Jiren

Is this something that every graduate student does? Are there graduate student who don't pay taxes on their stipend? Do they get caught?

My guess is that they just don't want to look bad. I think most people do get accepted with an MA and not straight out of college with a BA (judging from looking at some profiles of people who were admitted in other schools), but the people who do get accepted with a BA have been planning to do research in linguistics since their first or second year and have a lot of experience under their belt (for an undergrad). I majored in something else so I had no research background whatsoever in linguistics. Anyway I still have a few schools to hear from and that'll help confirm my suspicion that schools don't read applications from people who reapply.

Research is the most important thing for linguistics PhD applications, obviously. I was in the same situation as you and I got rejected from everywhere (though I had a few waitlists and interested departments like UCLA, UPenn, Maryland, UMichigan, Brown) before I got my MA degree. Now I'm about to graduate with my MA degree with a publication and an extensive research background and I got accepted to my top choice university among a few others. However, I urge you to not state on your application that you are reapplying to these schools. Due to personal experience I suspect that admissions committees don't even bother to read applications from people who reapply (I got rejected from UCLA this year which I was waitlisted in 2 years ago when my application was much weaker; I specified that I was reapplying, UCSC as well despite having a very good fit). I also don't think the committees will even remember that you applied a couple years ago; the people at Harvard didn't remember when they interviewed me a couple weeks ago though I applied years ago. So don't give up. Also, fit is extremely important. I got rejected from schools I applied to that I had a very bad fit with (I applied to UArizona solely for Chomsky despite having a very strong application, and got rejected) but accepted to ones I had a good fit with this year.