rising_star

I would take TakeruK's approach. Attend the "safe option" as a master's student and do everything they want you to do to join the PhD program. At the same time, apply to your dream PhD programs in the USA. Then, once you've finished your year as master's student, you'll have options about how to proceed for your PhD.

Berkeley sounds like it's out from what you've written. It doesn't sound like you want to be there so just scratch it off your list. Then it comes down to two things: 1) what mentoring style will allow you to flourish? and 2) which PI has the better track record for publications and your intended future career?

Follow the money...

It sounds to me like you need to do a lot more reading and independent research to figure out what it is you want to be studying and within what intellectual tradition. And then, once you've done that, you should apply for PhD programs again. There's no reason to pay for MAPSS because your credentials sound fine and the biggest issue is probably that you don't really know what field you should be in.

A lot is going to depend on what area of linguistics you want to study and what you want to do after earning your degree. I'm going to move your post to the linguistics subforum, as you may get more helpful responses there.

Would you be willing/able to leave it in an office on campus, rather than bringing it to class? Are you able to skateboard in/through the snow in the winter?

I would write to the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) AND the supervisor to ask about funding. Be polite and to the point. Say that you're excited about being admitted and are writing to inquire about the opportunities for funding. That's really all you need.

If you lived in Providence, your partner could commute to Boston for work on public transit, if your concern is work. Is this a master's or PhD? How do you feel about taking on the additional cost that RISD requires? Which school has a better placement record for their students, particularly students seeking the same career path as you? (Sorry if this is too late to be helpful! Let us know what you decide.)

Are there other ways you could research, learn, and work without taking out $50K in debt? For example, could you pursue an entry-level position in education policy at a nonprofit or with the local school board?

In most cases, it isn't a problem. In your case, I would wait until the absolute last minute to accept the assistantship at University A.

Honestly, given that many PhD programs require you to have a minor field and take X number of courses in it, it makes a lot of sense to pursue the WGS certificate at the graduate level. At the master's level, I'd be worried that you're setting yourself up for a situation where you're trying to take four graduate seminars at the same time while also working on the side, which is a LOT (even more so when you're new to the whole grad school thing). This isn't to say that you couldn't/shouldn't take WGS courses relevant to your interest while doing your MA. I'd just make sure those courses count toward the coursework you need for your MA, rather than worrying about earning a separate certificate at this time.

What is their track record with publications and placing their graduate students? Who did you "click" with better on a personal level?

@LoVeBirD-, we are intentionally trying to keep all of the information about a city/location in one thread so that people can benefit from past insight and also get a sense of how a place has been changing over the years. I've merged your thread. In the future, please follow the instructions in the sticky and post in the existing thread, rather than creating a new one that results in more work for the entirely volunteer moderating team.

I had to make a similar decision and opted to spend an extra six months in the field. I did some writing, ended up adding an entire component to my dissertation that has been especially helpful for post-dissertation research, and also took a little downtime to relax before gearing up for the sprint that is the job market combined with finishing a dissertation. For me, it was 100% worth it and I don't regret it at all, though there are definitely aspects of my situation that differ from yours (for example, I was single at the time). FWIW, more teaching isn't necessarily better. I'm not sure how much teaching experience you have but you may not actually need more to be competitive on the job market depending on what your goals are. Happy to discuss more via PM if you want.

MA with funding, without a doubt. Do NOT do a PhD without funding.

So... I'll say it partly depends on where you see yourself working after graduation. Yes, Brown is Ivy League but it isn't one of the big name Ivies that's well known throughout the country. If you're headed out west for your career, it's quite possible that many potential employers won't have heard of Brown or won't know that it's in the Ivy League. (Also, really, the Ivy League is just a sports conference! Not sure why people obsess over it...)

Hmmm... this is a tough one. If there isn't anyone who understands or works in your intended subfield and/or theoretical approach, then it's going to be much tougher on you to write a strong proposal, get the funding to do your research, etc. If it were me, I'd go to the place that's a better fit for my research, even if that means leaving a few thousand dollars on the table (this is actually what I did for my PhD). As far as the funding, are you considering straight dollar amounts or comparing these to the cost of living? Many of the Ivy League schools are in places with crazy costs of living such that a funding offer of $5-7K less elsewhere might actually result in you having more money in your bank account after paying your bills each month. It's definitely something worth considering. (There are lots of cost of living calculators online that can help you figure this out.)

MPA programs are two years, right? So I'm not sure where the 4-5 years of long distance comes in...FWIW, I would not go to the expensive program in NYC over the funded program in DC. It just doesn't make sense in the short or long term, unless there are some clear benefits you'll get by spending all that money on NYU tuition. I'm also not sure where your partner is but I will note that Pittsburgh is a decent town with an airport with flights to lots of places, so it may not be that bad as a place to be while in a LDR. Good luck with your decision!

I would go with the program offering you funding, so I'd go to BU. You could always do a summer internship or job in DC at one of the zillion environmental organizations there if you want to. There are also a bunch of cool nonprofits working on conservation in the Boston area (and throughout New England) so you could potentially work that into your program.

Whether or not prestige matters depends largely on what you want/expect to be doing after you finish your degree. Have you done any informational interviews with professionals in your field? Or at least looked at job ads and used LinkedIn to spy at people's background? I think doing so could help you determine the relevance of prestige in your field. Another factor is where you want to work after the degree. If you want to work on the East Coast, you may be better served by going to school there now. For a master's, I'd also look at funding and follow the money...

I have more questions than answers. Who would be your advisor at each institution? What is their placement track record? What do you want to be doing after your PhD? Which school would best prepare you for that? Which school has the most financial support for your research? Which school has students working on similar topics (so that you have people to bounce ideas off of and/or collaborate with on research)? Which program is offering financial support for the summer? Are there major grants that you'd need to get to fund your dissertation research? Which program/PI has the better track record with their students getting those (if that's something you need)? These are just some of the factors I'd be considering. FWIW, I only applied to one PhD program that was incredibly far from home and it's the one I ended up going to. I didn't know a single person there either (didn't even visit before accepting the offer). At times I was lonely but, being on my own forced me to make friends, get to know people, and, ultimately, to grow up and become more of an adult in a lot of ways. It also better prepared me for the reality of the academic job market, where you don't often get to choose where you live. YMMV obviously but it's something worth considering.

Honestly, I'm a career-first person so I'd go with School A. As you said, it'll give you better opportunities in the long run, which improves the likelihood that you and your partner will be able to find jobs in the same city post-PhD.

I would go to Atlanta. Amazing research opportunities are more important than coursework imo.

Serious question: What do you think the students do upon receiving your paper full of comments and red lines? Do you think they learn anything at all from all those comments or that they are demoralized and/or confused about how best to proceed? My recommendation is that you NOT focus on grammatical errors and correcting those. That's editorial work. Maybe do it for a page or two but don't let that be the vast majority of your comments because that makes it too easy for students to focus on those and not the bigger errors in their writing. This Youtube video has really good tips on giving writing feedback. Right now, you're doing the mechanical things PLUS trying to do the other things. If you actually want to help students improve their writing, you'll want to give what he calls global feedback. You also want to do more than just identify issues but move to suggesting solutions or identifying the rhetorical options for them.

I'll just say that Amazon's web hosting business (which turns out to supply the servers for MANY things) were down for most of a work day not long ago. If everything I had was in the cloud, I would've been SOL for doing work for that period of time (which was more than half the day). Just something to keep in mind if your plan is to depend entirely on the cloud.