melinh.maryjane

Has anybody heard from the UIUC PhD program?

Just PM'ed you

It's probably too late for my input to be of much help for this application cycle but FWIW I was an undergraduate linguistics major at Rutgers. Sadly I didn't interact with a lot of the department that much because they didn't really encourage that much intradepartmental interaction with the undergrads while I was there, although I think they're working on changing that now. But if you want a very general summary of the mentoring atmosphere: it changes from person to person. Overall, Rutgers linguistics is much more invested in their graduate students than their undergraduates, so it's not like they'll admit you and ignore you. And some faculty (more than a few actually) are the whole package for a great mentor: patient, understanding, and highly invested their students. Others are also eager at the prospect of new research with new students but then will maddeningly never check their email often enough to get it off the ground. There were a couple of professors who I couldn't even imagine stepping out of their own personal research long enough to teach intro to ling let alone mentor someone long enough to give them their doctorate. And yet, they do it. In the few instances that I got to mingle with linguistics grad students and faculty at the same time, it was always clear that grad students felt pretty comfortable just chatting with thefaculty, which I always took as an indication of frequent interaction. But Rutgers is a huge school so you'll find that a lot of departments, including the teeny linguistics department, generally have this attitude: if there's something you want out of your education, there's a chance you'll have to hunt after it like a shark. That includes your faculty mentor's attention and their assistance with your grad school endeavors. Feel free to message me if you want to talk more about Rutgers. I'll say this right now though: the department building is more on the "complete dump" side of "slightly shabby". It's an extremely old house that was converted into some office space, and its age is really showing. I'd say it's charming but one time I was almost late to a meeting because the door was quite rudely being blocked by a very large swarm of bees. If you're really interested just don't expect certain basic amenities is all I'm saying.

I got an email from my POI in UIUC Cog Psych that I was accepted (I'm the Jan 16 post from the results page). Visiting weekend is March 11-13.