Oh God Oh-God OhGod MFA deadlines are almost here
I gave up long ago trying to give Seth Abramson or Tom Kealey a run for their MFA web-journalistic money, and now just encourage everyone to read their blogs and the pw.org blog about MFA programs if they are feeling neurotic and tense about any unsent applications.
Bye-Bye UC Irvine. The thought of you was swell.
Now, a lot of non-writers will say that this isn’t really a big deal, or, not as big of a deal as writers tend to let writing things like this become (ie: endgame) but it kind of is when your really think about it. For one, the selectivity of programs (the top five or so are more selective than Harvard Undergraduate because of the extraordinarily small size of some programs (4-10 incoming student-poets) and the desired funding situation (tuition waiver and TA stipend/insurance– hey, I have plenty of undergrad student loans to not pay as it it) an MFA application is more like a job application, and there is in fact is one included in the process for many schools that offer Teaching Assistantships. And this is a job almost definitely out of state, away from family and friends, and one that is locked in for 2-3 years. And then there’s no guarantee where you’ll be able to find a teaching job. Who knows if you’ll be able to ever combine your desired profession and desired home may never coincide. That’s scary, damnit. Anyway you look at it. Up through undergraduate you can always depend on the lottery popping for you, or a rich estranged (or possibly unknown) uncle to crash your birthday party with his millions of dollars and a desire to help someone in the family.
For me the scariest thing is that not only is this (if you follow the metaphor) a job application for a very selective job somewhere else in the country, but you have to pay them a fair ammount of money to even look at it. They need to pay professors to read and evaluate incoming applications, so it is understandable that they should require some money for that process, but it makes it even harder for a poor college kid to apply to as many absurdly difficult schools to get into as he would like to. The online MFA pundits say your application pool should be 10-12 schools, at $50-75 an application, not counting cost of any and all college transcripts, postage for Letters of Recommendation (3 times for each letter: from you to prof, prof to you, you to school)… the cost of the applications far outweights the time put into the process which is ladeled on with glee and (perhaps) nervous anxiety.
So, yes, remember that some schools’ deadlines are fast-fast-fast approaching (Iowa and Cornell, I’m lookin’ at you) and others are just fast-fast on their way.