Late Blooming Linguist

Hi fellow older students! ()/ I'm in my early 40s, never married, no kids, kind of living the way I did in my 20s. So in a way I would blend in with the traditionally aged grad students! (I even still get carded.) But in other ways, I'm an old fart who gets exasperated with *some* millenials I'm glad to have found this thread. I didn't see it until after I'd applied to a couple of schools in early January. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get accepted. I think that when I gook the GRE and got surprisingly good scores in my first go, I got really confident and thought I'd apply to dream schools' PhD programs in Linguistics. Now that I've got a full year before applying again I'm looking more in-depth at a lot more programs. I was wondering, do y'all think it's better for people my age to do a Master's program, then apply for doctorate programs? Because it's been just over 2 decades since I graduated college, I don't really have "fresh" academic work to show. Plus there's the issue of having letter-of-recommendation writers who can speak specifically to your academic prowess rather than your work success. Any words of wisdom would be great, whether from fellow oldsters or from the sharper members of the GradCafe community! Thanks much!

Hi all! I've been lurking pretty intensely for the past month and a half — right after I submitted my grad school applications and started hoping against all hope, LOL I didn't get accepted, but I knew it would be a long shot — I've been out of college for more than two decades, so have no "fresh" academic work to show. I surprised myself by doing rather well on the GRE last December (I thought for sure that I'd have to take it at least twice) and got confident enough to apply to a couple of dream schools. I, too, was very interested to see everyone's answers to Linguo’s question about “fit.” OnzeHeurs, your answer is especially intriguing to me! I was wondering if you could tell a little about your independent research — what you did, how in-depth you wrote it up (I assume it was your writing sample), did you by any chance manage to get it published, etc. Thanks again for everyone’s wise words!