GeoLing

University of Hawai'i at Manoa has Robert Blust and Kenneth Rehg, who have both done a lot of work on lexicography in terms of language documentation. We also have the Sato Center for Pidgin and Creole studies. Wish I knew more!

Here's a website that collects info similar to the GradCafe results section, except this is for financial aid offers. Looks like it would be really helpful to future cohorts of applicants, so check it out and share your info anonymously if you feel comfortable doing so! http://gradpay.herokuapp.com/

I can't wait for the food!!! One of the students in my cohort is a Malaysian male who, because of int'l status missed the on-campus housing deadlines. I know he's on a pretty strict budget, so I was wondering if y'all knew of anyone looking for a roommate in Honolulu for this Fall? Lemme know if you hear about anything!

Ligocap, I got a Master's degree in order to focus my research interests and it worked out great for me. I also had a 2.98 GPA from undergrad, so I needed to show potential PhD programs what I'm really capable of doing. Unfortunately, while it's easier to get into MA programs than PhD programs, it's much harder to get funding for those programs. Definitely plan on financing the MA with some external funding (fellowships, scholarships (even little ones!), savings, income from another job, loans, etc.). Check out the University of Hawaii at Manoa. That's where I'm starting my PhD in the fall. Most of the faculty focus on some aspect of endangered languages, and several do historical linguistics as well. Best of luck!

Texas Tech has an Anglo-Saxonist and a Middle English prof.

Thought I'd bump this up and give some info on Texas for anyone interested. Austin and Dallas are awesome places for lesbians. Tons of events (the Halloween street parade is fantastic), lots of alternative lifestyles of all sorts. Austin is a bit grittier, whereas Dallas is all about the young professionals. My hometown of Lubbock, on the other hand, home to Texas Tech, is one of the most socially conservative cities in the US (only Provo, Utah can compete). My girlfriend and I rarely hold hands in public, and feel acutely vulnerable when we do. Neither of us has ever been threatened or confronted in any way, but we have to deal with looks of disgust and whispers behind our backs. That being said, there are two gay bars in town and a lesbian cafe called Belly's, and there is a large university so you can find queers and queer allies on campus.

If anybody has questions about Lubbock (I've lived here for 25 years) or Texas Tech (got my BA and MA there), lemme know!

Hey man, are you still looking for roommates? I have a friend from Malaysia who's going to start a PhD in Linguistics this fall and he's desperate for some kind of housing!

You might want to look up Katie Drager at the U of Hawaii Manoa. She's done sexuality/gender and runs the sociolinguistics lab at UHM.

Thanks for the info, ZacharyObama! As for no air-conditioning, at least it doesn't get as hot there as in West Texas. It sounds like that place will work out after all, and it's right next to Chaminade, so shouldn't be too far. Also, I'll be living with fellow Ling grad students who are already there, so they should be able to show me the ropes when I arrive. Another couple questions about the city: What's a normal range for groceries for the week/month for a single person? Any restaurants you'd recommend in the Palolo/Kaimuki area? I can't wait to get there!

Thanks for dropping all this knowledge! I am learning so much, and this is especially helpful since I'll be looking for jobs (in 4-5 years) all over the world. It's amazing how differently things can work even in neighboring countries with so much in common. I think it's great that undergrads are involved in the hiring process in Canada. I'd like to implement a similar policy someday, when I'm hopefully on a search committee.

I know I'm a little late on this, but are there any other applicants to Romania on here? I'm an alternate, and I noticed on the Google Spreadsheet that the only other poster is also an alternate. I'm mostly wondering how many grants were offered in the end, and how many of us were designated Alternate? Any alternates been upgraded from the wait list in the Eastern Europe region?

For the U.S.: 3-5 years for Bachelor's (the equivalent of 4 years of coursework, but people have very different timeframes depending on personal and financial factors) (some allow highly motivated students to complete and defend a "Senior Thesis", but it's rarely required) 2-3 years for a Master's (some require defense of thesis, some don't) 4-6 years for a PhD (all require defense of dissertation) 1-3 years for a Post-Doc 5+ years to get tenure from beginning of tenure-track position 12-17 years after finishing a Bachelor's, one can achieve a tenured position in academia. In terms of funding, it's quite variable. There are public schools (which get some funding directly from the state) and private schools (which do not receive funding directly from the state). Within both types of school, you can apply for privately- and publicly-funded scholarships/fellowships at Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate levels. Post-docs and faculty are paid by schools or often through grants (which come from public sources such as the Department of Defense, or the National Science Foundation; or from private sources such as the Ford Foundation, etc.). Also, many students fund their education partly or fully by taking out student loans (again, these can be administered by the state (better interest rates) or by private institutions). I think this is the most dangerous part of our system: more students are allowed into programs than can be funded, and they choose to attend because they think they will be able to pay it off with a tenure-track job, but we end up producing more PhDs than there are tenure-track jobs for, and we end up with people $200,000 in debt living as homeless people on welfare, with a doctorate under their belt. That's just my very basic version, but I'd love to hear other's takes on the American system. I also want to hear about other countries' systems! I've already learned a ton that I didn't know about academia in Brazil and India!

