Good afternoon, everyone.

The title of this post has no doubt started some of you to thinking, "What in the wide, wide world of sports is THIS topic doing on the SF forum?" That's a fair question and it deserves an honest answer.

As we enter the season of acceptance, this time of year marks a critical point in our lives that brings an end to months of agonizing suspense and seemingly endless waiting. For some of us, our discomfort is rewarded with that coveted golden missive, the admission letter. For the rest of us, rejection awaits. And upon the arrival of this bad news, every applicant must choose whether to restart the exhausting process of applying to graduate school or abandon their dream in favor of steering his or her life in a different (and more secure) direction.

I'll come to my point before I go any further. How many frequent SF visitors have asked themselves at least one of the following questions upon being rejected from film school?

- Am I too young?
- Am I too old?
- Have I waited too long since earning my bachelors degree to apply to graduate school?
- Have I frittered my life away?
- Are my letters of recommendation too old?
- Have I passed my creative expiration date?
- Does this school have an affirmative action policy that excludes me in spite of my best efforts?
- Do I have the aimless dilettante/wannabe stink of death?
- Has has my name been added to an application blacklist?

By the way, I want to include as many different people as possible in this discussion. Whether you've just been rejected for the first or twenty-first time or you got into film school after at least one rejection, I want to hear from you.

Consider this group therapy, gang. Each of us needs to let off a little steam every once in a while. Be as candid as you please with your responses. Don't hold back.

Thank you for reading,

J.G.

aw...i think more people should be posting on this , it's a great topic. I asked myself a lot of the questions, specifically, "am i too young" and "i don't think i'm qualified." The second one isn't really a questions but I feel it's a legit fear.

So far I've had interviews, a few rejections, but mostly silence on all fronts. It's nerve wracking. I honestly don't think I tried hard enough to get in. At the same time I can't see myself doing anything else. My greatest fear is that I lack the passion and guts to ultimately be successful in the field. Coming from my background i'm making a huge gamble by not going along the "well worn path." Yet I realize that copping out would really just make me hate my life. Probably some time in my 50s i'd go through a little mid life crisis.

If i don't get in this year, who knows. I think my next attempt at school would be half-assed. But half of me thinks that i'll really never get away from film so i might as well just suck it up and go.

haha, it's one of the things i think about almost constantly...at the moment i haven't received any rejection letters yet, i am almost sure that it's a 50-50 chance now, i'm not confident that i'll get in, but i don't think i will be 100% rejected

the question i asked myself is...why can't i let things go? the worries, things i learned in school, my mentors' advices, life experiences, and the rules...especially when pressure hits, i squeeze on to the luggage even tighter like a defensive mechanism...thinking it might help...but the reality is, it's only a burden, an invisible opposition...i try to tell myself, travel lightly...so far, so good T_T

Well, film schools are not PhD programs (which is what I eventually want to pursue). Admission, I imagine, must be a pretty straightforward process: prestigious school + 3.5/4.0 GPA + recommendations that actually show that the professor really knows you (and that he didn't just print a standard letter he wrote 5 years ago for another student + relevant personal statement which shows that you know what's going on in the industry and that you're not just a dreamer/wannabe.

I've received a couple rejection letters, and it turns out that I handle rejection from schools as well as I do from women. LOL It's particularly curious when I get a rejection letter from a school that I thought of as one of my back up schools. (a lesser school) I feel pretty good about my portfolio, I graduated with honors and my professors were genuinely pleased I was going to graduate school, so getting a personal recommendation was easy. Can't help but wonder what each school bases it's admissions. All the schools said that they received record applications, so the competition is good.

Yeah, that happened to me, too, MovieTeller. San Francisco State University sent me a rejection letter and I was pretty surprised. It was especially bad since it was my first one and then I had concerns about getting into the other schools!

But when I asked them about it (how I could make my application stronger, etc) they said that my application materials indicated I was ready for graduate work, but that they thought I'd be disappointed in their program. Basically, that their program wasn't a good match for what I was looking for, which is sort of true.

Maybe I'm being naive in believing them, but I do believe what they told me, especially since the first guy who wrote back wasn't as nice and hadn't looked at his notes about my application yet.

So, rejections aren't always because your application materials weren't strong enough. Maybe that helps?

How did they mean that you would be disappointed in their program? What were you looking for that they weren't able to give you?

I applied for the MA in film studies and they said it seemed from my application that I might be more interested in filmmaking. They suggested I apply for an MFA in production.

ya i heard that story a lot as well...i think if your portfolio is too strong, the grad schools will think you're ready to work as a director, thus turning you down...

it depends on a lot of things to get into grad school, school's decision change with every new generation of kids, it's not a straight forward process at all...

