Friday, February 27, 2009
What's on tap?
Coming up next week:
Rejection letters from Michigan. Rejection (and maybe some acceptance?) letters from Iowa. And word that Notre Dame is finalizing their fiction acceptances. They may be contacting those fine people as early as next week. But don't quote me on that last one.
A couple links:
If the desire to write a book about Africa should ever strike you, read this essay first: http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-About-Africa?view=articleAllPages.
Racialicious Blog -- Okay, so the title's a little flaky, but the content is incredible. From the site: "Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture." Race? Pop culture? What's not to like?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Rejection Time
Got my first non-implied rejection today, from Washington University (in St. Louis) via mail, which was expected. Don't really feel bad or good about it; I think relieved is the most accurate word. Not relieved at being rejected by a quality school, mind you, but relieved that I can finally cross it off my list and move on. I know I have several "implied" rejections running around in the back of my mind (yes, I know, there's no such thing as an implied rejection, but I'm much better at giving advice than taking it), which has been an unending source annoyance and stress. But then, we've all been going through this.
About halfway through the season. Cheers!
About halfway through the season. Cheers!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Science of Acceptances
A lot of things happened this week in the world of MFA acceptances. (All of this info is, of course, courtesy of Seth Abramson's The Suburban Ectasies.)
A bunch of the top 50 programs started sending out their acceptances: Michigan 2/18, Iowa 2/18, Massachusetts at Amherst 2/17-2/18, Washington 2/19, Syracuse 2/20, and so on. What can we interpret from these string of acceptances if you did not receive a phone call, an email, or a letter in the mail? Not much, I'm afraid. Each school's process is so vastly different. From what I've been able to gather, for example, Michigan sends out their acceptances (as they have in years past) via email, in one single blast. They do the same with their waitlists the next day. Chances are, then, that if you did not receive an email from them on 2/18 or 2/19, then there is a heavy suggestion of an implied rejection. But it gets murkier with other schools. The first word of acceptance from Iowa came on 2/18 via phone call. However, people are still receiving calls from Iowa as of this post today -- Sunday -- and further still I've heard that there are people who receive acceptances via email later. And then, of course, this all gets murkier with the majority of other programs, the ones with much smaller classes -- say, 3-5 people accepted in either poetry or fiction -- like Purdue, Illinois, or Minnesota. Their recorded acceptances, according to the Suburban Ectasies?
Purdue: 2/11 (poetry), then five days later, 2/16 (fiction)
Illinois: 1/31 (fiction), then over a week later, 2/9 (poetry)
Minnesota: 1/23 (fiction, poetry), then three weeks later, 2/18 (fiction, creative non-fiction)
Understanding each school's pattern of acceptances, when they will come, in what form, and why is like reading tea leaves. Certainly, there are explanations, reasonable explanations, for this seemingly random scatter of acceptances. For example, you could conclude from these dates that a school like Purdue or Illinois probably has each specialty's faculty (fiction or poetry) notify their students on their own schedule, separate of each other. You could also conclude from Minnesota's numbers that they do a sort of rolling acceptance -- a few here, a few there. And even further, to quote Seth: "...programs often admit one or two persons early, with an eye toward nominating them for some kind of fellowship or special aid dispensation..." Important, because those early early acceptances by some of these schools may not necessarily represent ALL of their fiction or poetry slots.
The point of all this? Simply, there are many possible reasons for why and when a school contacts a student, all of them plausible, but at the end of the day, it's still speculation. The fact is, a school like Notre Dame has been recorded as accepting someone for poetry on 2/6, and no one else. But is this completely true? Their classes are relatively small (10 acceptances, five in poetry and fiction, I assume), which means that out of the hundreds of applications received, only ten people truly know if they've been accepted, and the decision to share that information is theirs. What if they didn't know about the resources such as the Speakeasy forums, Seth's Suburban Ecstasies, the MFA Blog? And even if they did, who says that they'd want to share them publicly? Those acceptances, for all intents and purposes would've been like they've never existed if they weren't reported. The point is, for all of Seth's incredibly hard work with the community and his database of acceptances, we're still looking at a sample size that is probably only a fraction (perhaps a large fraction) of the true MFA applicant population.
