First gen, queer Afro Latina and non traditional student who dropped out in 2015 but completed BA in English with 3.98 GPA in December 2025. I have 6 published stories, a full manuscript, and have one first prize literary award in Fiction.

Received an email saying that an update was posted to my graduate portal, clicked the provided link to get back to the portal and there was a popup that took me to the rejection letter. At least they used my name instead of "dear applicant" I suppose :/

“Dear Student,” like god forbid you learn how to send an automated email with someone’s name on it..

Dear Student: The Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has now completed its graduate admissions deliberations, and I am indeed sorry to report that we will not be able to offer you admission for the 2026-2027 academic year. This decision should not be taken as a sign that our readers did not enjoy reading your work or that you would not thrive in study at the graduate level. We receive many applications, and with an incoming class of only three poets and three fiction writers, we must make difficult decisions. We hope that you will be able to pursue your goals for advanced study in another context, and we wish you the very best success in your creative-writing endeavors. Many thanks for your interest in our program.

Moved on to second round

4th year applying, this was a big shock

Rejected from waitlist, womp womp.

Already have a novel published in the US and ten years teaching in English literature and writing both academic assignments and creative writing in fiction and CNF.

Waitlisted for funding. Accepted to program

Rejected off the waitlist. Congrats to everyone who got in!

Hadn’t heard back so I emailed— here’s the response— The offers of admission have been sent out and so have the rejections. You should check your application portal to confirm whether you have received either of these notifications. If you did not receive either notification, then you were on our waitlist, and we were hoping to be able to admit you. However, at this point, we have made all the offers we expect to make for the Fall 2025 semester. Due to the statewide hiring freeze by the governor of Louisiana, we will not be making any offers after April 12. The earliest we may resume the process is in July, barring any extensions of the hiring freeze. I’ve accepted an offer at another school anyways but just wanted my answer. Best of luck to anyone else who is on the waitlist (?? at least I think I’m on the waitlist) 2a/9r/2w/0p

Rejected with an email. Good luck to everyone else.

accepted off the waitlist, but will decline !

Accepted in March to MFA but had no funding. On 4/7, waitlisted for TLF (20% tuition scholarship). They can't tell me until August 1 if I'll come off it or not... I will be declining. I can't (and nobody should) wait that long.

Got offered a spot at UL Lafayette with funding. Feels really late in the season & I already accepted an offer somewhere else so I turned it down. Funding is 2,000$ per month for nine months, so $18,000 per year. Teaching load is 2/2.