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dilly-dallier

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Everything posted by dilly-dallier

  1. I'm not suggesting anything, just in case u don't know, according to the recent NRC ranking, UMD is ranked almost as high as UMass. Their strength is on minimalism (if u r a fan) and psycholinguistics. Seems to me that it fits your general research interests well. But you do want to take your specific research topics into consideration.
  2. Agree. Learning sing languages might be a good way out.
  3. Best of luck to your application this cycle. I dont have any advice, not quite familiar with the latter program. How's ur trip to Michigan? Anything exciting?
  4. Congrats! You've decided to go to UConn? I haven't made up my mind yet, but probably not. I prefer fellowship to assistantship, and 15-hour weekly workload is heavy, I think.
  5. That's a good sign. Good luck then. EDIT: it seems that your email box works alright
  6. That's absolutely not your fault. I'm still hoping this is not true...just too difficult for me to accept it.
  7. You've made your decision already?
  8. Good for you. You've already narrowed down your choices into two. I've only heard from two programs so far. Though I guess UPenn silently rejected me. Since Philly is not far from the city, even if you love NY, UPenn isn't a bad place to go to I guess. To me the most important factor is the fit between me and the program, though I may also have to think about the ranking of the dept as it may have something to do with the employment after graduation. Am I thinking too far?
  9. Me too, just got an email from Richie. Hopefully we could meet in NYC later. Still remember that evening when Richie, Stephanie, and Chris skyped me, they asked me if I mind turning on my webcam. I was super embarrassed to tell them "sorry, I'm in my pajamas." What I was thinking? I didn't expect a video conversation over Skype? I cannot stop regretting that during the whole interview. It turns out that the professors in NYU could be very tolerate. I woke up 4 or 5 each morning to check my inbox. How can you keep yourself away from the Internet? BTW, my BF is working on nanotechnology. I should asked him to collaborate with me on nanosyntax.
  10. great stats! I guess I know who your supervisor is and which Austronesian language you are working on. Don't give up on Maryland yet. One of my friends didn't get her interview request until March but still got admission eventually. But if you like UPenn and NYU more, that's fine. I was interviewed by Richie and Stephanie, too, plus Chris Barker, though I keep thinking that I should have done better. The results would come out very soon, I guess. Fingercrossed!
  11. I don't know how to deal with the interview stress. When I was interviewed by NYU three days ago, I was too nervous to think straight the whole time. This was surprising given that I taught for so many years and presented my work in front of a lot of audience, that the three professors who interviewed me were really nice and that I rehearsed almost all the questions before the interview (I never rehearse when I was giving a conference presentation). But I have some experience in dealing with the jet leg. I used to fly across continents and give a presentation the next day, it would be better if you could switch your time to the destination time before your departure. Due to their financial problem, the only Californian school I applied to was USC. Maryland is unnecessarily a good fit for syntacticians. They take a very strong biolinguistic/Minimalist perspective, but it seems to me that they don't have clear-defined research topics other than developing Minimalism. I feel that I would have been through a hard time in writing my SOP if I applied to Maryland, as I don't have much to say except that I think MP is a promising enterprise. I've got a lot of friends applied to Maryland before. The dept is best known for their long run of interviews and short notice of the acceptance. They even interview people in March and admit people off wait-list on April 15. It is possible that you'll be interviewed more than once by different professors. More importantly, do not expect them to give you an answer right after the interview. You just have to wait.
  12. Congrats! I applied to UPenn too, but haven't heard anything from them. This is expected given that I'm not a really good fit to the program. Were you interviewed by the adcoms before the acceptance?
  13. Oh man, how can I be that nervous during the interview?

    1. hopefulapplicant

      hopefulapplicant

      I had the same experience with an interview--My voice was absolutely wavering. It is hard to master your nerves in that type of situation.

  14. I hate the time difference!

    1. Zouzax
    2. dilly-dallier

      dilly-dallier

      I've just accepted an interview at late night. The sad truth is that it happens to be my new year eve. I'll have to count down with two syntacticians.