I applied to 4, after whittling my list down from a possible 10 or so. I get the impression that a lot of linguistics students apply to 8-10 schools, but I had neither the funds nor the desire to send that many applications. I contacted people at every department that might fit, and found three POIs who said they would support my application. I applied to the 4th more for its location, and like so many others have mentioned, I definitely regret wasting that application fee and hassle. I ended up with a fully-funded admission to my top school, which was the only program that I found in the world that truly fit my interests, (and an unfunded admission to another program), so it all worked out in the end!

Check out the University of Hawaii at Manoa. They have good funding options for PhD students, and endangered languages are a major focus of the department. Also, U of Oregon, CU Boulder, and UC Santa Barbara are worth checking into.

Thanks, y'all! I'm currently in contact with some students who have a room available in Kaimuki, on Palolo Avenue. It seems close enough to campus, but I have no idea what the inside looks like. I figure if grad students have made it work in the past, I'll be able to do the same. Sharing really brings the rent down to a more reasonable level! It would be such a load off to know I can go straight to my new home when I get off the plane.

Hey, zahava, great to hear from you! You've got a great repertoire of languages to draw from. Can't wait to pick your brain in Honolulu!

I'll be starting a PhD program in Linguistics at UHM this fall (2013). It's my dream program, and I'm obviously excited about moving to Hawaii, but it's also about as different from my home (Lubbock, TX) as it gets!

Is anybody heading to UHM this fall? For those of you already in Honolulu, is it advisable to try to get a place to live arranged before you arrive? I'll be arriving on August 12th(ish) and classes start on the 26th. Will it be possible for me to find a place in two weeks?

If anyone is headed to Tech this fall, lemme know if you have any questions! I'm a local and did my B.A. and M.A. here at Tech, so I should be able to help.

I'll be attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa and specializing in LangDoc and geolinguistics.

I'm a native English speaker, and I studied French and German in high school. I lived in Hungary as an exchange student, so Hungarian is my best second language. I've also studied a little Turkish and Nepali, but just a couple months each. I'm really interested in the language situation in southeastern Europe, but I'm going for my PhD in Hawaii, so I have no idea what my next language will be!

The University of Hawaii at Manoa specializes in Language Documentation and Conservation, but they don't have a specialization in Native American, unless you count Hawaiian. They're starting up a program in signed language documentation, if that interests you. If you're interested in a formal approach to Native American linguistics you might consider the University of British Columbia. If you're a functionalist, it's probably not the best fit, from what I understand. The University of New Mexico would be an ideal geographic location for fieldwork, though I don't know much about their program (they do have a strong ASL program, as well). Good luck!

I agree that having an overall strong application is key, but I believe that contacting potential POIs cannot hurt, and can be quite beneficial. I tried to contact POIs at every school I was looking at, and I feel like I learned a lot about the cultures and foci of the various programs by doing so. For example, I didn't get any responses from a couple of schools, which I took to mean that the faculty is either not interested in my research plans or too busy to reply to emails. I took this to be a bad sign, and saved myself the application fees for those schools. I could tell to some extent which POIs seemed most enthusiastic, and I focused on those applications. I ended up applying to 4 schools, three of which I had excited POIs fighting for me. The school that I applied to even though I didn't get any responses rejected me with just as little communication. I found out recently that the school would not have been a very good fit for me, so I wasted quite a bit of time and money. I was accepted to 2 of the other 3. The POI who was most communicative managed to secure me funding to fly to the school before I was officially accepted. If you've got a stellar application otherwise, you definitely don't need a POI lined up. But if you're concerned at all about one aspect of your applications (I, for example, have a frightening undergraduate transcript/GPA), having someone willing to go to bat with you can compensate for other issues. Best of luck in your future applications and academic endeavors!

I voted psycholinguistics. Specifically, I'm interested in sociocognitive relationships between language and the cultural landscape. I'm curious about how natural and built environments affect the behavior of bilingual speakers of minority speakers. My B.A. was in Geography, and my M.A. was in English, with concentrations in Geography and Linguistics. I'll be working with Andrea Berez at the University of Hawaii at Manoa starting this fall, and I absolutely cannot wait!