All posts tagged: application

The MFA, Money, & Diversity (or lack thereof)

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Image: http://401kcalculator.org This post is about diversity BUT I think it’s useful to anyone negotiating money after receiving acceptances: Most MFA programs lack diversity. It ain’t a secret; going to school for three years to write stories and/or poetry is probably the bougiest thing you could ever do (besides paying for fluff-n-fold, which I low-key did sometimes when I had a full-time job). If you’re from an underrepresented community (ie. a POC or a first-generation college graduate), many graduate programs have additional fellowships available to you. Before I started my MFA program, I was working in college admissions at a private school in California. Almost immediately, I noticed a pattern that was killing me: After being admitted to the school, the students who asked for (or demanded) additional funding were almost never the POC or low-income students. Often, when a low-income student didn’t receive enough funding, they’d either choose to go into debt, or they’d choose not to attend the school at all. But, of course, the students who asked for more funding from the college …

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/ccamfacomics/

Eric Wong Introduction (California College of the Arts ’18)

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Image: CCA MFA Comics What exactly is an MFA in comics? It’s the opportunity to be on the cutting edge by learning and refining one’s storytelling capabilities in a medium that’s only just starting to be explored. It also means a lot of sleepless nights cranking out comics as you spend July doing a semester’s worth of work in the span of four weeks, for four courses. Then after the summer classes are done, you spend the month of August on the summer assignment which is to create a twelve page diary comic, fully drawn and inked, due literally a day before the beginning of the fall term in the first week of September. If being an MFA student is like being thrown into the deep end of the pool to see if you sink or swim, then an MFA student in comics is like being thrown into the English Channel. In winter. For someone whose undergraduate background is in creative writing and comics theory and has took only one art class since middle school, …

Where Did You End Up? 2016

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Image: Chris Campbell Now that April 15th has come and gone, let us know where you’ll be headed in the fall! Or if you’ll be pursuing other opportunities, reapplying again, etc. Also, feel free to leave any questions you have about starting your MFA or reapplying. We’ll do our best to answer them. Don’t forget we’re taking first year contributor applications until June 1st. You must be starting your MFA or creative writing MA in the fall to apply.

REJECTED: The Five Stages of Post-Application Season Grief

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Photo credit: Caro Wallis You did your research (or didn’t). You perfected your sample (or didn’t). You sought out recommenders that knew your work well (or didn’t). Okay, you get the idea. Whether you feel like you gave this MFA application season your all or felt like you shortchanged yourself, if you didn’t end up getting into a program you wanted (or a program at all), you may be feeling pretty down right now. For those of you who may have a fuzzy, nonexistent back-up plan, I crowd-sourced a few of our favorite MFA Years bloggers for their own advice re: moving on during the gap year(s). The following is what I call The Five Stages of Post-Application Season Grief, a combination of my own and others’ thoughts on this dark, dark period. I’m sure many of you have more or fewer stages than I list here, completely different stages altogether, or no stages at all (cue meme with little cartoon dog on fire). TL:DR? You’re going to be okay. Stage One: “I suck and …