onzeheures30

Hi inrebusveritas, Re the NYC area: CUNY is indeed a good choice; Jason Bishop and Janet Fodor would be an especially good mix --- the former is a phonologist who works specifically on prosody, the latter is a syntactician who works on sentence processing and is also interested in the prosody/syntax interface. There are, of course, other syntax and semantics people there --- and tons of other processing people, too. You would also be able to attend classes and events at NYU (and other schools that are members of the local inter-university consortium, of course, but NYU is super-close to CUNY). You might as well consider applying to NYU, too. We have a good crew of syntax and semantics people. There is currently no one at our dept who works on prosody (not that it can't change in the future), but you'd have access to CUNY folks. (Feel free to PM me, too, if you have further questions.)

Hi Valeria! I am currently a 2nd year Ph.D. student at NYU Linguistics with interests in SL linguistics (also from Russia, also with an undergraduate background other than in theoretical linguistics, so I've been almost exactly in your shoes). I also suspect I know your contact person from UCSD =) Feel free to PM me, if you have questions about opportunities for SL-related research at NYU (or any other questions I might be competent to answer). As for the programs you list, I don't see why you wouldn't have a chance to get into them, but a lot depends on what subfield(s) you envisage yourself working in, what kind of balance between experimental and theoretical research (SL or otherwise) you are looking for, etc. In other words, the standard notion of fit applies.

I was interviewed by someone who was about to join the department back then; I didn't identify them as my POI in my SOP because I didn't know they were joining the department, but our interests aligned quite well, so they contacted me for an interview. As far as I know, UMass doesn't always conduct interviews, though, and my case was more of an exception. Also, I don't know whether the 'standard' interview is 'with a bunch of people in adcom'. All my interviews were with one or two people from my subfield(s) (in most cases, those who I identified as my POIs in my SOPs).

Yes, our department made the final decisions a couple weeks ago and, to my knowledge, all accepted candidates have been contacted. As far as I know, the department itself does not send out the rejections; official rejections come from GSAS. Those who were interviewed but didn't make the final cut were likely unofficially informed about the rejection by their POIs, though. (And yes, our department interviews all short-listed candidates, regardless of the subfield.)

Most likely, those were posted by people who interviewed with our department, but didn't make the final cut, so they got unofficial notificaitons about rejection from faculty members they interviewed with.

Does the school itself provide any specific guidelines?

In my experience, none of the institutions you list ask to convert international grades. Some departments might ask to provide a description of the grading system (unless such a description is already included in your transcript, which was my case). The point of a LOR is to describe your research potential, so it's unclear how a former student of yours can contribute that kind of information.

If you have questions concerning semantics at NYU, feel free to PM me =)

Sure, that would be fine. Our field doesn't strike me as particularly formal when it comes to outfits (although, of course, people have their individual preferences). In any event, be sure to dress warmly above all, spring hasn't reached the state of New York yet =)

No, it's not =) giggitygirlworld is right, standardized tests are called standardized for a reason: all the problems there come in a preset range of types. Just familiarize yourself with the types of problems (this kind of info is available even in the free ETS materials), practice a little bit, and you'll be fine. Also, GRE is going to be one of the least important parts of your application, so don't sweat it.

In my experience, most US Ph.D. programs in Linguistics do require GRE. There are some that don't (including some of the top ones, like MIT and UCLA), and there are some that say it's optional (e.g. Chicago), but chances are that once you finalize your list of departments to apply to you'll find out that at least half of them require GRE.

Oh, excellent! Congrats!!! Hope you'll come for the Open House in March. And sure enough, feel free to PM me with any questions about our dept in the meantime.

Did you have an interview? If no, then you can safely assume that. If yes, don't assume anything for now =) THE meeting happened today, the faculty have made their decisions, and the POIs will be sending out the (unofficial) news in the next few days. P.S. Oh, I've just seen in your signature that you did have an interview. So stay alert for a couple of days =)

As for NYU, if you haven't been interviewed by now that means you haven't made it to the shortlist. The subfields have made their decisions about shortlisted candidates, and the general department meeting is going to happen soon. As for UMass, last year I only got my interview request on Feb 5 and learnt about being waitlisted on Feb 25. From what I know, UMass people don't necessarily interview all the candidates they might be interested in. My UCLA waitlist notification came in pretty late in the game (April 3), but one would suspect that they notify admitted students much earlier.