fuzzylogician

I suppose this may vary by field. In mine, it'd be entirely appropriate to ask for the slides over email. Talk to your advisor, but the way to create and maintain a relationship is precisely what you've been doing: introduce yourself, find ways to talk about their work with them, and once you have something to share, tell them about it. If you are going to be in the same conference as them, email to schedule a time to grab a coffee. These small things are the way to keep these kinds of connections going. The potential to collaborate again varies a lot by field. This would be something to discuss with your advisor. In some cases, it may be possible to have a shared project, or alternatively to be a visiting student in this scholar's department for a semester (with them as host!). As a first year, you may need to be slower about building this relationship than you might like, but with time, these kinds of opportunities will come up more often and will be easier to grab.

I'd probably do the following: email the contact person; wait about a week or so for a response, then follow up, replying to the original email. If there's again no response, I'd then follow up/reply again, this time ccing the grad advisor directly and apologize ("I apologize for emailing you directly, but my previous emails haven't been answered and I wasn't sure who else to contact"). That creates a paper trail that can sometimes be useful. Alternatively, you could try calling. It'd be much faster and might work just as well.

Seconding everything @jrockford27 said. The lie was totally unnecessary and speaks to the stress you're in more than anything. I personally would choose to move on from this. At this point you don't know your potential advisor well enough to know how to "come clean" to him without causing yourself potential harm. The chance that he'll find out exists but isn't large (it depends on who he might know at the other department). The chance that finding out about your lie will actually cause him to drop you as an advisee seems very small. This topic of conversation is most likely in the past and won't come up again. If it does, at some point in the future, you'll have a better sense of how to handle it once you know your advisor better. If it does, I think the way to put it is precisely as it was described above: an almost instinctive reaction to impostor syndrome and a fear of how you'd be perceived by your new advisor. A moment of weakness that's led you to do some serious thinking about how you perceive yourself as an academic. But again, I really think it's best to move on.

Hi there, I'm not exactly sure why you posted a picture instead of just entering text into the comment box. Either way -- I think you may need to give us a bit more information about your interests in order for us to help you. There are many fields that will allow you to do research on medical-related questions.

You can present an unfinished project, but you need to be comfortable with the level of detail you get into. You may not have a fully fleshed out manuscript-length paper yet, but if you don't even have an analysis of some preliminary pilot data, that may not be enough to present. You also need to be familiar enough with all the steps of the study to answer any questions, and you don't want to be caught off guard by questions about how much you can generalize from your study, or whether you even have enough data/robustness to say much of anything. Short answer: yes, you can do it, but there's also a line of unpreparedness you don't want to cross. Talk to your advisor.

This depends on the school's IRB process, but it doesn't sound all that crazy to me that you need to get some kind of approval not only from your home university but also from some local institution where you're conducting your study. At the very least, you'll need to get your consent forms translated into the local language (I've seen that happen every time there's a speaker of a non-English language involved in the study). When working with vulnerable populations such as children, IRB will often take extra measures to ensure that no harm comes to participants and that recruitment is handled sensitively. This may mean that you need to have a local host or connection -- I've seen that happen too, also e.g. when working with indigenous people. But whatever I've seen or not, the bottom line is that you need to get the approval from your institutional board, and what other schools do will matter very little to them (this, from experience). So just do what they ask, and keep your advisor involved in the process. They will surely have relevant experience, or someone else in your department will.

I'd recommend simply asking the school this question. And at the same time, ask if they can reimburse at least some of your travel expenses, and maybe you arrange for a student host to help you with accommodations. Congrats on your acceptances!

I have a very different specialization so I can't tell you much about either program, but at the point where you haven't even applied yet, it's probably wise to have several options under consideration. If you're accepted to more than one school, then you have the option of visiting and chatting with faculty to weigh your options. I think it's premature to do it now. But more generally, I think a question to ask is what you hope to gain from the degree -- what job would you like to have? Which school is likelier to help you achieve that goal? For high school teaching, it's my understanding that certification doesn't carry across states, so that might be an important consideration, along with funding and fit with an advisor.

