Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Tuesday Review

A rejection on Monday, via mail. The culprit: Syracuse. Not a big surprise, like the other rejections. This one is less painful than most of the others, as I'd been just waiting for the letter at this point, and the idea of picking up and moving all the way to the state of New York was a little unrealistic. It's good to know for sure, however.

Also an acceptance today, via phone call, from Roosevelt University at Chicago, which I unfortunately had to turn down.

At any rate, this past week and a half has been a doozy, by far the busiest in terms of rejection and acceptance news. It is interesting how in the course of five weeks (from the beginning of February to the first week of March) I got four responses, and in the last week and a half, I got six more. I guess this time of year is the real active part of the season. The revised list:

University of Illinois - accepted
Western Michigan University - accepted
Roosevelt University (Chicago) - accepted
Purdue University - waitlisted *
University of Notre Dame - waitlisted
University of Michigan - rejected
Washington University - rejected
University of Iowa - rejected
Indiana University - rejected
Syracuse University - rejected

* Purdue's selection process relies on a system where the top 15-20 candidates for poetry and fiction each are selected. Out of these candidates, the final slots are eventually filled with permission from the Director of Composition, who has final say. This selection process works as a kind of quasi-waitlist. Details of Purdue's process can be found here.


No news:

Ohio State University
Johns Hopkins
Columbia College (Chicago)

3 comments:

Jessica said...

Congrats on all those acceptances. What a process, right?

I found your blog by googling U. of Illinois MFA, because I'm on the waitlist there. What are your thoughts about the program? Is it in the running for you?

(I've been accepted at a couple other programs, and am trying to decide whether to wait it out for U of I or go ahead with one of the others).

Congrats again! Best of luck with the remaining schools.

Jessica said...

Oh, and also a word about WMU: I almost went there last year, but the funding fell through. However, I got to speak a lot with Jaime Gordon, both in person and on the phone, and she was/is amazing. I wish the funding situation didn't suck.

Eric said...

Hi Jessica, thanks for the comments. Basically, I'm still waiting to hear from Purdue and Johns Hopkins before making my decision.

Regarding my thoughts on the U of I program, I'm extremely excited with the prospect of going there -- it's extremely well funded, and has (in my communication with them) an enthusiastic, communicative faculty. It's definitely in the running for me. But like I'd said before, I'd like to consider all my options first before making a decision. If you want, I can give you a more detailed response via email. My email is moomoocow42 at yahoo dot com.