Lena Xu

Hello, Warelin, thank you so much! Thanks for giving me such good advice, and these questions are really thought-provoking. After I read through your reply, I spent my weekend thinking about the questions you put forward to let me think about. I haven't finalized my decision yet, but I have decided to make a sheet and consider those factors you mentioned above. Again, thank you very much!

Hello, I am new here. I hope to seek some advice from you guys if possible, and I would be very grateful for your help, and also, thank you very much for sparing me the time! I am an international student. I have received several offers from American universities. Now it is near the time to make my final decision. I will do a TESOL program. Among the offers I have got, I am most interested in 3 universities: NYU, Rochester and Penn State. I am interested in foreign language teaching and research, and also, applied linguistics. I hope to pursue a doctoral degree in the future. I haven't had any language teaching experience and my undergraduate major is English and Psychology. The TESOL program in NYU is a MA degree. It stresses more in practice, to equip students to be professional in teaching. Therefore, it provides abundant fieldwork opportunities. However, it doesn't have paper or thesis requirement. In my view, thesis experience is an important factor in application for a PhD program, right? But students could take extra electives or attend Post-Master program which will prepare them to apply for a PhD program in other schools as the PhD program at NYU is very competitive. That means I will have to spend more time and more money in it. Does it worth? The good thing about it is the overall ranking of the university and its education department are at the top level. Their faculty in this program also are very great. Is it an advantage to my future studies and career? Does it worth to pay a lot of money to do that? Is it helpful to my future application for a PhD program? The program at Rochester is at Warner school. It is under Education and Human Development department. The department is unranked. It is kind of a theoretical orientation program. It confers a MS degree and requires students to complete a thesis. But it doesn't provide internship. The school offers me a scholarship which will cover 1/3 of my tuition. So if I went to Warner school, I would spend less money. But should I worry about the quality of the program? If I found that it would be too hard for me to do a PhD program, would the lacking of teaching training and experience hinder my career？Like hard to find a teaching job? The program at Penn State is in Applied Linguistics department. It requires a paper which according to a professor of that program is acceptable in application for a PhD program. The program also provides internship opportunity. However, it is also impossible to apply for a PhD program at that school, as the professor I mentioned above told me so. But he told me I could apply to other universities, such as Ohio State university, Hawaii, etc. But I don't have previous storage knowledge about Applied Linguistics. The only field in it I have known is Second Language Acquisition. I am interested in knowing how people learn second language and how to make people learn a second language more effective. But sometimes when you delve more into a field, you might find that it is not what you imagined. I think I am scared of this idea. One of my concerns here is that I am not sure whether I am PhD bound. I have not had experience in studying abroad. I can not imagine the future graduate school studies in a foreign country would be how stressful. I also know that there are very few chances to be accepted into a PhD program, and I want to be in a good one. I am even not sure about whether I would have passion for teaching. But I know I would do well at it if I had to, as I have strong sense of responsibility for my work and others. This is my second chance to choose my future career path. I think I desperately want to make sure that the decision I make is wise or suitable for me. I am also not sure about my future life. Whether I could find a job in America, what kind of jobs I would find, and whether I should come back my country, etc. Things just are so uncertain which cause my anxiety. I really hope I could get some help from people with more information and good at making wise decisions. Thank you very much!