fuzzylogician

Some programs have Open House events, usually during late February to mid-March (including, as far as I know and if things haven't changed, Stanford, MIT, UCLA, NYU, Brown, Maryland?, Johns Hopkins?). Those programs have to make decisions by mid-February to allow people time to make travel arrangements. The other programs also tend to announce around the same time, and successful applicants will then often go on "school visiting rounds." Especially for international applicants who can't go to the US more than once, this kind of arrangement is very helpful. I'm assuming programs will do the same this year, too. Of course you could also be on waiting lists for much longer, but otherwise the first round of acceptances starts trickling in in late January and intensified by mid-February. Most schools will make their decisions by mid-March.

Lets assume for simplicity that we are talking about a morpheme that has two allophones. Free variation: The two forms can be used in the same environments with no restrictions. Conditioned variation: There is a rule that governs when one form is used and when the other one is used.

Listen, I'm not going to have a "I read more than you do" match. Maybe in your field you can choose to ignore works that don't suit your literary aesthetics or trust that others will summarize them for you. Maybe you work on very mainstream issues where you can truly rely on that. Where I am coming from, you can't make that assumption and you also can't draw any link between writing and content. You can find mediocre results packaged in well-written papers but on the other end of that there are also important results in not-as-well-written papers. When you write a dissertation you hope to become the number 1 expert in your field on your topic. For me that means being familiar with everything and not trusting others to do the work for me. I also don't work on problems where I can expect everything to be summarized in the first place. The field moves fast and I need to keep up with current publications, not wait for others to read them for me. But if it works for you, I guess your field must be very different.

Well, you look at the data set that the scientist in question collected. You look at their calculations and you struggle through the convoluted wording to figure out what the conclusions are. Sometimes brilliant observations and novel claims can be "shaken loose" out of the text. (And yes, sometimes you learn that the convoluted words represent convoluted reasoning and unjustified conclusions.) I'm certainly not advocating for anyone to use unclear writing, but part of our job as scholars is to learn to see beyond the writing and understand the ideas. I find your attitude towards this problem more idealistic than realistic - certainly there must be people in your field whose writing is less than clear, but you can't just choose to dismiss them. When you research a problem you need to be familiar with everything that has been written about it, whether or not it's written clearly. Choose to ignore writings that don't satisfy your aesthetics and you'll end up working on problems that have already been solved, or missing crucial data and/or techniques to solve your problem.

Give it some time. Your deadlines aren't close at all and there is no reason to be calling every three days at this point. Follow up again after Thanksgiving, and don't start giving up and looking for someone new before December. If your deadlines are in Jan/Feb you could even ask someone for a replacement letter in the second week of December without it being considered last minute (but beware the holidays!).

Nobody here can tell you that. Your best bet is to check on the results board when notifications went out for your school in previous years. For me it was accurate within a week for all 8 schools I applied to.

Normally there is no such thing as transferring in graduate school. You have to reapply in this cycle and get admitted again. Furthermore, it's very likely that you'll have to repeat at least part of the first year instead of being allowed to join as a second year. The specifics of your case may be different, however, and that's something you will have to work out with the new program directly. Usually you don't "apply for a transfer" after you have your MA. Rather, you apply for the PhD program. I'm not sure I followed the logic of not needing to work with faculty as much in the later years as opposed to earlier years, but I suppose it may be field specific. I rely on my advisors' guidance now that I'm in my fourth year just as much as I did in 1-2 years, if not more. Decisions you make later in the game matter just as much, in particular things like dissertation topic and where to apply for jobs. I don't know the details of the program you're in but if you're only three months into the program and already want to switch, it may be wiser not to wait. It all comes down to whether you can justify the move, and whether you can do it without burning bridges in your current program. If you can, I don't see a reason to wait for the MA.

Resume or no resume, you should not be discussing your entire background and history in your SOP. Think of the SOP as a forward-looking document. It should be about your current interests right now and how you would like to develop them in the future. Another main point to address is why the school you are applying to is a good fit for your goals - what resources, scholars, courses, etc. it offers that attract you there. You also need to devote some space to explaining how your past education and experience have provided you with the skills you'll need to pursue your goals, but that should not be the main focus of your essay. Find out if you are allowed to submit a resume for schools that did not require one. In particular, verify that they'll accept one if the app specifically mentions anything like "no unsolicited documents." In your case they might make an exception, but you don't want your app tossed for not playing by the same rules as everybody else.

I agree that if the thinking hasn't happened then the writing will be close to impossible. But even when the thinking has been done, writing is still not an easy task. In fact, it's one of the most difficult tasks graduate students face. Being able to clearly and succinctly communicate your ideas is anything but straightforward. It's a skill few have coming into grad school and many struggle with during school and beyond. You can be a brilliant scientist who has made amazing discoveries, and you may even be a wonderful presenter - but that absolutely doesn't mean that writing should be easy for you. Some very good scientists in my field appear not to have mastered writing at all. I find that incredibly frustrating, but still I would not dare dismiss their scholarship or intellect.

