feel this. The engine of my imposter syndrome is my own perceived mismatch for the vast majority of how MFA programs are focused. With fiction largely geared (as I understand it) to short stories, your interests/talents are elsewhere. As a poet, I'll cop to poetry comprising like 5% of my reading diet, the rest being a mix of spec-fic, Buddhist shit, and high litch-ritch-uh—and this low-key has me wondering if I'll be run out of my program, regardless how else I may fit. Especially when my... knowledge, yeah... of the English poetic canon comes to light 😅😬

[everything bagel lover]

3 minutes ago, shelbo said:

thanks for your response! the draft doesn't seem to have anything for USC for this cycle, just for 2024, so I assumed nothing had been sent out. really weird that they made me create an account for fafsa and everything if they were just going to deny me. 

No problem! It seems like everyone used the full name in the form, and I made mental note because another person who was accepted into CSU also got accepted into USC (congrats Dylan if you're here!!)

[_redrabbit7]

10 minutes ago, analog_e said:

I've been told my writing is for people with graduate degrees, though I don't know how true that really is. It's really pretty readable, even if a little difficult at times. I think a lot about what DFW said in an interview about seeing Blue Velvet breaking him out of being an avant-gardist and just comfortably finding his voice as something distinct. That's really all I'm playing at. The intention is never to be difficult, just to express something how it needs to be expressed.

I didn't start writing poetry until this year because of workshop at UVA with Lisa Spaar, whom I adore. It's been a fun process, and I have written some quality prose poetry, but the lined stuff is mostly a little wanting still even if one of them got into the UVA lit mag. I'm hoping to get it to the point where I feel comfortable enough to apply for poetry and fiction next year, because as far as workshops are concerned, I find it much easier to give critical feedback and insight on poems.

I’m out of reactions but I like what you said about your work in relation to David Foster Wallace’s. I’m embarrassed to say I’m not familiar with his work.

I think applying for both poetry and fiction next year is a nice idea. But, hey, it’s not over yet until you hear from Brown. ✌🏾

[currahcane]

Hi y'all. I've been waitlisted at my top two programs (UCSD and OSU) and received 1 hard r and two soft r's. (Though, in truth, the programs I've not heard from are ones I've had to take out of consideration anyway due to the politics in the area they are in.) I am wondering if anyone has experience with waitlists moving, I know OSU's is longggg (just based on the MFA draft.) but I haven't seen anyone else waitlisted at UCSD for nonfiction. Starting to feel slightly hopeless about it, but is there any chance I'll hear before April? Has anyone else been accepted off the waitlist at one of these schools? Thanks!

[Tinky C. Clown]

omg, higher tier rejection from iowa with handwritten note at the bottom

[_redrabbit7]

21 minutes ago, rapunzel said:

everyone saying they're good with novels--HOW. i think short fiction works for me because i can hold the whole thing in my head while i'm writing, whereas with a novel there's obviously so much space and so much i feel like i have to say that i'm truly incapable lol

Lol, same way I ask myself how people write compelling stories under 5k words. At 5k, I’m just beginning to say what I want to say. 
 

I think mine stem from influences. I read Coetzee a lot, and he’s only written about three or four short stories through his career, which are not particularly good as standalones.