snarky

"Formal" just means that you will get substantial training in modeling language and grammar with precise (usually mathematical) formulas. Most likely they want you to have a sound background in phonological, syntactic and semantic theory. Judging by their "research" page, the UC Davis linguistics program has a pretty strong bias towards non-formal (applied, experimental, typological and sociolinguistic) approaches. They seem to have courses in general linguistics, but they might not be rigorous enough for this other program, or it might not be in the right framework. FWIW, a lot of neurolinguists don't have training in formal linguistics, so I doubt you'd get this response from all programs.

Getting an (even partially) unfunded PhD in typology sounds really risky to me. I agree with the others and would for sure choose the funded program. Also, it is good to have a program that has multiple specialities if your background in linguistics is spotty, as there is a high chance you will change focus/interests throughout the five years and it's good to have options. I have seen a lot of people come into our program and switch topics based on the personality/work style of the potential advisors - some professors are so awesome to work with that they inspire you to change to a subfield you wouldn't necessarily have otherwise chosen. Also fyi: it is COMPLETELY possible to do brain/mind/language-y things without a background in psychology.

This was interesting, although I thought maybe a little overly pessimistic about job opportunities outside of academia. Provided that you leave with some practical skills, e.g. a working knowledge of statistics, experimental design, and/or programming, I think it is possible to find a place in industry (granted, maybe not as easy as it would be for a computer science PhD, but easier than other humanities). In addition to law and tech, there is also speech pathology, second language acquisition, etc. Some of these might require more education, as he mentioned, but that's true of most career changes. It would definitely be a little harder, I think, to leave academia with only a knowledge of formal theories - that's definitely harder to sell to an employer...

Hey all, I've been visiting another lab/department for a year and I'll be leaving soon. I was thinking about getting the two lab PIs something to say thanks for hosting me for the year - they've done a lot for me, from training me on new and expensive methodology to sending me abroad on their grant to run subjects. It's hard to tell what is (in)appropriate in this kind of situation... does anyone have any thoughts on gift etiquette? Thanks!

If you're going to a five year program, you should definitely just register and insure it in CA. I was in another state for one year, and had this problem. I had to get insurance in the new state, otherwise it can be potentially considered insurance fraud. However, once I got insurance in the new state, the old state invalidated my (just recently paid) registration. I just kept my car unregistered for the year, because it made no sense to pay double registration in the same year and I still had the tags. However, my tags are expiring two months before I move back, so now I have to find a real solution. (It turns out that you can apply for an exception to emissions requirements when you reregister if you are out of the state...) All this to say that it is a huge headache to avoid registering and insuring in-state. If you'll be there for multiple years, just do that.

After a few years, you might understand the reason why you didn't get into those places and not feel so bad. The thing is that there are a lot of weird complications in the process, for example, even if you are interested in the same topic as someone else in the department, you may come from a substantially different theoretical framework/orientation. Or they may have been trying to find students in other subfields to round out the department a little more. Or other random weird political things, for example another competing applicant has similar credentials as you but their recommender is very famous or has connections to the department, or that student knows the faculty personally some other way (from a conference, summer school, etc.). Many of us got some rejections. In my case, over time it became completely obvious why I got into some places and not others. And anyway, being a grad student is pretty much all about putting yourself up for rejection constantly -- for conferences, defenses, journal submissions. Then if you "make it", you get to hear people critique your work all the time. So, you've got to have somewhat thick skin. It can take a little bit to get used to that...

I'm in the same boat as you, but I have to say, it doesn't bother me that much. As long as my advisor likes me and my work, will give me a solid recommendation, and provides sound advice, I'm happy. Maybe it would feel better to get the extra back pats that come with being the "favorite"... on the other hand, whenever I talk to my advisor's obvious "favorite", all she does is panic about whether or not my advisor is happy with her. It's insane. To echo what others said: a lot of misery in the graduate student world comes out of comparing yourself to others and (especially) to others in your lab. A small amount of competition can be healthy, but so often it becomes paralyzing and unhealthy. If you can manage not to worry about it, and instead just focus on doing your best, you'll probably be happier and more productive. Also, it sounds from your post like you've only been around for a few months (?). If so, you should consider that your advisor knows the other student much better than he/she knows you. It takes a while to forge a working relationship, and a few months is not really long enough to truly know a student or their work.

