hoviariel

Go where the funding goes (unless you can afford it, it that case, go where the research goes the most)

Well, one of my teachers had an MA in translation+applied ling and a PhD in applied ling. She was able to get into translation, english education, and contrastive linguistics. i guess the jobs you can get with a translation MA depends on what you focus on with in. For example, because of the dual linguistic/translation nature of her MA, she was able to get into those fields above though still at the MA level

Is fluency in Python mandatory in comp ling software? I'm a Java man myself. I talked to my advisor about this a while back, and what I gathered was that my department preferred was that I would just brush up on linguistic theory and have pre-existing math/comp sci background so that the department would help me fuse them together. Granted my department is more comp for ling research than NLP like Gnome's UW

Whether you are multilingual and love language learning is irrelevant to linguistic research, i.e. research on language as a phenomenon with its systems, forms, functions, developments, structures, etc. I should know because I'm doing my degree but I hate learning languages. So it's not about loving languages and loving to learn languages and language idiosyncraises, but about loving the pursuit of a systematic and empirical of language as a general human phenomenon which would involve the study of these idiosyncrasies but only for the bigger picture. http://www.linguisticsociety.org/programs i dnt know where u got ur info, but generally speaking MAs are more geared toward either TESOL or general linguistics. Though some programs offer more courses in a specific subfield more than others and some MAs can even go beyond general linguistics and be specialized in a specific experimental field, like Washington's comp ling MA. After reading this, I'm not sure what about language you actually like, the fact that it can be used creatively, the fact that you can speak 5, or that you are actually going toward lit. If I were you, I'ld check out some stylistics programs because stylistics would be a good compromise between your love and lit n languages http://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-410098001/checklist-of-american-and-british-programs-in-stylistics (just make a free trial to see the rest of it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Linguistics I know this helped me in knowing about what I wanted to do as an grad specialty. I haven't started my courses yet but for the most part you can just look at a university's course catalog since they give a good idea about what the linguistics courses do. As for research, just check out a department's research papers

Well, it really depends on the school and how well you describe your linguistic experience, and what specialty you want to go into. If you at most have a minor but no clear idea over a specialty, then an MA is a good place. But, if you have a minor and a specialty in mind, then PhD's are not impossible, just more difficult, it will depend a lot on how you have been able to prepare yourself with your specialty. In my case, I have an English BA which involved taking 24 credits of linguistics courses and a minor in computer science, so I got accepted into a PhD program in comp ling (see how the comp minor fits in?). Because I don't know about your case I can only say that MA seems right for you because you make yourself sound like ur still a novice in linguistics. However, if you're interested in stylistics, then you would have a gd shot at applying to stylistics-specialized programs (MA or PhD) because your BA+minor would act as a good baseline for it. I don't know of any stylistics programs in the states though since it's really concentrated in the UK

You can try learning French for Reading

GPA is meaningless as long as its above the cutoff point for most grad programs, like above 3.0. The GRE aren't that important but likewise something of a cutoff point, so try your best to be like 80-90% or above. What matters most is suitable research interest, good writing/research skills, and your undergrad professors liking you.

Fit is rarely perfect because your faculty are not your clones. Apply to the school anyway because you can never predict whether your other "good-enough" will accept you or not and you seem to fit well enough as it does there anyway. The thing is that you can only measure fitness relatively between different departments that have already accepted you. The only thing that you can during the application process is apply to programs that you can fit in well enough to feel comfy in your research and productive. Apply

Anyone left?

They can go fudge themselves

I guess we're the only ones... Dang... We're minority specialists in this forum and now minority I-dont-give-a-damn-about-learning-new-cultures-and-languages dudes... Another thing that's a stereotype that doesn't apply to me: giving a damn about how German color words are etymologically related the English ones. I remember once my friend was talking to a friend of his about going to Germany there for grad programs and eventually they brought up the subject of basic German color words. He was like "O you would probably be into that" and I was like "Why", "Cz ur a language major', "So why must I give a dang about how two Germanic languages unsurprisingly share high-frequency and day-to-day vocab words?" I get the impression that people think my job is to memorize redundant similarities between languages, especially English etymology or pronunciation, or to have my heart pitter patter whenever I see a French word that has been borrowed into English. I don't even get how that stereotype can survive...

Yeah. I mean, it terms of excitement all I can think of is: if you wanna read Hugo so much, then just read a translation

I love linguistics. I love the rigor, its intersection with the formal sciences and social sciences, the difficulty and challenges that researchers have to face trying to describe language form and function. But one thing that I don't like (AT ALL) is language learning. And I don't mean applied lingustics; though not specialized in AL I am a fan of contrastive/cognitive linguistics when they intersects with AL; I'm just a fan of AL when it involves using humans as guinea pigs. I mean actually learning new languages. I don't know why but I've always felt either apathetic or frustrated learning other languages for the sake of communication. I'm currently trying to learn French for reading purposes and even though it's going (slowly) fine, I will never see myself getting all emotional and excited over going to a new country and learning its tongue or experiencing its culture; I just want to learn French to get access to its journal and that's it. And the same would go to any other language variety that I would be forced (out of practicality) to learn in the future.. Am I a freak for not being into language learning despite being an (aspiring) linguist? Am I alone in this?

I'ld say it's possible, but only if your MA education provided some foundation or emphasis in theoretical in the first place. Thankfully it sounds like this MA does have a healthy dosage of general ling so it sounds safe. Try asking the admissions committee there about prospects for general ling specializations after the MA, maybe they recommend that you take certain electives because of how previous students have gotten into general PhDs