    3. Zouzax

      Zouzax

      hehe well, the positive thing is that you have an interview!! wooo go celebrate

  15. I've got an interview request from NYU. We haven't fixed the time slot yet. The two slots they suggested do not work for me.
  16. Thanks guys. When I submitted the application to USC, I was a month and 4 days late from their Dec 1 deadline. I met one of their professors in mid-December and he said they already sorted out the applications into "strong" ones and "not-so-strong" ones. At that time I hadn't even started. It turns out that missing a deadline isn't a big deal, but maybe this is why I have to wait for the details of financial aid?
  17. A couple of minutes ago I received an email from USC saying that I'm admitted but I have to wait for financial aid. It sounds positive. This is the first email I've ever received from any of the adcoms concerning my application. I also applied to UMass, but no interview yet. I hope this isn't a bad sign.
  18. You are welcome. If you are still a student, or if you've got a full-time job, applying a tourist visa will be very easy. The only documents they'll really look at (though they may ask you to prepare more) are your application form, your passport, and the letter from your university or your employer saying that they granted your leave of absence. If you are currently between jobs, printing out the email from U Mich would be a good idea (actually you should bring it anyways). Highlight the funding they will provide for your trip. Since it is a half-funded trip, I don't think you need to prepare a lot of money in your bank account. But you'll have to make a reservation of a double-way flying ticket before the interview, and print it out. I think bringing along the birth certificates of your entire family is as ridiculous as bringing long your family photos. The idea is just show them you have no intention staying in the states after the open house and you have your loved ones at home that you want to come back to.
  19. Congrats! Given my previous experience, I think it is possible to get a visa in three weeks. My visa was issued in three days, in fact. In my country usually we make an appointment online, and bring all your materials to the embassy or consulate for a short interview. If it is approved, the officer would tell you the result immediately. And then you wait at home. It takes two days for them to mail your passport back to you via express delivery. So if you make a next-day appointment for interview, you'll get a visa in three or four days in my country. But you may need some time preparing all the materials. I remember the US visa requires a photograph with a weird size and shape (it is almost like a square!), so you may need to take a new photo. Also if you could apply online, you need an electronic version of your photo. But can you get a visa without the invitation letter?
  20. I watched the video just now You've submitted your thesis? I was thinking about submitting my thesis, but it's almost 300 pages long. I seriously doubt if anyone would like to read it. Sometimes I even felt sorry for my committee members for having the obligation to read it. So eventually I selected just one chapter from the whole thing and slightly modified it into a 20-page long paper (single-spaced). Some would say this is still long, but I did my best. I'm a little bit curious about how careful the adcomms will read our samples. Do they care more about our analytical skills or about the research ideas we conveyed?
  21. Thank you, Pearls and Typologaster. The good news is my recommender submitted five letters today, still two more to go. Have you guys applied to UMass? This is my dream program, though I'm not a big fan of formal semantics. I'm following one of the professors' research for years. But their online application system is really difficult to use. Once I've submitted the application, I have no access to the system any more. One of my recommender didn't receive any e-request, and I can do nothing about that 'cause there's no "resend" option. So later she has to email her letter to the dept and the dept will direct the letter to the graduate school and later the graduate school will direct all the materials to the dept again. Isn't it ridiculous? After severals days of submission they sent me a link where I can check my application status and the materials they've received so far. But it seems that the system is updated manually. So I still have no idea how many recommendations they've got.
  22. Thanks everyone for being supportive! Good. Let's see how it goes. Maybe we'll end up in the same program. By far my application to UConn is the only one that is complete as they required hard copy recommendations. I remember you've got an accident in you mail delivery. How's it go now? My LORs are not complete yet. Do you think they'll start reviewing my application with the absence of one recommendation? MIT sent me an email and said they would, but lacking an LOR would be a disadvantage. Thanks for your information. I'll definitely take this into serious consideration. I noticed they had money problems from their website, but I really like some of their research. All the other programs (not sure about U Conn, any idea?) I applied to have good fellowships, I guess. Hopefully I could have the choice to choose among offers. And oh, Congrats!