All of the above are great suggestions. On a practical level, I didn't find out how to read papers efficiently until my fourth year. When it's crucial to understand a certain paper, I find the best possible way to go about it is to quickly scan through all of it, with special attention to the intro and conclusion, to get a feel for the whole structure and argumentation. Then I reread the whole thing carefully, and and write a summary in my own words outlining the main points and data in the paper and any questions I had while reading it. It sounds time consuming, but it has saved me SO MUCH TIME because I stopped having to constantly reread important papers when I forgot the content. If it's in your own words you automatically and quickly remember the content. AND, when you do a lit review, you can basically copy all that stuff into your paper. But I only take the time to do this for papers that multiple people suggest to me, or which are seminal in my sub-area, etc - stuff I know I'll need later. [This doesn't really count if your field has short easy-to-reread papers (I'm thinking of those 6 page journal articles in neuroscience) but in my field the papers tend to be long-winded, and with a lot of complex data and argumentation.] Also, I keep a notebook where I keep track (in careful, intelligible prose) of ideas that come to me. Most of the time they're terrible when I revisit, but sometimes they're worth pursuing. The questions and ideas you have early on often have a habit of revisiting and framing how you think, read, and write, so it's worth consciously noting them down and reflecting.

Agreed, you probably shouldn't state things that way. It could remind the professors of all of the undergrads THEY teach in gen ed classes who don't show up, sleep through lecture, or otherwise put in no effort at all. Plus, there are a lot of moments in grad school when you having to do some really boring stuff. I'm thinking of the weeks on end I've spent getting intimately familiar with various pivot tables of reading time data. I find that in SOP-type things it's best to let your research interests speak for themselves. In the end, the way to get a professor excited to work with you is probably just to give them a SOP describing a really cool topic or idea that they might like to help you brainstorm about, and be affiliated with, since they have to put a lot of their own time and brain power into their students' research. Not to say they aren't interested in a student's intangible qualities (intelligence, ambition, intellectual curiosity, etc) but I think for that they'll tend to look for evidence in your grades, test scores, writing samples, whatever. If I were applying all over again, I'd skip that stuff almost entirely and try to let my personality come across in the way I framed my interests. This sort of presupposes that you already know the field well enough to pitch an idea that fits a professor's interests. I definitely didn't when I applied, but do what you can. You don't really have to go into that many details, and if you don't know the field that well it might be better to be a little vague. Try to read papers by the professors in the department if you can understand them, that will help.

I do neurolinguistics & theoretical syntax/semantics and I'd agree that Maryland & NYU would be good choices. (And maybe also look into UC San Diego.) It's worth mentioning that there is a bit of an idiological divide between linguists and neuroscientists; a lot of neuroscientists are critical of modern linguistic theories, plus linguists don't always find neurolinguistic investigations relevant to their work. Maybe that's why there aren't that many schools right now that do both in the same department or collaborate heavily between departments. One thing I would underscore is that it's extremely important to find a school that can support the methodology you want to use (as fuzzy mentions above). It's very difficult to do neuroimaging in a program where your faculty only work with behavioral methods or ERP. Neuroimaging is both complicated and expensive (the fMRI at my school costs $400/hour) and you need a close mentor to make that type of research possible -- to help with funding, logistics, and experimental design, all of which will be nearly impossible to do all on your own.

