fuzzylogician

Sounds like a fine letter to me -- it's someone with a PhD who knows you well and can talk about your performance in class and your teaching abilities. Along with two letters from research professors, I'd say your bases are covered.

I've published papers with contractions, no one ever edited them out - not my advisor, not other readers, not reviewers, not editors. No one's ever even mentioned it as a problem. I also read them in other people's papers and I never thought anyone was less professional because they used "it's" instead of "it is." I'm going to go ahead and say that linguistics programs are not going to care too much one way or the other, as long as (as others mentioned) the tone is professional.

This is not a thing we do in my program--I've never met with any of the (three) committees I've had over the course of my studies for various papers prior to defending the paper, and I don't expect to ever have my entire dissertation committee in the same room before I defend (and even then it's likely that one person will only be attending via skype). That said, I imagine that the individual meetings I had with professors when I initially invited them to join my dissertation committee may have been similar to your meeting with your committee -- they knew I wanted to talk about my project and I kind of presented my project in broad terms; I had about an hour to talk so I basically collected all the relevant facts that I knew, framed the main questions I was interested in, and sketched the way in which I thought the analysis was going to go, though that part was very sketchy, as you might expect. The meeting then progressed in very different ways with different committee members, basically depending on where their interests lie. All asked questions about possible growth areas and conversely areas where more fact-finding areas might be needed; each had the part they believed more or less (not the same parts), some concentrated more on sources of data, others on methodologies, etc. Each of them ended up giving me pointers going in different directions and some general feedback on the strength of the project. Basically the way I would prepare for this kind of meeting is just create a presentation of the current state of the project (data, methodologies, previous findings) and lead with the open questions or areas that need more work, explaining how I planned to proceed and what parts I thought I could do vs. what I'd probably leave open--it's ok to carve some part of a problem that you can reasonably define as the core question or data. Depending on how much time you have to talk, I imagine more/less details will be expected. I assume you know the people on your committee; spend some time imagining what they might be more inclined towards and where they may ask you questions or be unconvinced. Maybe even meet with them individually to talk about your project before the committee meeting, that's probably the best way to get an idea of what they're thinking and also to get advice on preparing for the meeting. Ask older students how their meeting(s) went--that too is a good way to know what the process looks like at your school, since these things can greatly differ across institutions. If your program is a healthy one, the committee should be on your side and there to help you, not intimidate you or impede your growth. Take advantage of the smart people who have all come there to hear what you're doing, and don't be afraid to make mistakes or not know the answers to everything, because you're not expected to!

I imagine I would find out what my transcripts say and go with that, in the hopes of reducing the need for explanations. More generally, if the school basically still teaches the same curriculum and has a similar reputation to when I attended, I imagine it's easier to go with the current name because that's what people will know and that's what they can (more easily) search for online. Saying "School X, Dept AB (now: Fancypants School, Dept A)" just sounds like overkill. I do see your point, but both choices seem legitimate to me, as long as no deception is being attempted.

You know, it's ok not to have a huge CV at the beginning of grad school; most people don't. I'm not sure if your employment is at all relevant to your studies but you could probably just list your work under 'work experience' or a similar heading, to avoid having a 4-year hole in your CV. I wouldn't give too many details like you might if you were applying to an industrial position, again unless it's relevant in some way. Once you start grad school and have more relevant academic experience, these jobs should probably be removed, unless they are directly related to your research/studies.

1. Extracurriculars are very important for undergrad applications . They are not important for grad school applications -- what matters is the relevant professional experience that you have and that you can demonstrate your fit with a department (through a focused SOP, showing past research experience, publications, presentations, strong LORs, a good writing sample); unless volunteer work is relevant to your degree program (e.g. you volunteer at a museum and want to study art history or curating, or you're applying to social work or maybe psychology and volunteered with disabled people, etc), it's not going to contribute much to your application. You could probably include these activities on your CV, with the correct focus -- i.e., not too many of them and not on top, so as not to overshadow the parts of the CV that are directly relevant to your application and proposed studies. I don't think it'll help much, but it shouldn't hurt. 2. Yes, you should include research experiences that are similar in nature to your proposed academic studies; your profile says your interests are in media and culture, so work/research in an art institute sounds very relevant. It might be a thing you could discuss in your SOP, depending on what you did.

