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I guess I could've worded it differently, I didn't think of how it would be received. Noted for future reference, thanks

It's funny, I actually had prepared a well-researched defense of not taking it a few years back. If I had the opportunity, I would've sucked it up and taken it bitterly, but atm it's not an option at all.

Right, an MA is just my first step. I do plan on getting my PhD afterwards from a different institution. I just wanted to know if it mattered that my MA was from a regional school.

I did not mean to say that I wanted to push boundaries with this application- I meant in terms of research. What I asked was if it was possible to make up for academic deficiencies with research experience. A yes or no question. Instead what I got was people chastising me for my past mistakes and accusing me of being lazy for asking this question. In my current situation I cannot change my GPA. I also can't afford the GRE right now, so please don't think I'm being lazy by not taking it. Telling me "you NEED this" when I obviously don't have it does not answer my question or help me in any way now. I will pursue an MA first to build up a better profile, as suggested.

On the contrary. Since changing my GPA and letter numbers is not possible for me at the moment, I'm producing research papers and submitting them for publication to make up for it. My original question was if this research would be enough to get past the academic deficiencies. I know in the hard sciences it would not be, but I'd like to get a view from the social sciences as well. I am driven and assertive and passionate about my field. But I also like to push boundaries. Is that undesirable? I didn't know it was what I wanted to study until it was too late to change my GPA. Congrats, but I could not do this because I had no idea I really wanted to go to grad school until my senior year. I know what I want to do now. I dicked around for three years, and I want to know if I can fix it.

I've been accepted to a regional school in my area for an MA program in Linguistics, but I'm wondering if going there will negatively affect my CV, since I plan on going into academia and teaching/researching at a university. It's not a well-known linguistics school by any means, but they do have a program I'm interested in, and its closeby. Any advice? (I'm asking this because I was warned it would be a bad choice, and I just wanna get some more opinions)

I would love to have another letter, but during undergrad I didn't have any other teachers for more than one semester (i.e. they don't know me or my work well enough for it to be beneficial to my application). My preferred school (UCLA) does not even accept GRE scores, so I'm not worried about that as much. As for GPA, there's nothing I can do to change it (and a 3.2 in the major field is not bad). Having a good GPA is not indicative of research ability in Linguistics, nor is the GRE. I was stuck with an underfunded state school with only 2 linguistics professors, and I have both of their amazing recommendations. Well you're not a linguistics professor and have no knowledge of my research.

I studied linguistics, and graduated with a 2.8 GPA from a state school (most graduate schools require at least a 3.0). In addition, there are only 2 linguistics teachers at my old school that could write a recommendation for me (most programs require 3). I also don't have GRE scores (I will not take the test on principle). But, I have published a book, done several original research projects (one of which was featured in a study by a professor in Australia), have a glowing review from an esteemed scholar (my old professor), and I had done grad-level fieldwork with a Native American tribe for almost 10 months. Is there a way to get around these surface-level admissions requirements?