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ellbell

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  1. Hey, I just happened on your post and was interested because I had a somewhat similar experience. I was in close contact with a professor at my top choice university and had seen/spoken to her on several occasions. She told me she was very interested in my potential research idea, and even told my boss she was impressed with me and was planning on recommending me for admission to the committee. Let me tell you, that school was the quickest to reject me of all of them. I heard later from others that she does not have a lot of pull in the department, and that her research interests potentially didn't really represent the direction that department wanted to take with their research. Of course, I think on top of that my application was not strong enough -- this is a top-3 school, and most of the people accepted already had or were working on MAs and had a good amt of research experience, which I admittedly don't have. So I think it was a combination of the two. Anyway that's all I got... thought you might find it interesting.
  2. ellbell

    Los Angeles, CA

    I have little knowledge of your field, but in general I would say yes. People who want to work in LA often go to USC because of the alumni connections it offers (I know this is particularly true of business and law students). My company heavily favors USC alumni (my bosses both went there). These connections are much less useful if you are planning on moving out of the LA area, but if you want to work in LA, going to USC is an excellent option.
  3. Just curious what all you guys are thinking when it comes to making the big decisions -- that is, assuming you have heard from all of your schools by now. How are you weighing funding vs. overall "fit" with the program vs. rankings? I'm between USC and UCSD -- I think I'm overall more into the UCSD program (although to be fair I haven't gone to open house yet for USC). But I got a great fellowship at USC with a big, comfortable stipend, the school is strong in syntax, and I live in LA already so it's very convenient for me and especially my significant other. Maybe I'm worrying way too much about it... Anyone else making pro and con lists in their heads all day?
  4. I'm in the same boat as you all. My SO has agreed to move with me to whatever school I get into. But for those of you in a discipline where academic jobs are hard to come by (this is true for most subjects, but especially my discipline - linguistics!) what do you all plan to do when it comes time to up and move again for a potential job? And when in the process does having a family fit in? I've heard that it's difficult both during grad school, as well as while working as an asst professor, and if/when I made full professor I would maybe be too old to have kids. Maybe I'm just worrying prematurely since I can no longer worry about where I did(n't) get into.
  5. lol! I love the last one. I spent a lot of my language change class transcribing my professor's Chinese-Canadian accent.
  6. yes, i should clarify about that one prof - that was like 20 years ago or something. i don't think most programs put a lot of emphasis on the GRE these days...
  7. I have a 3.8 overall/4.0 major GPA, 640V/770Q for the GRE, and have been working as a linguist for the last 3 years (field linguistics and SLA, although not in an academic environment... so that sucks). I also know a number of languages (5-7 depending on what you count as different languages), but I'm not sure that matters much. I think the weak points of my application were that I majored in Language Studies (foreign languages and courses on most of the subfields) instead of pure Linguistics, was a bit scattered about what I wanted to study (still trying to figure it out), and one of my letters is from a non-PhD. Also, no publications or formal research experience. From what other PhDs tell me, the admissions process can be somewhat random. One prof I talked to got into UCB Linguistics primarily because of her high GRE math score. My mentor was rejected from her first choice PhD program b/c the department wanted an international student. That's not to say that it's all randomness, but you just never know what a particular department is looking for that year.
  8. I totally don't know yet. I loved studying language change but it's not very marketable, and also enjoyed syntax quite a bit. Now I work as an applied linguist at a company that makes language learning software (where I've had to study a lot of SLA and do some field linguistics on low-resource languages), so I'm completely mixed up about what to do. I'm hoping to narrow that down in grad school...
  9. Anyone know how UCSD stands these days? A few of the professors I spoke to recommended the program highly, but it's only 14 on the NRC rankings. I wonder if it's improved since 1995? That or the professors I spoke to were biased... Also, does anyone know their placement rate? It's not listed on phds.org.
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