I'd suggest clearly labeling both the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts paragraphs. Reviews from NSF panels always have a rubric for describing how the application meets these two criteria and you want to make it as easy as possible for the reviewers to find. It may be evident from the overall application, but it will still make the reviewers' lives easier if they can simply copy or paraphrase directly from your paragraph on each of these questions. Good luck to everyone who's applying!

The 15 minutes a day advice always reminds me of this: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1597. I think the one page a day goal is good, especially for people who have a hard time writing. I think my experience is mostly incompatible with this approach, though. I always do my writing in chunks. Some writing, some research, rinse, repeat. During periods of writing, I normally write a good 5-6 pages a day. If I know what I want to say, I can write a whole paper (/chapter) in about a week, using the "don't look back" method. I write a full draft, then revise. I'm a fast writer so once I have a full idea in my head it doesn't take too long to get it onto paper and I don't get hung up on wording at all--that's what revisions are for. I also almost always have handouts from presentations of my work so I never start from scratch, there's a lot that can be copied into the paper from previous iterations of the work. My current plan is to get about 1.5 chapters of my dissertation done by the end of summer, which is probably about 50 pages. I think I can do it, but we'll see. I may end up writing only 30ish pages if the research for the half-chapter I hope to write during the summer turns out not to work out as I hope (and that is now looking like a likely possibility, unfortunately).

Honestly, this topic has been discussed so many times I'm a little tired of it, but here's a shot at my opinion. I am doing a PhD because it is required training for the career that I would like to have, as a researcher and professor in linguistics. I am aware that this goal is not easily attained, so I've also been trying to make sure I learn skills that would be transferable to other occupations (experimentation, statistics, some modeling and coding). If I end up not getting a job in academia, that would really be too bad because I've invested a lot in making it work but, both when I started my PhD and now, I think it will not have been a waste. I'm having a great time, I'm learning invaluable skills, living and working in a supportive environment with wonderful people, and I have opportunities I would not otherwise have. I've been paid to travel around the world, I've met all kinds of interesting people, and more than anything -- I'm being paid to do what I love. I think this is a one-time opportunity in my life. Could things be better? Yes. Especially in terms of finances. However, let's be clear that a PhD stipend is supposed to reasonably support a single student living a student-style, and normally it does. If it can't then I would say, don't go into debt unless you'll earn enough to repay it in a reasonable time (and there are tons of discussions of this point so I won't continue here). My stipend, which is clearly low when compared to salaries of actual full-time jobs I might be doing now instead of studying, is enough for me to live comfortably, travel some and also save. It's all a matter of priorities and where you are in life; as I become older my priorities change and the structure of my expenses does too, but I view this part of my life as training, not as a final destination, and I am ok with the lower income. So yeah, I'm also not a huge fan of all the "don't get a PhD" articles because they only look at one part of the problem, and that is just not a good way of examining any issue.

The questions weren't there in their current form when I wrote my reply. But as I said, if you want to start a discussion you should also provide some of your own opinions. I'd love for Jim84 to stick around and become a contributing board member, but participation solely in the form of "I wrote a new post in my blog, what do you think?" isn't exactly that.