I have no doubt that as the years go by, and as the MFA community becomes better informed, with more transparency on both ends -- with both the schools involved and the applying population -- we'll get a more holistic view of acceptance times that is much more accurate. Heck, the acceptance database right now is pretty darn accurate as is. But it is absolutely NOT the complete picture, the end all, be all. As Seth and countless others have reiterated over and over again, an implied rejection (hearing nothing) from a school is not a rejection at all. Until one gets that sheet of paper in the mail, keep hope alive!
A bunch of the top 50 programs started sending out their acceptances: Michigan 2/18, Iowa 2/18, Massachusetts at Amherst 2/17-2/18, Washington 2/19, Syracuse 2/20, and so on. What can we interpret from these string of acceptances if you did not receive a phone call, an email, or a letter in the mail? Not much, I'm afraid. Each school's process is so vastly different. From what I've been able to gather, for example, Michigan sends out their acceptances (as they have in years past) via email, in one single blast. They do the same with their waitlists the next day. Chances are, then, that if you did not receive an email from them on 2/18 or 2/19, then there is a heavy suggestion of an implied rejection. But it gets murkier with other schools. The first word of acceptance from Iowa came on 2/18 via phone call. However, people are still receiving calls from Iowa as of this post today -- Sunday -- and further still I've heard that there are people who receive acceptances via email later. And then, of course, this all gets murkier with the majority of other programs, the ones with much smaller classes -- say, 3-5 people accepted in either poetry or fiction -- like Purdue, Illinois, or Minnesota. Their recorded acceptances, according to the Suburban Ectasies?
Purdue: 2/11 (poetry), then five days later, 2/16 (fiction)
Illinois: 1/31 (fiction), then over a week later, 2/9 (poetry)
Minnesota: 1/23 (fiction, poetry), then three weeks later, 2/18 (fiction, creative non-fiction)
Understanding each school's pattern of acceptances, when they will come, in what form, and why is like reading tea leaves. Certainly, there are explanations, reasonable explanations, for this seemingly random scatter of acceptances. For example, you could conclude from these dates that a school like Purdue or Illinois probably has each specialty's faculty (fiction or poetry) notify their students on their own schedule, separate of each other. You could also conclude from Minnesota's numbers that they do a sort of rolling acceptance -- a few here, a few there. And even further, to quote Seth: "...programs often admit one or two persons early, with an eye toward nominating them for some kind of fellowship or special aid dispensation..." Important, because those early early acceptances by some of these schools may not necessarily represent ALL of their fiction or poetry slots.
The point of all this? Simply, there are many possible reasons for why and when a school contacts a student, all of them plausible, but at the end of the day, it's still speculation. The fact is, a school like Notre Dame has been recorded as accepting someone for poetry on 2/6, and no one else. But is this completely true? Their classes are relatively small (10 acceptances, five in poetry and fiction, I assume), which means that out of the hundreds of applications received, only ten people truly know if they've been accepted, and the decision to share that information is theirs. What if they didn't know about the resources such as the Speakeasy forums, Seth's Suburban Ecstasies, the MFA Blog? And even if they did, who says that they'd want to share them publicly? Those acceptances, for all intents and purposes would've been like they've never existed if they weren't reported. The point is, for all of Seth's incredibly hard work with the community and his database of acceptances, we're still looking at a sample size that is probably only a fraction (perhaps a large fraction) of the true MFA applicant population.
I have no doubt that as the years go by, and as the MFA community becomes better informed, with more transparency on both ends -- with both the schools involved and the applying population -- we'll get a more holistic view of acceptance times that is much more accurate. Heck, the acceptance database right now is pretty darn accurate as is. But it is absolutely NOT the complete picture, the end all, be all. As Seth and countless others have reiterated over and over again, an implied rejection (hearing nothing) from a school is not a rejection at all. Until one gets that sheet of paper in the mail, keep hope alive!
