pulp

a PhD program

Hey everyone. It's almost the end of the application season. I applied to 5 schools this year and got 4 rejections. I still haven't heard back from Georgetown, but I suppose it is a rejection too. So, here's the question, what to do next...I'm definitely going to apply another year, what can I do to make myself more qualified? Here's some of my background: M.A in Applied Linguistics (graduating in May) at Teachers College, GPA 3.6, GRE 159V 165Q 3W, B.A in cross cultural communication from a Chinese university Undergrad RA for SLA lab on metacognition and SLA reading, Graduate RA for East Asian Program on a qualitative study about Chinese-Korean learners interlanguage analysis, also TA for Chinese undergraduate level class 1 year of ESL teaching experience, intern experience at UNDP (at the HR department some language assessment work) no publication, 1 poster at a presentation, three recommendation letters, one from a syntax prof, one from sociolinguistic prof and one from neuroscience prof. I guess they are writing good things about me? I've taken 2 classes with them each and got nice grades... I am interested in cognitive linguistics. Basically I'm not a huge UG person. I believe that language ability is generated from general cognitive development and I wanna build the relationship between cognitive ability and linguistic ability. I've taken several cognitive and neuroscience classes. I used eye-tracking method in my master thesis to investigate acquisition of empty category in "wanna" contraction. I applied to Brown, JHU, McGill, Berkeley, NYU and Georgetown. So far, I've got rejections from them all except for Georgetown. I thought I would get an interview at least, but, nope. I was wondering what can I do to make myself more qualified for the next year. I am applying to volunteer lab work at different language and cognitive labs in NYC. I am also going to the summer school at University of Quebec at Montreal in cognitive science. What else can I do? Should I take GRE again? (My score is 3 years old...)Should I get a job? I guess the gap between my background and my research interest is that my background is more SLA, but I want to go beyond SLA to purse cognitive linguistics. How can I feel in the gap? Or should I just apply to more SLA oriented programs next year to increase my chance of getting in? I really feel powerless and confused now. Thanks so much!

hey pallina, I haven't heard anything form them too...so...I guess that's it... And best of luck for those got the interviews!!

hey everyone. I'm so glad that I saw this before I applied. I also have a long list of schools. I am an undergraduate major in English in China. I have done some research work with my teachers in second language acquisition and metacognition. My writing sample is about synatic metacognitive knowledge and monitoring. My major interest is in language acquisition, and I'm also interested in computational modeling and morphology. I've searched schools and I found that metacognition or language acquisition belongs to different department in different schools, sometimes in linguistics, sometimes in education and sometimes in psychology. One of my most fit SOP is in Columbia Psychology Department. I'm hesitating applying it because I'm afraid the competition would be fierce and I will fail. My TOEFL is 103 and GRE V 159, Q 163. My GPA is 85/100. John Hopkins Northwestern U of Massachusetts U of Maryland U of Pennsylvania (Education) Purdue Carnage Mellon (they have an independent SLA program! but master degree is encouraged to application. I think I will be considered as master application if I apply.) Columbia USC Cornell U of Chicago I plan to email POI of each school to shorten my list. Any good advice?? Thanks so much!