The board has a policy against advertisement. It's there precisely for the reasons that NicholasCage mentions. Just as an example, of the 5 reports currently open in my moderator panel, 4 have to do with ads or self-promotion (these reports originate from board members, not from us). We deal with these cases on an individual basis and in cases like the one in this thread, we normally let the poster keep their links provided that they actually participate in discussions on this board. The original post in this thread has been altered after I posted my reply so it's hard to discuss its exact content but what bothered me about it was that it was very simply an invitation to go read something off site and not a discussion here. As I said above, starting a discussion here that also links to the blog is different from forcing participants to visit the blog if they want to participate. I don't think it's the same as linking to a third-party article and discussing it here and besides, we're not talking about a regular poster who started a thread linking to some interesting article they would like to discuss, we're talking about a new poster who's started exactly two topics on the board so far, both simply linking to their own blog. A good outcome here is that the OP post a reply with some of their opinions about the question of "Why a Phd," and we can take it from there. I don't buy the reply that it's too long/complicated/whatever to discuss in a post here.

At my school the books are provided. If you don't want to ask your advisor, ask an advanced graduate student in your department; but only someone from your department, not us, can answer this question.

And your post wasn't "snarky" at all. You might want to familiarize yourself with the board along with and its participants and rules of conduct before passing moral judgment. You are sending people off to your blog instead of starting a discussion here. If that's not self-promotion, I don't know what is.

You know, there have been many discussions of this topic; here are some posts from the past few months that I found from just skimming a couple paged back in The Lobby: Not that I'm not interested in more discussion, but this thread, like the previous one you started the other day, appears to be nothing more than advertisement for your blog. If you want to start a discussion here, you should write your opinions here, not send readers off to another site.

I don't know why this is urgent, but here are a few quick thoughts: - The first paragraph needs to go. It's not relevant to the present and future career that you are planning for yourself. I am amazed how many people think it's a good idea to tell the adcom that an 8th birthday present from their parents is what made them choose their future career. - You have details about too many projects and it's not clear that they're all as worthy of the adcom's attention. In particular, it seems to me that describing all your class projects is a bit over the top; if it's a way of mentioning skills you've acquired, I'm sure there's a better way (e.g. just saying what skills you have learned through your education). I'd find a way to mention the skills and the benefits (team work, etc) without describing the innards of class projects--it's not clear from the description what your contribution was, what scope the project had and what it means exactly that the project was "appreciated." -The middle part starting with the Intel project could be reworked. There are too many details and some of them are not necessary (I assume they'll be on your CV). I'd stick to telling about the successful project that yielded the paper, and keep all the details about the project in one place; right now there are details all over the place. - Scope: Your statement is about 75% past, 25% future; you need to flip this around -- SOPs are about the present and future, and even the description of past events should always be geared towards explaining how it prepares you for the future. - Fit: You need to seriously spend more time on the fit part of the SOP. Right now it's too short and very generic. If you send it like this, adcoms will know that you didn't spend a lot of time at all researching the schools you're applying to and thinking about why they are good matches for your interests. - Nitpicky but important: there are too many instances of you saying you're great and saying (instead of showing) that you worked hard: "with my vast knowledge in ...", "I have always been a quick learner and extremely hard worker...", "all this hard work paid off when.." . It's not as effective as you might think; your CV and your successful projects will show these traits of yours, and saying you have them doesn't really make you come off any better.

I don't know if it's true, but I wouldn't worry either way. It doesn't change anything from the way things were before you found out about this. You will write what you write because there isn't that much time to worry about how it might come off to a professor on an adcom 4 months from now, and the adcom will still care about this essay much less than about other serious components of the application like your SOP and writing sample, and therefore is unlikely to rely on the GRE essay as a serious way to make decisions this way or that.