Monday, February 16, 2009
AWP
Fun, fun, fun. The AWP Conference in Chicago was the first AWP Conference I've ever attended -- the second writer's conference I've been to. The first one was Indiana University's Summer Writing Conference in 2006, which was incredibly fun as well. It was there that I met two of the three group members of my current writing group, and it was there that the lessons of writing were truly ingrained in me -- writing on a daily basis, taking risks with voice and character, etc. -- but where IU's conference was small, intimate, and personal, with only 200-250 people attending at the most, the AWP Conference was huge. Sprawling. Taking place at the Hilton Chicago Hotel in the loop (downtown, for all you non-Chicagoans), there were thousands of writers, milling around, talking about craft, lecturing on craft, reading from their works, inspiring each other. It was incredible. I'd never been in that kind of atmosphere before, not on that level anyway, and it really blew my mind. That there would be so many people in one place, all of them invested in the one thing that, really, no one outside of the community even knew existed: writing.
A not-so-short list of the things I did, the things I loved, and the things I noticed at the AWP Conference:
A not-so-short list of the things I did, the things I loved, and the things I noticed at the AWP Conference:
- AWP Swag: A nifty all-cloth (with zipper) AWP tote bag. A lanyard with my name on it. A shiny, bible-thick guidebook in every tote bag. A nifty little highlighter with the AWP logo on it.
- Seminar of the weekend: "Midwest Confidential" with Barrie Jean Borich, Bao Phi, Ander Monson, Andre Perry, Ira Sukrungruang, Cheryl Strayed. Being a Midwestern nerd (I'll coin the phrase right now, why not?), I'm very interested in and often write about the experiences of Midwesterners. This seminar featured a writer from the Southeast suburbs of Chicago, a writer from a small town in Minnesota, a writer from the upper peninsula in Michigan, a Vietnamese writer raised in Minnesota, a Thai writer raised in Chicago, and an African American writer in Iowa City. And, as you can imagine, all of their experiences are wildly different. If that isn't a slice of America so perfectly encapsulated in the Midwest, I don't know what is.
- Most frustrating seminar of the weekend: "Hip-hop and the Future of the Black Writer." The title is pretty self explanatory, and I had been hoping that the presenters would speak to problems and possible solutions on the synthesis of popular culture and hip hop (especially with the younger generation), and literature. But there was actually very little attention given to the subject of writing. Instead, it was dominated (despite a couple of very interesting essays) by platitudes on hip-hop and children. I was a bit disappointed that I was unable to take anything away from that seminar.
- Writers I got to see read: Stuart Dybek, Charles Baxter. Charles Baxter was replacing a sick James Alan McPherson, and read passages from Mr. McPherson's work and some of his own. Mr. Baxter's reading was particularly moving. I'd never heard him read before, and he has this very deliberate manner about him -- in speech and mannerisms -- which made for a captivating show. Never mind the fact that his short stories are wonderful.
- Writers whose seminars I got to sit in on: Robert Olen Butler, Steve Almond, Achy Obejas, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Robert Boswell. I was a little starstruck to be in the same room as Robert Olen Butler, who spoke very passionately about the value of life experience for writing. Also, Luis Urrea is a fantastic speaker. He tells great stories, and has an absolutely wicked sense of humor.
- Attended a fundraiser for a lit mag. Swanky. In one of the penthouse suites at the top of the hotel with an absolutely gorgeous view of the lakefront.
- Sat in on ten seminars in total. Five on the first day, two on the second, and three on the final day. I quickly learned that pacing is key. Doing five seminars on the first day was an absolute beating -- each seminar is an hour and fifteen minutes long, with fifteen minute intervals in between each one. By the time the third seminar rolled around on Thursday, I was sucking air. Frankly, there's only so many consecutive hours one can take on the subject of controlling narrative distance before it all starts to sound the same. I wisely dialed it back on Friday and Saturday.
- Got to peruse the prodigious book fair, but did not buy (one of my two regrets) any lit mags. I was overwhelmed by the volume of choices -- there were, literally, hundreds of book stands -- and indecision stopped me from purchasing anything.
- My other regret? I chickened out at Bennigan's for lunch, and didn't choose their world famous Monte Cristo sandwich. What is the Monte Cristo? From the Bennigan's website: "A delicious combination of ham and turkey, plus Swiss and American cheeses on wheat bread. Lightly battered and fried until golden. Dusted with powdered sugar and served with red raspberry preserves for dipping." A heart attack on a plate, and I avoided it. I can't tell you how incredibly disappointed I am in myself.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
See you at the AWP!
