You might notice the small change to the title of my blog up top: from "Applying to the MFA in Creative Writing" to simply "The MFA in Creative Writing."
While I'll definitely be monitoring the MFA application season closely come next fall, as I transition these next few months from applicant to student, I think the revised blog title will give a more accurate picture as to where I stand in the process.
And one last bit of obvious advice as we exit application season: always doublecheck the emails you send out to schools. In my emailed response to Columbia College's acceptance letter, I accidentally referenced Western Michigan instead of Columbia College. A horrible, horrible mistake. Thankfully, the person who responded to me was more than gracious amidst my embarrassment, and didn't grind it in my face. You'd think an editor like me would have the chops to read and reread the emails he sends out to schools.
Showing posts with label acceptance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acceptance. Show all posts
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Last One
A letter was waiting in the mail for me today: an acceptance from Columbia College. Nothing much to say, as I've obviously already made my decision, but it's nice to get a final word on the final school. I immediately emailed them my "thanks, but no thanks."
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)
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)
Friday, March 13, 2009
A Rejection and an Acceptance
Received rejection number four today, from Indiana University. A long time coming, really, and I can't say I'm terribly surprised. For a while, though, I was holding out hope that I was perhaps waitlisted, due to lack of response. Add to the fact that I've always held a special place in my heart for Indiana's focus on diversity in their MFA program makes the outcome a little disappointing, personally speaking. As a writer and a minority, I've always tried to make it a point to immerse myself in an environment that fosters diversity in not only skin color, but culture, voice, and experience. I have no doubt I'll be able to find this in whatever program and school I go to, but I'd be lying if I said this rejection didn't sting just a little.
My acceptance came via email from Western Michigan University. I'm pretty excited with the acceptance, with WMU possessing a fine program with a great faculty. Unfortunately, the offer is unfunded (I had been expecting there to be partial funding, based on my research of previous years), and based on a post with another Western Michigan acceptee (to the PhD program), it seems as if WMU does not have as much funding to provide their students this year as they have in previous years. This, of course, is complete hearsey on my part, so take it with a grain of salt. At any rate, a completely unfunded offer -- however prestigious the program -- is a tough pill to swallow, especially in comparison to the other offers I have on the table.
My acceptance came via email from Western Michigan University. I'm pretty excited with the acceptance, with WMU possessing a fine program with a great faculty. Unfortunately, the offer is unfunded (I had been expecting there to be partial funding, based on my research of previous years), and based on a post with another Western Michigan acceptee (to the PhD program), it seems as if WMU does not have as much funding to provide their students this year as they have in previous years. This, of course, is complete hearsey on my part, so take it with a grain of salt. At any rate, a completely unfunded offer -- however prestigious the program -- is a tough pill to swallow, especially in comparison to the other offers I have on the table.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Update
A small bit of news. A generous poster on the Speakeasy Forums notified that he/she had been accepted into Notre Dame's MFA program for fiction by phone call yesterday afternoon. No word on whether all acceptances will be contacted by phone call or not; however, this person did say that the official acceptances will be arriving by mail next week. Since Notre Dame's program is small (5 fiction, 5 poetry), I'd expect them to be able to call all their prospects in the next few days, though this is just speculation on my part.
Like most people at this point, I have but a handful of actual rejections, and probably a half dozen or so implied rejections running around on my list. What to do? I'd prefer to give the University of Illinois an answer on their generous offer sooner rather than later, which is predicated on a handful of schools that I'd seriously consider offers from (in comparison to U of I's program, location, and outstanding funding) -- schools such as Purdue, Notre Dame, and Indiana University. The lack of a rejection letter keeps me in a sort of decision limbo. So as much as I hate it, I have resolved to contact the schools that I at least know have sent out acceptance and rejection letters to some of their students already (Purdue) by the end of the week. While I'd rather not bother anyone and remain comfortably anonymous through the whole process, the allure of knowing rather than just fantasizing about being on some phantom waitlist -- or worse, accepted, I just don't know yet, which is another level of delusion -- is too powerful. I need the rejection in hard writing. End of story. Move on to school number two.
I know there are many others out there who are in the same situation of "limbo rejection." How are you dealing with it? Any plans on contacting schools, coping with it?
Like most people at this point, I have but a handful of actual rejections, and probably a half dozen or so implied rejections running around on my list. What to do? I'd prefer to give the University of Illinois an answer on their generous offer sooner rather than later, which is predicated on a handful of schools that I'd seriously consider offers from (in comparison to U of I's program, location, and outstanding funding) -- schools such as Purdue, Notre Dame, and Indiana University. The lack of a rejection letter keeps me in a sort of decision limbo. So as much as I hate it, I have resolved to contact the schools that I at least know have sent out acceptance and rejection letters to some of their students already (Purdue) by the end of the week. While I'd rather not bother anyone and remain comfortably anonymous through the whole process, the allure of knowing rather than just fantasizing about being on some phantom waitlist -- or worse, accepted, I just don't know yet, which is another level of delusion -- is too powerful. I need the rejection in hard writing. End of story. Move on to school number two.
I know there are many others out there who are in the same situation of "limbo rejection." How are you dealing with it? Any plans on contacting schools, coping with it?
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 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.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