If you want to study Semitic using the methodologies of linguistics, you should consider applying to general linguistics programs. You don't need there to be someone who works on Semitic, in particular; you want someone with expertise in the areas that interest you (what are they, by the way) who can support you in pointing out relevant literature, facts about other languages, etc. Maybe you need to have to have a collaboration with someone from the Language/Lit program or wherever Semitic scholars are found. But the thing about general linguistics programs is that you are not very likely to find people who work exclusively on language X, because that's just not how we perceive our field--we work on questions of interest that may require us to look at a particular language or language family, but not many professors restrict themselves to just one language (though there are those too, especially people who work on under-studied languages where you need to go into the field to collect data and there are not many speakers around). For its number of speakers, Hebrew is actually very well represented in linguistics as an object of study, because there are quite a few Jewish/Israeli linguists who (at least occasionally) write about it. So, it's quite normal for a student in a particular program to be the only person working on a particular language, and the faculty don't need to be experts in it to be great advisors. They provide the technical knowledge and expertise, and you're the expert on the details of your language. Of course, this would lead to a specific kind of education that I'm betting is very different than what you've done in your past; it's something to learn more about. Maybe you'll end up trying to do the collaboration in the opposite direction - apply to a program that's more along the lines of what you've done in the past and find an interested professor who is willing to work with you in a linguistics program, assuming the school you go to has one.

annanyc, please get help in dealing with the depression that you'e feeling and with the suicidal thoughts. You should not deal with it alone--seek out a therapist or a support group, perhaps through your school. I'm sure that there are programs that are meant for people who are similar situations to your, and they can help you see your way through the difficulties. Graduating with a low GPA is NOT the end of the world. It might make your life somewhat harder than if you had a perfect 4.0, but that's all it is. You will still have opportunities and you can still have many successes in your life. You could get into a Masters program by following the advice in mewtoo's post above. Or you may want to get a job first, and that can help in a few ways - beside the obvious making money, it'll give you some perspective to help you make sure what career you'd want to have in the future. Having more distance between your undergrad and your grad school experiences will also make your grades less important than other aspects of your portfolio. I understand that you're currently doing well in your program -- that too will help; many people struggle at first but the upward trend in grades will prove that you are able to be successful in school. Maybe you can find an internship with a museum or other group that is relevant to what you want to study and do later in life. There are many options out there and it's just not true that they're all closed off because of this one blemish. Whatever you do, and before you figure out a job or grad school, please--get help dealing with your feelings. Everything will be some much easier and clearer once you do that.

I made my own vocab cards. It doesn't work for everyone but if you're one of those people who remember things better if they write them down themselves as opposed to just read it from a page, this is a great way to go. I got my words from the GRE prep books (can't remember which ones, I think Kaplan for root lists, Princeton Review for a dedicated vocab practice?). To be honest, I think very few of the words I memorized from those lists appeared on my exam. The more useful part of studying was that I also basically did what zapster proposed and just read a lot, and added any words I didn't recognize to my cards. Looking up the words and their definitions helped me remember them better.

Well, a tenured job in academia is in fact a difficult goal to obtain. It's a buyers' market, there are more qualified people than jobs and the economy isn't great either. It's something to be aware of before applying and while attending school. Schools are many times not exactly great at preparing students for industry jobs, but it's a fact that not everyone can (and should, or even wants to) get an academic job. You need to actively seek out the qualifications that will help you in all potential markets you might enter once you graduate - academic and otherwise. I'm not telling you not to do it (I'm doing it!) but you should definitely not come into this with any illusions about how the job market works.

One thing that comes to mind: try reading about 'bridge anophora' or 'bridging anaphora'. It's basically sentences like (1) below. It's anaphora that picks out not a word that was mentioned in the previous context but something semantically close in some relevant way that conjures it up. I think most people give examples similar to (1) to illustrate this phenomenon, where we have lexical items with a part-whole relation. Try relating this phenomenon to your topic -- there are interesting questions and experiments you could do here (but it's your homework assignment and you should work it out yourself). Good luck! (1) My car broke down this morning. The engine wouldn't start.