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs' (AWP) Conference is just around the corner, which means education and information on writing and writing programs for the next three days straight. What is the AWP? Go here for details. Then read my general thoughts on the value of attending the AWP Conference here. You can still register to attend the conference, so don't miss out if you happen to live in Chicago. Have fun, to all those attending, I know I will!
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Lottery
What is it about the writing community that makes it so neurotic when it comes to acceptance/rejection season for MFAs? This is something that we ("we" being those souls applying to MFAs) are all guilty of, myself completely included. You know what I'm talking about. The collective nervousness. The nail biting. The hundreds, maybe thousands, of posts on every tiny detail every single day. Does this community dynamic exist (and I'm asking earnestly here, because I do not know) in other graduate disciplines?
Consider: You're finishing high school. Your GPA is so and so, your SAT scores are so and so, your extracurriculars are so and so, and so forth. Very definite, objective. All the fields on the applications are filled out with little room for subjective information (maybe an essay at most), and at the end of the day, after you've sent all your applications to the half dozen schools of your choice (maybe two "safeties" and two "reaches"), you hear back in a couple months, and that is that. What I personally remember of my application experience as a high schooler was that it'd be nice to go to NYU, but that I'd settle for the other schools if they'd have me.
Now maybe you were a different kind of student. An achiever. Many of my friends were. I knew a couple students who had their hearts dead set on Northwestern or Harvard or whatever. But the vast majority of people treated the whole process as what it was: a numbers game. If you made the cutoff for this SAT score, and you were ranked this highly in your class, you'd probably make it into this school. Sure, there's always some measure of hand-wringing about the whole process -- hope is sometimes a tortuous thing -- but for the most part, everyone knew where they'd get accepted and where they'd get rejected.
What I realized the other day, was how much like the lottery the MFA acceptance process is. You just don't know. You may hit that jackpot and win the million dollar prize, but then, you may get nada, like everyone else. Now, I'm not talking about the faculty side of things. I'm sure when they read all of the manuscripts side by side it becomes exceedingly clear which are heads and shoulders above the others. Rather, I'm talking about the applicant. The writer. Is there any other profession where it is normal, even expected, to operate on an island? Without criticism or feedback or comparison? Or community? Even worse for the beginning writer, where all it would seem, at first, to be a proper writer would be to put pen to paper, and nothing else. But let's forget about the beginning writer for a moment. We all know how important community is to the writing process, right? We have our writing groups, our forums where we go to for advice, our friends, our family. Yet even then, I would argue that it is all too common to fall into that trap, where you put your head down and write -- in confinement -- for days and weeks without end.
This kind of isolation, which is so necessary for the act of writing, yet so contrary to the concepts of criticism and feedback in nearly every discipline (writing or not), is what makes acceptance season so difficult. It makes an already subjective process even more uncertain. You may know that your story has better movement than Jane Doe's story in workshop or crisper dialogue than John Smith's in your writing group -- but what is it against fifty stories? A hundred? You just don't know.
Consider: You're finishing high school. Your GPA is so and so, your SAT scores are so and so, your extracurriculars are so and so, and so forth. Very definite, objective. All the fields on the applications are filled out with little room for subjective information (maybe an essay at most), and at the end of the day, after you've sent all your applications to the half dozen schools of your choice (maybe two "safeties" and two "reaches"), you hear back in a couple months, and that is that. What I personally remember of my application experience as a high schooler was that it'd be nice to go to NYU, but that I'd settle for the other schools if they'd have me.
Now maybe you were a different kind of student. An achiever. Many of my friends were. I knew a couple students who had their hearts dead set on Northwestern or Harvard or whatever. But the vast majority of people treated the whole process as what it was: a numbers game. If you made the cutoff for this SAT score, and you were ranked this highly in your class, you'd probably make it into this school. Sure, there's always some measure of hand-wringing about the whole process -- hope is sometimes a tortuous thing -- but for the most part, everyone knew where they'd get accepted and where they'd get rejected.
