lingg

hmmmm yeah it sounds good to think along this line! I think I'll get a more realistic idea on how much debt I should expect for this PhD program after talking to some profs there soon!

I calculated and it's huge really - I heard from current students that paying the living expenses by teaching and research is possible, but the workload is really heavy and the opportunities are not guaranteed - and faculty jobs are just so hard to find now. I guess it might be better for me to imagine the worst-case scenario instead of having too much expectation on the funding that might arrive later - and deferral is not permitted so it's either to take it this year or apply again. Yeah indeed, I need to check the loan details, and I'm going to talk to a prof in the program to find out more about things :/

Thank you! Yeah this is the risk of choosing that - I can either get something better afterwards, or I can get worse or nothing at all. The PhD program is also full of risk - I might need to take loans (which I don't want at all) and I'm already nervous about competing with my master degree holder classmates on fellowships and everything. (sigh)

Thank you thelionking for your insights! Actually I personally lean towards the master's program, but the majority of my professors said I should go for the PhD - and they told me a lot of "horror stories" on how a student got 4.0 in an MA but ended up being rejected by PhD at the same school. It seems that US PhD programs are getting more and more competitive each year, and the whole process as what I've experienced has a lot of unpredictable factors (whether your subfield's too popular, whether you know someone at a school, etc) - so my professors have been saying that you should grab this opportunity since it might never come back to you. I'll definitely work hard if I'm going for the master's, though I'm just not sure whether things will come out in the ideal way :/ I'm not actually thinking about migrating to the US - I'm totally fine with returning to my home country; the problem is that, where I'm from is somewhere that values US degrees to a great extent. If you hold a PhD from the US, you'll immediately get more popular on the academic job market than others (given that you have roughly the same amount of publications etc as others). After this master's it's totally possible that I'll do a PhD in Europe, which will generally make things harder when I seek an academic job back home. Another thing is really, probably things will get more difficult for international students during this administration, so some have suggested me to "enter the US before the government comes up with other horrible policies". So yeah, I really need to think hard about everything!

My situation is so similar to you in this regard (except that I only have the 2-year master's offer) - I personally would prefer the 2-year program over the 1-year one, as it's a bit hard to largely improve your profile within around 9 months from now; and I personally think the master's study will never go wasted - later in the PhD you might graduate sooner than your counterparts directly coming from bachelor's! And the experiences at another institution could be valuable in the long run. And concerning the PhD offer, yes, the school I got in is in a super expensive area, and it's also the only PhD program I got in so I don't really have anything to negotiate with them; plus, there has been rumors saying that school is always short of funding so there's no guarantee that I'll be able to survive on my own. Such a hard decision to make!

Definitely understand how you feel! Is your Canadian master's program one year long? My Europe program is two years - which means I'll need to keep the relationship with my undergrad profs and ask them again after more than a year. So your PhD offer also came with an insufficient financial package??

I'm an international undergrad applying for graduate programs in linguistics. I've been accepted into a fully funded (tuition + stipend) master's program in Europe, and a partially funded (tuition waiver, RA for the first year but not really enough for living) PhD in the States; now I'm in a serious dilemma on which one to choose, and I'd appreciate any advice from you all! Pros for the Europe master's: 1. Funding is very sufficient 2. Might get into great PhD programs with full funding when I apply again with a stronger profile 3. It's going to be a wonderful experience studying in multiple countries - it's a consortium kind of program Cons: 1. No guarantee that I'd get in anywhere (especially with funding) if I reapply; and this program is probably not very well-known in the States, which might put me in disadvantage (anyways my undergrad school is not famous either though) Pros for the US PhD: 1. No need to apply again to PhD - and it's in the US; most schools in the US are thought as more prestigious than most schools in other countries, at least in my field 2. Professors there are great 3. The city the school locates in is wonderful Cons: 1. The funding situation seems very difficult, and workload of teaching and research part-time jobs is very heavy. Also, conference travelling funds, research funds and dissertation funds are all competitive - correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume some schools include all those as guaranteed in their full funding packages? Plus, international students are not allowed to work off-campus, so I have to solely rely on on-campus jobs to survive. Both curriculums are great - they are roughly in the same subfield, so I don't have a preference on this between the two. I'd like to know what would you suggest. In fact, how common it is for PhD programs to give not-fully-funded offers? And if I choose the Europe master's, am I taking too much risk - as things will probably only get more competitive after two years? Thank you so much in advance!!

Thank you for your kind wishes Have a blast in the program you're going to!

Oh I actually talked about phonetics + phonology in my application to some not so socio-oriented schools thank you and best of luck to your studies!!

Sociolinguistics + Phonetics! Actually this is also one reason I've been thinking about, as I noticed that soooo many people are applying for socio. I tried asking one POI who sent me the rejection personally (rather than giving a generic letter on the system) but I haven't heard back since. May I know what's your subfield?

Thanks a lot for your insights! My GPA is 3.5, which I assume is lower than a lot of the strong applicants. I was hoping that my writing sample would look good as I have got conference presentations from it, but probably the adcoms were just not so impressed :/. Guess I might really need to do a master's to improve my chances...

Congrats to everyone who has received some offers already! Is it possible to know a bit of your backgrounds - are you undergrad students or you're already attending a master's program? Have you got papers (journals/proceedings) published at the time when you were applying? I'm an international undergrad at a not-so-famous university and have got conference presentations when I applied (my GPA is not good though); some of my recommenders are familiar with people in the schools I've applied to, but so far I've only been receiving rejections - even from the schools that I considered to be the best fits. I'm not sure what went wrong, so I'd definitely appreciate any kind of sharing on your own profiles or other suggestions!

Thank you! I'll email my POIs soon on this. Good luck to your applications as well!

Hi there! So I have this situation that I haven't received interview notices from NYU and Berkeley - though apparently a lot of people have received that and have already been interviewed. But after seeing a lot of rejections and acceptances from Berkeley on the results board, I'm still not receiving anything from them (and nothing happened to my online application system). So should I email my POIs to ask about my application status and the interviews? Or is my chance of getting in already low if I haven't received anything at this stage? :/ Thanks a lot!!