To make matters worse, it's not just "special connections," skills/merit and vast resources that make you successful. Lots more goes into successfully getting an academic position, a lot of it obscure and up to luck. For example, you want to have a successful project or two some time in the beginning of your career which you can turn into journal publications, or else a brilliant dissertation (or both); you need to have good instincts or else good mentorship that can help you pick out and develop the skills that will be 'hot' on the job market a few years down the line when you graduate; similarly it helps if you can identify the problems that will be occupying your field when you graduate because having work on them will set you apart from the rest; you want good people skills and opportunities to use them; favorable conference/journal/grant proposal reviewers; the right job posting at the right time; strong faculty supporters; did I mention luck? lots of luck.

I currently attend one of the schools on your list and I have to say that more important than the name of the school in getting a good academic job post-graduation is the name of the department and of your advisor(s). In my field, people from my department historically do quite well on the job market, but so do for example graduates of UMass Amherst and UC Santa Cruz, which may not be very glamorous universities on the whole, but the linguistics departments there are very strong. If you're not aiming for an academic job but for a job where people might not know the intricacies of within-field rankings, there might be a greater weight put on the famous school name, but since you asked about academic jobs I think it would certainly not be my first criterion for choosing where to apply and what school to attend compared to research fit within the department and the personal fit with my advisor.

Disciplines are sometimes different in the way the departments are structured. In many (experimental) sciences, the department is organized around labs; the PI - the person who heads the lab - is in charge of securing grant money for certain projects normally centered around a certain theme or expertise of the PI, and students are basically hired to work in the lab on a project (or projects) proposed by the PI to the funding agencies. Projects may be quite long and collaborative, sometimes even to the point where they can't be done by just one person or where you might inherit code or parts of the project from an older student. Students are funded directly from the PI's grants and therefore it's important for students to contact the PI and make sure that they are accepting students and can fund them. There are sometimes more complicated versions of this model where students can do short rotations in several labs before choosing where to end up, but even then it's important to know that the department you are applying to is likely to have a professor who can serve an an appropriate advisor for you and who is also able to fund you. In other disciplines, including most of the humanities and social sciences, funding for students does not come from individual grants given to professors. There is less grant money in these disciplines in general (and the research also costs much less because no expensive equipment is needed). In these fields, the department as a whole holds on to all the money and admissions decisions are made not by individual professors but instead by a department-level admissions committee. This means that often a single professor can't just decide to admit you, because you need to be approved by the entire committee and/or faculty in the department. On the other hand it means that you are much less committed to a particular advisor and project for your funding and good standing in the program, and you have a lot of freedom in choosing a research project. It might still be beneficial to contact professors in these latter type of field, for a number of reasons. First, to make sure that the person you want as your advisor is accepting students (not retiring or moving schools or otherwise not taking on new students because they are busy or taking on an administrative position, etc). Second, to attract someone's attention -- because even though decisions are made on a department level, you are much more likely to get in if there is someone who champions your case. If there is a professor who strongly wants to have you as their student, they may be able to influence the committee. There are different cultures in different fields as to whether or not it's customary to contact potential advisors and it's not necessarily a bad thing to not contact anyone (for example, I never contacted any faculty at all but did very well during my application season). Based on the replies you got, your field may be similar to mine, where it's not really necessary to contact professors prior to applying--but you may want to ask around for opinions from people in your field.

Out of those options I'd definitely choose the Lenovo T431s. I've owned one IBM and one Lenovo T-series machine which I've had for a total of 9 years, and liked them a lot. I just recently bought myself a new computer and I was leaning towards a Lenovo similar to the T431s you linked to, but was eventually persuaded to buy a macbook air this time. The price I paid was actually lower than that of the Lenovo I was looking at, and everyone around me swears that they're so much better than Windows machines. Despite all the hype, though, I'm not head over heels in love with my macbook air - it's just a computer like all others and it's not anything extraordinary. The one thing I have to give it that beats the Lenovo by a mile is how light it is. It also has better battery power. Anyway, out of the choices you have, I'd say the T-series is better than all the others since it's the line that Lenovo took over from IBM, as opposed to starting on their own. The touchscreen machine looks like somewhat of a risk as a main work computer; the other Asus may be a good choice but I don't know too much about it.