What I realized the other day, was how much like the lottery the MFA acceptance process is. You just don't know. You may hit that jackpot and win the million dollar prize, but then, you may get nada, like everyone else. Now, I'm not talking about the faculty side of things. I'm sure when they read all of the manuscripts side by side it becomes exceedingly clear which are heads and shoulders above the others. Rather, I'm talking about the applicant. The writer. Is there any other profession where it is normal, even expected, to operate on an island? Without criticism or feedback or comparison? Or community? Even worse for the beginning writer, where all it would seem, at first, to be a proper writer would be to put pen to paper, and nothing else. But let's forget about the beginning writer for a moment. We all know how important community is to the writing process, right? We have our writing groups, our forums where we go to for advice, our friends, our family. Yet even then, I would argue that it is all too common to fall into that trap, where you put your head down and write -- in confinement -- for days and weeks without end.
This kind of isolation, which is so necessary for the act of writing, yet so contrary to the concepts of criticism and feedback in nearly every discipline (writing or not), is what makes acceptance season so difficult. It makes an already subjective process even more uncertain. You may know that your story has better movement than Jane Doe's story in workshop or crisper dialogue than John Smith's in your writing group -- but what is it against fifty stories? A hundred? You just don't know.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Funding Wars
I would like to direct your attention to an article published last year in The Altlantic here, courtesy of Nillywilly on the Speakeasy Forums. It comes in at a hefty 10-11 pages, and touches on all the important (and interesting) MFA-related topics such as funding, prestige, alumni, faculty, etc.
Most interesting to me was the segment on "Funding" on pages 4-6 of the article, which goes into great detail about the "funding wars" occurring with the elite programs, the Virginia's, Iowa's, Michigan's, Texas', Irvine's, of the country. Specifically, what struck me was how much like college sports recruiting the whole process was. If you know anything about college recruiting (football and basketball being the most glamorous of the college sports), you'd understand that an "arms race" of funding and courting occurs between schools in the furious grab to sign the best of the best every year -- and has been going for years, decades. In fact, whole communities and websites have popped up around the concept of recruitment -- ever wanted to know who were the top defensive backs of 2009's high school class? Well, now you can find out here.
And what do these elite sport schools do to court the very best? They provide scholarships. Waive tuitions. Promise the best and the brightest coaches. Offer the most sophisticated and state-of-the-art training facilities and gyms. Is this so different from what's happening with the MFA? As Edward Delany intimates in his article, the most prestigious MFA programs "bid" over the finest talents with higher and higher stipends, better and bigger-named faculty, and varied and inventive classes and programs. It's wildly interesting to me, to suddenly realize that this is really just what college football and basketball have been doing for decades -- now in the very subjective arena of creative writing programs.
Most interesting to me was the segment on "Funding" on pages 4-6 of the article, which goes into great detail about the "funding wars" occurring with the elite programs, the Virginia's, Iowa's, Michigan's, Texas', Irvine's, of the country. Specifically, what struck me was how much like college sports recruiting the whole process was. If you know anything about college recruiting (football and basketball being the most glamorous of the college sports), you'd understand that an "arms race" of funding and courting occurs between schools in the furious grab to sign the best of the best every year -- and has been going for years, decades. In fact, whole communities and websites have popped up around the concept of recruitment -- ever wanted to know who were the top defensive backs of 2009's high school class? Well, now you can find out here.
And what do these elite sport schools do to court the very best? They provide scholarships. Waive tuitions. Promise the best and the brightest coaches. Offer the most sophisticated and state-of-the-art training facilities and gyms. Is this so different from what's happening with the MFA? As Edward Delany intimates in his article, the most prestigious MFA programs "bid" over the finest talents with higher and higher stipends, better and bigger-named faculty, and varied and inventive classes and programs. It's wildly interesting to me, to suddenly realize that this is really just what college football and basketball have been doing for decades -- now in the very subjective arena of creative writing programs.
Statement of Purpose, Redux
I've been re-examining the comments on the MFA Faculty Forum I post on the MFA Blog. Now that everyone's commented, I've specifically noticed that there seemed to be a large emphasis (noted by the directors and faculty; the people who make the application decisions) of the value of Statements of Purposes/Personal Statements. In fact, five out of the eleven contributors exactly mention the importance of SOPs in their evaluation process, which has caused me to revise my original thoughts on the SOP.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Application season is all but over, and theorizing at this point in the game is little but "armchair quarterbacking." I understand that. But that doesn't mean we can't pore over every single minutiae, every little crumb of research, right? Right.