I feel the need to rant...

I applied to USC (Stark Producing), UCLA, and AFI (both screenwriting.) I was flat out rejected at both USC and UCLA, and I was waitlisted at AFI. I did not even get an interview at UCLA.

I'm feeling a little bit bitter because I really have no idea where the weakness was in my applications. I graduated cum laude from an Ivy League university, with high honors in my major (film and tv), and an award for excellence for my thesis film. I had good GRE scores (somewhere around 1450 if I remember correctly... 90th percentile in both verbal and math).

Since graduation (in 2005) I have been living and working in Hollywood. I've had internships at agencies and major production companies. I have IMDB credits for my work as both a director's assistant and post production supervisor on an independent film. I wrote three feature length screenplays in two years (while simultaneously holding down full time employment). One of those screenplays placed in the top 10% in the 2007 Nicholl Fellowship competition (this was my writing sample). Since the time of my applications, two of my screenplays have been optioned by a small production company.

I have good recommendations from film professors and industry professionals. When I interviewed for AFI they specifically remarked that they liked my personal statement. I reread my personal statements for UCLA and USC... there were no glaring errors. If I had to rewrite them, I might tweak them a bit, but the general gist would be the same.

I understand that there are a lot of amazing, well qualified individuals who apply to these programs, and that this year was a particularly competitive one for some reason (the strike?) I don't want to come off like I think I'm entitled to something, I think I'm just a little befuddled by the whole process, and thus a bit emotional.

I'm not quite sure why I didn't get at least an interview at UCLA. I have called and tried to set up an appointment to talk to an admissions officer, but I've yet to hear back from them. At USC I just felt a bit disrespected. They had to send me two rejection letters (one wasn't sufficient). The letters strongly discouraged me from contacting them to discuss the reasons for my denial. It was also just unprofessional: they misdated the letter (I received it three days before the printed date) and suggested the reason for my nonacceptance was bad GRE scores or the inability to speak the english language (which seem like odd things to put on a form letter to me.)

Of course I wish I had been accepted outright to AFI, but I am honored to be on the waitlist; I know that some people do not even have that as an option. I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

Thanks for listening.

(note, I'm not seeking sympathy from this posting. I realize what I wrote could come off as a bit bratty and for that I apologize. I just really needed to get that off my chest as part of my "dealing with it" process.)

I feel your pain on those rejection letters KelMo, I've received no less than 4 from USC thus far.

Wow, KelMo, the USC letter-writers told you that the inability to speak English was a possible reason for your rejection? That's one of the clearest cases of projection I've ever seen.

I, for one, got two copies of my acceptance: the first was full of typos, formatting errors, and ungrammatical prose. The second "corrected" those mistakes with DIFFERENT MISTAKES.

Friendly advice for USC: there are some things you can't outsource to Mumbai.

--IA

Icarus/KelMo: The USC Peter Stark rejection letter was a form letter. It basically said most people they don't accept due to poor English skills (I guess they get a lot of int'l applicants). They don't really make it clear, but it's not specifically the reason that either of us didn't get in, they just couldn't bother to tell us.

UCLA is notoriously bad at clarification, so unless you know someone personally on your interview panel, chances are you'll never learn where your weakness was. They do often choose repeat applicants over new ones. But thats not always set in stone. A certain friend of mine from the forums had an interview for their program, but never got off the waitlist. Audited classes in their non-degree program for a year, and was pissed that this year he wasn't even waitlested.

I know personal statements weigh heavy at all the schools-- actually even heavier than writing samples sometimes-- they want to see what is DIFFERENT you can bring to the table.

Thats not to say that your applications weren't strong. Many school's are looking for a certain personality in their students and will ignore those they feel won't fit their style, despite potential.

My heart goes out to you and everybody dealing with rejection letters. It must be really tough. Rant away, lay down your attributes for us, this topic of all topics should be one you DON'T have to censor your feelings in.

Keep in touch-- even if you don't end up going to filmschool-- I know my buddy with the UCLA issue has decided against it. If I were in his position I'd probably do the same.

Speaking of UCLA, I received a second rejection notice from them last night via e-mail. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly; a SECOND rejection notice for one application. In all honesty, that had never happened to me before last night. When I first saw the subject header, UCLA Graduate Application Decision, in my inbox, I thought for a brief moment that it might be a mea culpa letter apologizing for their mistake in erroneously rejecting my application and offering me admittance in lieu. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

That duplicate rejection leads me to believe that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing at UCLA. Has anyone else received duplicate rejection notices from UCLA? Or any other schools, for that matter?

Pray tell.

J.G.