I'm a current undergrad student hoping to do a master's in computational linguistics/NLP. The more I read about it, the more I'm drawn to the University of Washington's MS program, but I'm rather worried because my GPA isn't great... around 3.3 at McGill University in a cognitive science program (though McGill has no cognitive science courses, so a majority of the courses I've taken for the 54-credit program have been in linguistics and computer science). However, that also includes six semesters of Arabic courses, in which I did quite well; if you drop those and look only at the linguistics and computer science courses, the average is closer to 3.0.
Am I crazy even to be thinking of applying to this program? How about the other programs (either MS/MA)? It's very difficult to find information on what sorts of applicants get accepted... Also, in the case that this isn't really a possibility for me right out of undergrad, what sorts of steps might I be looking at taking in order to strengthen my application with an eye to getting accepted the following year? Or, for that matter, what steps should I consider taking now in order to make the most of this upcoming year, my last of undergrad, in order to improve my chances the first time around?