With that out of the way, I've noticed that one of the reoccurring themes on faculty members' views on SOPs was how it can (or cannot) speak directly to the applicant's desire and commitment to the craft of writing. The most illuminating quote on SOPs to me was what Mary Biddinger of Northeast Ohio had to say:
"I would encourage statement of purpose writers to 'be themselves' as much as possible, while maintaining a sense of audience, of course. The best statements work in tandem with the writing samples, leaving readers with a lasting overall impression. Students are often surprised when I meet them for the first time and remember some detail from their statement, but the good ones are quite memorable."
Some valuable words, in my opinion. What will a great SOP do? Ideally, it will speak to your passions and motivations as a writer. It will tell the reader what is important to the writer, but won't do so explicitly or (to borrow from Holden Caulfield) sound phony. It'll speak from the heart, and although that may sound corny, it's essentially what writers do implicitly with their writing anyways. Why not their SOPs?
I think what I realize now about SOPs is that it isn't necessarily an issue of templating or style. Business-like, casual, conversational -- does it really matter? What matters is what feels comfortable, what matters is that it tells your story, in your own words. If you fake it, people can and will be able to tell. As for my own SOP -- I do plan on sharing it after most of the acceptances have been sent out -- I used a semi-formal business letter approach. But rereading it, I think I can say that I did it not because I felt it was the style or template that allowed me to most effectively maximize my chances, but because it was what felt most comfortable to me in communicating what my writing was about, and what I was all about. And that, I think, is the most important thing.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Application season is all but over, and theorizing at this point in the game is little but "armchair quarterbacking." I understand that. But that doesn't mean we can't pore over every single minutiae, every little crumb of research, right? Right.
With that out of the way, I've noticed that one of the reoccurring themes on faculty members' views on SOPs was how it can (or cannot) speak directly to the applicant's desire and commitment to the craft of writing. The most illuminating quote on SOPs to me was what Mary Biddinger of Northeast Ohio had to say:
"I would encourage statement of purpose writers to 'be themselves' as much as possible, while maintaining a sense of audience, of course. The best statements work in tandem with the writing samples, leaving readers with a lasting overall impression. Students are often surprised when I meet them for the first time and remember some detail from their statement, but the good ones are quite memorable."
Some valuable words, in my opinion. What will a great SOP do? Ideally, it will speak to your passions and motivations as a writer. It will tell the reader what is important to the writer, but won't do so explicitly or (to borrow from Holden Caulfield) sound phony. It'll speak from the heart, and although that may sound corny, it's essentially what writers do implicitly with their writing anyways. Why not their SOPs?
I think what I realize now about SOPs is that it isn't necessarily an issue of templating or style. Business-like, casual, conversational -- does it really matter? What matters is what feels comfortable, what matters is that it tells your story, in your own words. If you fake it, people can and will be able to tell. As for my own SOP -- I do plan on sharing it after most of the acceptances have been sent out -- I used a semi-formal business letter approach. But rereading it, I think I can say that I did it not because I felt it was the style or template that allowed me to most effectively maximize my chances, but because it was what felt most comfortable to me in communicating what my writing was about, and what I was all about. And that, I think, is the most important thing.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Acceptance!
I got a letter of acceptance into the University of Illinois' MFA program on Friday, and frankly, I've been too busy geeking out the entire weekend to do anything but hyperventilate. Well, that and reread the letter every two hours just to make sure it's real. I'm thrilled to be given a chance to be a part of such an outstanding program. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject, but for now, I think conciseness is probably the smarter way to go for this post before I start blathering like an idiot.
Regardless, it's still extremely early in the game for everyone (both those who haven't and have heard back from schools). We're barely scratching February. Keep your chin up, your gameface on, and try to stay sane.
(I know. Easier said than done.)
Regardless, it's still extremely early in the game for everyone (both those who haven't and have heard back from schools). We're barely scratching February. Keep your chin up, your gameface on, and try to stay sane.
(I know. Easier said than done.)
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