I had a colleague who got an MA in Computational Linguistics. He said his program was more oriented towards computer science than linguistics, i.e. the most important skill you develop is programming, in the context of language-related applications. I also worked closely with someone with a PhD in computational linguistics who worked on automatic speech recognition, who was incredibly smart but surprisingly seemed not to be familiar with the IPA (!). I think it would be a cool field to get into, especially if you already have somewhat of a computational background, and the career prospects/salaries are a LOT better than for regular linguistics, but the focus would probably be quite different from what you're used to (if what you're used to is general/theoretical linguistics).

My program admits ~12 students a year. Most of them are international students who already have master's degrees and fairly extensive research experience. Of the domestic students, many have some connection to our department via personal contacts, reputation of undergrad program, etc. I was kind of surprised at how important this was, and my sense is that it probably really helps to establish contact with a few professors at the program in advance of applying. The domestic students don't always have extensive research experience and usually don't have an MA, but probably have good recommendations, great grades, and most important, highly compatible research interests. I have the sense that GRE doesn't matter that much, except maybe quantitative (depending on what field of linguistics you're looking into). Of course, I cannot speak for other programs. Good luck to both of you!

I would think UPenn would be a good fit for you. They have Tony Kroch, Beatrice Santorini and Don Ringe. And of course, Bill Labov. Plus, it's overall a very strong program, so you'll be fine even if you change your focus.

I'm glad someone has raised this topic, because it confused me when I first came into grad school. Most/all of my evaluations have not been anonymous at all -- the classes are small and the professors know my writing style. I have rarely given low ratings, for precisely the reasons the OP states. At first this made me uncomfortable, but after being evaluated and knowing what things the evaluations influence, I don't think I feel that way anymore. If you really want to give constructive criticism without causing political fallout, the written questionnaire is the part to do that. You can give someone decent evals (in terms of numbers) but then offer suggestions for improvement in writing (e.g. "maybe try reorganizing the curriculum this way..."). If it were me, I would be much more receptive to criticism if it weren't accompanied by scores that would potentially affect my ability to get tenure, a promotion, etc., especially if I had genuinely put a lot of time/effort/care into teaching the class. Plus, in my experience the written section really distinguishes the students who just want to give the finger to the professor anonymously from the ones who genuinely want to give helpful feedback but feel uncomfortable doing that face to face.

I just saw this topic, and I haven't read through all of the responses so my apologies if I'm repeating things other people said. I'm in my third year at a program, and here's what I know now about the process - - Call/email/contact respective departments, try to talk to some people in advance about what that department is "all about." The websites are often really out of date and sometimes a bit cryptic if you don't know the field that well yet. They don't often tell you much about the particular department's philosophy and the current research they are pursuing. Our dept website, for example, lists multiple professors that have either passed away, retired, or are not really associated with our dept at all anymore. It lists areas of research that are not really pursued, and there are some thriving areas of research that are not listed at all!! If you're going to tailor your SOP to a school, you need to know what that school is like, which could involve some legwork. BONUS: if you meet with a professor, they will remember your name when they see your application and hopefully remember you making a good impression. - NEVER start out with a story about how you have loved X since you were a kid - SO cliche. Scientific writing is succinct and clear, not emotional and flowery, so that's what they will probably expect. If you want to show how much you love a topic it could maybe help to inject a little nerd humor (I once made fun of myself for being the absolute only person in a class who enjoyed learning the German case system). I guess most scientists can probably relate to being a nerd about their topic, and asking questions about things that might make other peoples' eyes glaze over. - If you lack background in a topic, it could help to acknowledge it. There may be applicants with publications, presentations, etc. I didn't have any of these, and I wish I had come out and said that it took me a while to figure out for myself that I wanted a career in academia. It's a long tough road to be an academic, and it's actually very practical to explore other career options first. I wouldn't have spent tons of space on it, but if you're up against much more qualified candidates, then you may not have an option. I sorta hinted at this in my NSF app and I think it helped, relative to my SOPs when I was applying to schools. But I could be wrong, who knows.