  23. Hi everyone. I've just finished my application a couple of days ago. As my name suggests, usually I don't start doing anything until the clock is ticking. I even switched every final deadlines (not the priority or recommended ones) to the Pacific Time so that I have one more day to procrastinate. I know I'm playing with fire, and occasionally I missed a few deadlines for one or two hours. Have no idea if this would by any chance hurt my application. Hopefully they won't think I'm not serious enough. One thing that really worries me a lot is that one of my recommenders likes procrastinating thing even than I do. So by far he's sent out only one letter, among one of the latest deadlines. As for the programs with early deadlines, he's already 1 and a half months late. Oh my! I guess I'll just keep asking the systems to resend him e-alerts. I'm a final year MA students in Linguistics and finished writing my (lengthy) thesis last November. Now I'm scheduled for my oral defense. My research interest is theoretical syntax and my thesis centers on the parallelism of clause structures and noun phrase structures in an East Asian language. My stats are very mediocre if not bad. GRE: V700/Q760/AW4.0(sad) TOEFL: 105 undergraduate GPA: I have no idea. The college I attended to didn't calculate GPAs. But given my performance, even if they do, it wouldn't be very impressive. postgraduate GPA: 3.7 My strength is my extensive teaching and research experience. I've TAed 8 courses in linguistics and started the ninth one yesterday, ranging from LING1XXX to LING6XXX, almost covered all topics in linguistics. No published journal paper, one in preparation with my supervisor (me being the first author) developed from one of the chapters of my thesis. 1 poster, a lot of conference presentations, 1 invited speech, and 1 proceeding paper. I investigated various phenomena in various East Asian languages, topics including argument structure, aspect, case and agreement, language change, comparatives, split CP, etc. I also did some field work of an endangered language by myself. I submitted two writing samples to most of the programs I applied for. One is a thesis chapter, and the other is a collaborated work with my supervisor. What else? Oh yeah, occasionally I helped the language acquisition laboratory with some experiments. But I'm not an experimentalist at all. I've applied for 8 programs, i.e. USC, Arizona, UPenn, NYU, MIT, UConn, UMass, Cornell. And yes, that's a lot of money. One of my recommenders complained that I applied too much. I'm leaning towards the programs in New England as I'm more into minimalist theorizing in general than topic-driven research. I talked to two professors from USC, though. With the first professor we've spent a whole hour discussing my research and I can tell she likes my idea, but at that time I haven't made up my mind so I didn't tell her I would apply for their program. With the other it's just a brief encounter. I've just got time for self-introduction and asked some application-related questions. At the end I didn't identify him as my potential advisor in my SOP as our research interests don't match quite well. Oh this reminds me of another topic, SOP. I've heard a lot from successful applicants that SOP is one of the most essential part of an application. So I spent most of my time doing that. In each program I identified 2 to 4 professors whose research interests I'm genuinely interested in, read their papers (really time-consuming, this is why I always submit my application at the last minute), and talked about how my research fit into theirs, how my current findings could strengthen their analyses, and how I would like to continue with the line of research in PhD study, etc. The good part about late submission is I have less time to worry about during the waiting period. But I'm still supernervous at the moment. Every morning I wake up I felt less confident. I start picking out all my weak links and giving reasons why they should reject me. Perhaps my GPAs are too poor. Perhaps my analytical writing score would hurt. Perhaps by the time they receive my last recommendation they've already made their decision. Anyhow, good luck with everyone. Fingercrossed!
  24. I used Barron's math review and I think the real GRE questions are much harder. Barron didn't include many important math facts which are actually tested by GRE. Fortunately before the test I went over ETS' math review and at the end I got a 760 (I major in one of the humanities dept). Have you ever tried the CD ETS sent to each test taker. I answered all the practice questions and model tests in that CD. It is really helpful.
  25. When I took the GRE test last week, after I'd done both V & Q sections, I've got an identified research section with question types I've never seen before. I guess those belong to the new GRE format. For instance, the sentence completion question becomes a testing for synonyms. There is a blank in each question, and you will be given six choices. You are asked to choose two of them which would yield meanings more or less the same. I answered 10 such questions. To me such questions are very simple, considering that I've never been trained for this question type before.
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