Seeing as the BU program is brand new, I'm not terribly surprised by that. I also don't think rankings are what really matters in PhD applications (read: they are by far not the most important factor), especially for a program that couldn't possibly have a relevant grad ranking. Oh, I meant more like physically be present in classes, colloquia and reading groups there, I wasn't really thinking about credits (I have no idea about that). You're in physical proximity to these really good programs with lots of things happening in them every day. Even if you don't take classes there, you still have the chance to establish some connections with the faculty there; though classes could be a good place to start, especially if you have less theoretical background so you won't be working on a project you could meet with them about. Here is my general thinking: if the goal is a PhD program, and you don't at the moment have enough background or preparation, the main things you want out of a program are A sense of whether you want to do a PhD, and in what area (roughly). This is a prerequisite for applying to PhD programs. Assuming it's a yes, you mainly want: Sufficient preparation to be able to write a strong SOP -- a sense of direction for a PhD, and enough background to back it up Connections with faculty who will write you strong letters of recommendation. Likely, the profs in your program. Possible but less likely: profs from nearby programs you can connect with. A strong writing sample All three programs should give you (1) and (2).* The main question is about (3) and (4). Where are the best known profs who send students off to the kinds of programs you want to be in? Who will do the best job supporting a research project and paper writing at the MA level? There is no easy answer. The UChicago program has a large number of leading profs. If you had more contact with them, I'd say it's a winner. But since that isn't quite the case, the decision is more difficult. BU has a brand new program and therefore it has motivation to produce students that go on to do great things, which should be an advantage, but there might be quirks in their program because of inexperience, and we can't really talk about their placement record. For the record, though, I think that there are several excellent faculty there. Again, I know less about Edinburgh, but I do think that their s-side profs are great. In all cases, a one-year program in your case means you will need to wait to finish the program before applying for a PhD, and the research project and writing sample at the end might be limited. That's something to worry about, because producing a strong writing sample should be one of your main goals for the degree. And then there are financial considerations, which are also important but only you can weigh against the other factors. If it were me, I'd pick BU out of those three, given what I understand about the UChicago program; but I don't think you'd go wrong with with UChicago or Edinburgh. It's more about what you do with the opportunity, and that's up to you. * at least, the US programs will definitely prepare you for the kind of classes and materials you'll be exposed to in a PhD program in the US. I'm a little less sure about Edinburgh.

There have been several discussions about this before. Here are some of them:

In addition to the 1/2 year question and the funding question, you should know that the CU approach to linguistics is completely different from the BU one. So by committing to an MA in one of those programs, you are also pre-selecting which PhD programs are likely to take you seriously. That's something to think about very carefully.

In that case, I think BU would be better than UChicago. I have less to say about Edinburgh, as I noted above. If you have more specific questions, that may help.

Definitely. Your own department bully can be used as an exercise for ones you don't know as well and whose behavior you can't predict. The stakes are lower because everyone knows this person behaves this way, but you can confound expectations by handling them well. Think back to people who've handled them well in the past: how did they do it? Attitude? A certain way of deflecting the question? Answering a different question or reformulating? Giving them a compliment or finding a way to cite/use their work in your reply? You can even try to prepare for the question(s) this person might ask, since you've seen them do this in the past. You can't predict all questions, but you can prep for at least some. I sometimes find that it's useful in these situations to say "that's an interesting way of putting it ... hmm. Funny, half-way thought [this] is what I thought you were going to ask: ..." and answer your own version of the question that you've prepped for. Or if the situation calls for it, you don't even announce that you're doing it, you just answer your own question and pretend that's what they asked.

I think you need to get yourself at least some idea about your goals in order to choose. To be frank, I don't think Alabama will get you very far if you want to be serious about theoretical linguistics. I don't know anything about TESOL so I can't comment on that. Assistantships don't matter for PhD applications, so other than for the sake of earning some money, I wouldn't take it as a serious consideration. Normally I'd say the precise coursework you take doesn't matter all that much, but since you're coming from a program with no BA in linguistics, you need to show some linguistics chops if you want to get into a good PhD program, and so in this case I'd say it matters more than usual what courses you take, which professors you work with, and what work you produce.

- If students in your field aren't usually flagged for TAL, you should be just fine (you could reach out to some current first year international students and ask about their experience). - Your department may need to complete some forms for you, but they have nothing to do with your email account or housing. There may be some form concerning funding, especially if your funding package doesn't meet the precise criteria for the I-20. I think I ended up getting a letter from the bank for something like $500 which were lacking based on my offer. This was almost a decade ago so things may have changed. If you're concerned you can write/call the ISO and ask, but my guess is that they're swamped right now and work on a first-come first-serve basis. Ask you department admin what's the next step. - Sounds good on the interview front. If TAL isn't a concern, you really have nothing to worry about; it'll take a few days from interview to getting your passport back, but we're talking just a few days and practically no wait for the interview, so there's plenty of time.

The vast majority of the time this step is just a rubber stamp and you won't have any trouble. A small percentage of the time, if a student doesn't meet some school-wide GRE/GPA requirement, there's a snag, which the department is able to resolve with some effort. A diminishingly small percentage of those cases aren't resolved favorably. I remember one in 10 years on this site. You will probably worry until you see your official letter, but it's very unlikely that anything will go wrong at this point. Congrats!

What field? Some fields might lead to your application being flagged under TAL, which can take some unspecified amount of time to work through the system with nothing you can do about it, could be weeks or even months. FWIW the I-20 comes from the ISO and not from the department; the MIT ISO can sometimes be mildly incompetent, but they process a whole bunch of these requests right around this time of year and at least for this part, I think you can trust them. The question will be when there are interview dates near you; if you're fine for TAL, there's most likely no problem, assuming you'd want to move around mid-/late August. Otherwise, the sooner the better.