Unless archaeology is substantially different from other fields, it's not bad at all. In fact, it's the most common state of affairs for students who are just out of undergrad. In many fields, it's also the case for most MA students. Publications take time and are difficult to manufacture, especially as a beginner scholar. At least in my field, no one expects students to have publications coming into a program. Conference presentations are nice (and easier to get) but also not required. This is not a publication, as you say yourself. It wasn't published anywhere. You could list this on your CV as a manuscript if you so wish, and provide the URL. You could mention this as a department-internal presentation if you want. I think it'd serve you better to simply talk about this experience in your SOP and/or have a recommender write about the experience for you. The presentation aspect of the project is probably the least important here, given the venue where you presented. Bottom line: you are worrying too much about what is a very common state of affairs and, I fear, may be trying to overcompensate by listing things on your CV that don't need to be there.

Two things. One - you have more life experience; that means you have more to report, but you also have a much better perspective on what's important and what's not. Two - even if you know exactly what you want to say, writing a research statement is still very difficult. The thought that it should somehow be straightforward for someone with less background is puzzling to me. That is precisely when writing such a statement means stopping to consider some very basic questions about one's future, perhaps for the first time. Moreover, writing this kind of statement - the kind that is the meat and bones of any grant, job and even conference application - is a skill that takes researchers years to develop.

What's the payoff you get for having a thesis as opposed to taking the comps? If you're in a professional program it's not clear that you need to keep the research option open. If the main goal is to finish on time and with minimal hassle, it sounds like the comps are a much more direct way of achieving it.

FWIW I opened with a (broad) research question that was on my mind at the time, then described the background that allowed me to ask it (education, research and teaching experience) then circled back to expanding on the question and at the same time explaining how the school I applied to would be a good fit for working on this type of question. I had tried a couple of "hook" openings but none of them worked as well as the straightforward approach, not to mention the space it saved compared to the versions that contained 2-3 sentences telling a story that was not related to my current (at the time) research.

Your transcript needs to contain a full record of the grades you've received in all the courses you've taken in undergrad. If you attended more than one institution, some schools will require that you submit a transcript from each one (even if the grades transferred and appear on your home institution transcript).

It means that that student's progress was not satisfactory. That could be the student's fault, the professor's fault of a combination thereof. I'd suggest talking to other people and figuring out if this was a one-time thing or a common occurrence. If there are multiple such stories, do yourself a favor and stay away from this professor. Find someone with a reputation for getting people out in time. This could also be a question to bring up with any potential advisor you're considering working with - how often do they meet with students, do they give regular progress feedback, will they let you know if you're not on track to graduating on time and what will happen then, how often does that happen to this professor's students in general. Once you've gotten yourself into a situation where a reluctant prof. is your advisor and he/she will not sign off on your thesis, it'll be much harder to get out of the situation. You'll need to find out your department's policies regarding theses defenses and how they are set up and you will have to fight against your advisor and whoever supports him/her in order to defend. So do yourself a favor and don't get yourself into that situation to begin with.

As a linguist, I beg to differ. The only thing that would be more cliche is "Ever since I was a child, I've always enjoyed learning new languages."

Are you sure you can make it work without offending anyone? That is, without getting across a message that whatever you aren't interested in is boring? I'd worry about that. Not to mention that people's interests change and shift in grad school and beyond, and making such a strong statement like you're making now might end up painting you as close minded and not ready for graduate school. Additionally, it sounds like you're spending a lot of time describing your past and how you developed your current interests - you could do some of that, but really the statement should be about the present and future - what do you care about now? How will you develop these interests in the future? How and why is the school you're applying to the perfect place for you to achieve your goals? Maybe it'd help you to finish the rest of the statement and then go back to the opening paragraph. You can write this paragraph up and get people's advice on it. My guess would be that it's be better not to use it, but I suppose it could work in some contexts.

I usually had one or two paragraphs. First I talked about the general attributes of the program that I found appealing (libraries, resources, special courses, collaborations or other opportunities). Then I had a paragraph that mentioned a few POIs by name and explained how these people's interests matched my own. I'd advise you to select no more than 4-5 names to mention in your SOP. Choose only those ones who could really be advisors, not everyone who has some overlapping interest. If you just list everyone it'll sound as if you are shooting in all directions and haven't really established that the program is a good fit for your goals.

Getting caught in a lie is one of the worst things that can happen to you as an academic. Nobody will work with you, let alone hire you, if your integrity is suspect.

As far as I know, our program doesn't have an official policy.

In my program people can go wherever they want over breaks. Most international students go home for at least several weeks over the summer (some go for the entire summer) and most people also leave for some time over winter break. I guess the culture of my program is very different from yours because it's pretty much a given and no one would ever think to complain.

Mind you, my friends are not all from my cohort. Once the first year was over, we started taking seminars that everyone from 2-5th year attended. I have friends from all the different years, above and below my year, and what I wrote refers to them all. Same goes for my professors - they studied together around the same time but they're not all necessarily from the same cohort. I think that matters much less.

1, I learn from my cohort (and other students) just as much as from professors, if not more. They have been extremely important to my academic development. 2. They are the first people I run my crazy ideas past. They are the ones I complain to. They are the ones with slightly more experience who advise me on what to do next in my career, or who I advise on their problems. They proofread my papers and comment on them. Yes, they are still important. 3. Actually many of my professors are still friends with their cohorts and other students who they went to grad school with. Some of them still publish together and they also visit each other occasionally.

At the very least, I think that it's safe to assume that there is an entailment pattern such that, if a school provides support for its MA students then it also supports its PhD students. I'm not sure if the support for PhD students is necessarily better, but in most places it's much more likely to be guaranteed.