longforit

haha Chicago might make me struggle a little, but they kindly didn't put me into such dilemma

Maybe academic neighborhood is also one important thing? As you said, West Coast is the big place for lab phonology. I would image more conferences/communications happen there. But it's all about what you like the most. Hope you make the best choice

I hope this thread has not been abandoned.. Anyway, I'm looking for apartments in near-campus area. Considering North Campus apartments (but I only know Westview) and the Commons/downtown apartments. Anyone here lived in or know anything about Center Ithaca apartments? They seem to offer pretty good apartments with moderate price. I heard that landlords are one thing that one should be careful about when looking for housing. I couldn't find any review on Center Ithaca, so I thought I might come here to try my luck. Anyone? (Well I found one on Yelp and it's all bad things..) Edit: also Brooklane apartments. I could only find one comment on it. It now belongs to the same company as Lansing West, Northwood, etc. Strangely, comments of these apartment complexes vary a lot. I'm not sure about Brooklane. Anyone knows?

I can see why this is important. But if fitness is not the issue (also financially comparable), should one choose a more productive program over the others? (so basically higher-ranked over lower ones?) Luckily I'm not making decisions myself for now. I'm very satisfied that I was accepted into a program where I could do what I like, with friendly peers and faculty, and in the exact same university my boyfriend is doing his PhD :D I have no idea.. but not every department has the stats for it's Ph.D. graduates' job placement, which is probably one of the most important factors applicants take into consideration when making the decision. Haha just all the best to those who need to make a decision among all the best programs

Or maybe a more realistic ranking would be the one based on difficulty of admission? It might generally be in line with the academic ranking of a program. But that includes other factors like faculty's interests and the size of the program.. so.. probably not that decisive.

haha that's a cute answer I'm just curious how people (in other fields) can talk about things so precisely like "I was accepted into a top 20 but not top 10 program" or "I might choose a top 25 over a top 15". Also, we might have a more comprehensive view of the top/middle/low-tier things, but for people newly in the field, some self-explaining rankings might be a more handy guidance--only in the case of NRC, things get a little more confusing...

Now I'm starting browsing over the decision forum and saw all the discussions about higher/lower-ranked program. Just out of curiosity: how do you decide which program is higher/lower-ranked? I know there're a few top tier linguistics programs that almost everyone agrees with: MIT, UMass, Chicago, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, etc., but I could see some other programs like Michigan, OSU, NYU, etc. as good as these tops at least in the filed of (lab) phonology. How do people (maybe from other disciplines) speak so firmly about the ranking? I also looked back into the NRC ranking--maybe the only ranking of US linguistics programs out there, and found all these S-ranking and R-ranking quite confusing. For example, NYU (S-ranking 14-25; R-ranking 4-28), Chicago (S 15-27; R 1-14), UCLA (S 23-32, R 2-15), UCSD (S 24-38, R 3-20), Rutgers (S 27-41, R 4-39); UCSC (S 27-43, R 7-34), Cornell (S 28-41, R 7-23), Austin (S 28-44, R 2-17) are ranked top 10 in R-ranking but much lag behind in S-ranking; and some other programs like NWU (S 4-16; R 17-44) and Purdue (S 6-20; R 33-47) are just the opposite (high S-ranking but low R-ranking). I noticed that many of the first group are traditionally-thought top programs; a few tops in the second group but much less. Anyone knows how these two rankings work and how it is consistent with the real situation (in terms of research, reputation, job opportunities for PhD graduates, etc.)? Or simply don't take it seriously but look more into the specific subfields/big names in the subfields/projects they are working on and make your own list of ranking? I'm leaning towards the latter one, but nevertheless curious about how the "formal" rankings like NRC work. Insiders or any comments?

big congratulations!!

Probably not. I will be working very hard on my thesis to get my degree at that time.... (what is TAL?)

Thanks Roberts! (and feel free to steal "inner resources" from me in the future hahaha )

Thanks! Of course I'll come! Looking forward to meeting you all (I've acutally been to the building several times )!

Just got my offer from Cornell! It's like my dream has come true!!!

Waiting for Cornell and Chicago and getting crazy here.. Now it should be THE TIME!!!!

haha hopefully!!!!

The results pool is awkwardly quiet today.. Did the adcoms come to this forum and decide "suffer more before you go into PhD study!"

Me too!! Hang in there!

Ah I thought you should be one of our P-guys based on the programs you applied! Looks like you guys are still overwhelming You must be super good to receive so many interviews/offers. Good luck on Chicago and all the applications!

Oh you mean OSU English.. Then I don't know. For linguistics the results were shown on the application website and were mailed to applicants days ago. Maybe you could check the website? Good Luck!

Hi onz! Can I ask what's your area? Just a general concept like p-side/syntax, etc. Thanks!

haha I think it's understandable. I started thinking about PhD programs as early as I entered my MA program..

I can give my impression for these programs, but is not necessarily accurate (since I've only looked into East coast/Midwest programs in terms of lab phonology). I think West coast has a great concentration of programs famous for their experimental phonetics/lab phonology/psycholinguistics. Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley are all the top programs in these areas (Not sure about UCSD). Northwestern and Ohio have professors specializing in various subfields of phonology/phonetics (I especially like Northwestern for that ) and they're, in my opinion (maybe biased since I've looked more into them), as good as west coast programs. MIT is more on the theoretical side; two of their phonologists are working on phonology-phonetics interface, but impresses me more as "using phonetic constraints to explain/model phonology". Besides these, I've considered Michigan, Chicago, NYU, Maryland and Stony Brook when I was applying. They're all among the top programs, with Chicago and NYU being probably more theoretical. It's hard to rank these programs since they're all AWESOME. As for the acceptance rates, maybe you can email students in the programs for information? (I'll guess Berkeley, OSU, Chicago, MIT and NYU are especially hard.. but just intuition with no stats..)

Congras to both of you!

Thank you for the information of Chicago! I'd also like to ask: do they have the tradition of interview before acceptance? This years there seems at least one person (Onzeheures30) being asked for an interview... Did they do it to every applicant they're interested in? Thanks!

haha Happy Horse Year! Wish all the luck to everyone!

Thank you! It's a good idea! Though the one-page limit of the SOP doesn't allow me to talk much about my thesis work. But I'll definitely try!