No clue, I'd never heard of this program before. The question would be what your actual day-to-day life would be like. Would you be taking courses with linguistics graduate students or undergrads? (What are the class sizes?) Would you have an office and an advisor in linguistics? Connections with the incoming first-year cohort? Interaction with other profs? Personalized attention of any kind to help you actually get good letters and have opportunities to write some papers? Those will determine what you get out of this program.

It's your CV, you choose what to list. It's not a job application where you're asked to list *all* of the higher education institutions you've attended. If you ask me, I really don't think it hurts to list a CC degree, but just like you can choose not to include a publication in a more obscure venue or whatever else takes away from accomplishments you want to highlight, you can omit this degree too.

Congratulations! UChicago is the largest program with the most diverse faculty. BU is also well enough known, difference being that Chicago actually has its own graduate program but BU doesn't, so Chicago faculty will have more experience with graduate-level teaching and advising. On the other hand, there are opportunities to make connections and sit in on classes at Harvard and MIT, though it'd be hard to really get too much out of that in a one-year program. I can't tell you much about class sizes or what students end up doing, but you should ask about that. If you're not funded, I'd bet that Chicago is somewhat cheaper but both Hyde Park and Boston are expensive. The problem with these one-year programs is that you need to start applying right after you start the program, unless you want to wait a year, so it's not clear how much they help you immediately. You won't have strong letters or a writing sample from the program at that point. I know s-side people in Edinburgh and they're great; I don't know p-side people or what students end up doing with their degree. 9 courses per semester sounds completely crazy. It's a lot for a year. I know almost no one in Spain, and I don't think that's necessarily the best move. I don't know what more to say, other than that my hunch is that staying in North America would be more beneficial.

Clarification question: "trying to decide" meaning that you've been admitted to these programs or you're looking for programs to apply for?

From an outside perspective: you had the whole summer to prep, plus the whole fall + half of spring semester, and there is no way you spent the whole time writing. You could have (and perhaps should have) prioritized studying for your exam more. To me, the story you're telling sounds like an excuse. You're always going to have more than one thing on your plate as an academic, and if you can't handle that, you won't succeed in academia. Now, beyond that, there's a question of whether you prepared correctly, which it sounds like you may not have. You say that there were concerns about your ability to recall your readings and express yourself orally, which isn't so much a problem of having time to do the reading but of doing the extra work to digest, integrate, and actually speak about these topics out loud. I don't know if you did that, but that would be something I would think about. Short version: I don't see anything unfair here. Now when it comes to the letter, not knowing your program it's a little hard to know what to say. For one, no one outside your program ever needs to know it exists. These "files" students have won't follow you around after you graduate. So I guess the question is what it does program-internally, and that is something you'd know better than us. The good news is you passed! A pass is a pass. A high pass or a low pass are both just the same a pass, meaning you've been approved to move on to the next level in your program. It sounds like your program isn't shy about letting you know what they think, so if they thought you should leave, they would tell you. Nonetheless, I think it's wise to have a frank conversation with your advisor about this question and get their opinion. If they say you could/should stay, you should ask explicitly how to fix whatever was lacking in your exam. But assuming you stay, you will need to put this unpleasant experience behind you. As I said, a pass is a pass. Impress your committee with your next steps, and they will assume that you've taken their advice in the letter to heart and improved. They won't hold older offenses against you if you're doing well later on. And again, the letter is internal (as is the exam for that matter) and doesn't matter to anyone but your program. You'll be successful in academia on independent grounds that have nothing to do with this exam or letter, so all is most definitely not lost, and you still have a path to success directly ahead of you.

From my perspective, if you found an advisor that's a great match and has a strong placement record, that beats official rankings by a mile.

If you followed up yesterday, you should to wait beyond Monday to call. You could talk to a grad student you know off the record, though I'm not exactly sure what you'd ask them (or for that matter a random person at the program). FWIW, it's spring break in many places, so that might be a factor.

It depends on the question and question-asker. One thing you can often do is take a question and then answer something slightly different that you have more to say about or is framed in a more favorable way than the original question, and get away with it. Although some people are just trying to attack, or it might seem that way to you, often it's better to try and find the helpful or insightful part of any comment and take it from there. You can answer on your own terms - so, "I haven't thought about it in this way before, so I'll have to think about it some more later, thanks, but here are some thoughts if you look at it from this other direction." Or "Hm, I'm not sure, but here are some thought that might get us started" followed by something you can say with confidence, hopefully deflecting and leading the conversation in a direction you're more comfortable with. Or if you think someone's just out to get you or you have nothing at all to say, then I think the wisest thing to do is simply say "thank you, that's a good question and I'm not sure how to answer it right now. I'll have to think about it (and I'd be happy to talk to you more about this after the talk)", instead of making something up that you haven't actually thought through and someone could poke holes in. It's a spur of the moment decision often.