Typologaster

What an outrageous tragedy.... My heart goes out to her friends and family.

Thanks for the support guys. All I need is one good one, but even if it doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world—there's always next year. The tricky part about this is that seniors write the thesis *as* they apply to grad schools, and so committees do not necessarily receive polished, complete versions of the papers. It turns out that the typology of coordinative compounds is a fairly broad topic, so the paper requires lots of revision before it becomes necessarily presentable. Nonetheless, writing this has thus far been a good experience (and probably will continue to be).

A no by my neck of the woods—hopefully the other schools turn out better. I'm slightly scared because I know that UCLA accepts large cohorts of students (despite the financial crisis in Cali (?)), but I'm not outrageously disappointed because UCLA wasn't in my top two. Still, I'm disappointed... Los Angeles is beautiful. At this point, I'm trying to prepare myself for worst case scenarios. In case I don't get into grad school, I'm applying around for jobs starting in the summer (I also studied mathematics and some economics) so I can start saving money. In such case, I'd simply apply to grad school again some point in the future (perhaps next year).

Me neither. My fingers are getting tired from clicking the mouse to refresh my mailbox. (And I'm neurotically checking my cellphone as well.)

Good luck! Congrats mang, and good luck! Also, feel free to tell us about yourself/what you're into/where you applied. I called in one to two weeks ago because there was this issue with my transcript (which is now resolved); they said at the time decisions would be made in a few (e.g., 2-4 (?)) weeks.

The interview process for schools that do them started not to long ago, so perhaps they haven't finished evaluating you (us!) just yet. I'm hoping that only a proper subset of applicants they're considering for admission are actually interviewed (perhaps the stronger half, or the weaker half, or...). EDIT: Or, at least, this is what I'm inferring from what I know thus far.

So does anyone have any new news about interviews? That other part of grad cafe lists people who've been interviewed by UCSC and others. I haven't had any (:-(), but my friend (phonology) had been interviewed by UCSC and UMass recently. Does anyone if it's the case that all accepted applicants were previously interviewed by schools who do them? (For instance, Fuzzy, you were accepted to UMass—were you interviewed by a UMass PI before then?)

Congrats, pearls! My friend goes there for phonology.

I applied, and yes, their application system is slightly weird. It says they received everything from me, except the section Miscellaneous Materials (or whatever it is) doesn't state that they have my thesis (but I know they do). Prof. Johnson seems awesome—I think there's this youtube video of him teaching syntax to undergrads in which he uses grad students dressed up as bees to convey the notion of constituency. o.o (I could be misrepresenting this somewhat; I saw the video quite a while ago.)

Excellent stats man, you have some beast research experience! I'm also quite interested in theoretical syntax (specifically case, agreement, argument structure, etc.). Good luck, perhaps (if luck goes both our ways) we'll be able to work together on something in the future.

Also, congrats!

Didn't apply (though perhaps I should've?). At first I read "open house at UCSC" and my heart dropped. Luckily that C was actually a D hahaha.

I doubt that the lack of Semantics courses at your school should be a problem. I think it's often the case that successful grad school applicants have had deeper knowledge (and interest?) of two out the three core subfields (syntax, semantics and phonology). Howdy! Where are you applying?

I think you've definitely got a good chance of getting in with money. I know that previous international applicants to places like UCSC had money problems because Cali state schools couldn't easily afford to take on international students, but perhaps Boulder isn't facing such an issue. (Also, consider the fact that Cali is in a giant load of debt right now.) Did you submit a writing sample? Geez, those professors really want specialized students. Nevertheless, NYU and Brown are probably both great for psycholinguistics (well, I know Brown at least is... I don't know that much about NYU except for the fact that they have Dougherty and Pylkkanen).

This only applies to MIT applicants: According to previous comments (see Tips for MIT Application 2010 (or something like that)), "usually it's a paper (=the writing sample) that develops and defends an argument about a (possibly very small and focused) problem in one of the core areas of research - syntax, semantics or phonology" that gets applicants into MIT. Note the fact that that's usually the case—I bet there have been a number of admitted applicants in the past who wrote a serious work on a topic of a related discipline. The MIT website says "these papers need not necessarily be about linguistics, but they should demonstrate an applicant's ability to pursue serious scholarly inquiry," so as long as the paper demonstrates that the applicant has strong analytic skills (which perhaps is too general a statement to be at all informative )-, (s)he has a good chance of admission. (This is all guesswork, unfortunately. I would imagine that they consider theses, inside and outside theoretical linguistics proper, that argue and/or defend theories based on empirical observations.) I'm preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. =\ Your undergraduate work could be good! Psychology is certainly related to linguistics, and practically *is* half of psycholinguistics (I think?), which is one of MIT's 5-year specialization programs (and which, to some degree, I am considering doing, if the heavens part and they admit me). As long as the work demonstrates that you've engaged in "serious scholarly inquiry." This is all hearsay from other topics in this forum, but I don't think they consider typos in the SOP to be a really big deal. That your paper concerns an issue in syntax will probably greatly help your chances. And yes, I submitted my thesis as the writing sample. Unfortunately, the honors-thesis sequence runs throughout my entire senior year, so I wasn't able to send them a completed work. Stanford received a 20-pager (which, by the Stanford deadline, hadn't been looked over by my advisor, so I'm not incredibly positive about that one), the UCs received a 25-page improved form, and MIT/UMass received the 35-page form (which might be bad, even though some of the pages are filled with either graphs or derivations—they could potentially not want to read all of it). Welcome to the Linguistics Waiting Period Subforum! Feel free to tell us about yourself.

A term paper can be good, especially if it concerns linguistics. An applicant to Stanford would usually submit a writing sample of an average length of 15-20 pages anyway (and I've also heard of success-stories who submitted 20-pagers to their schools).

Yeah, freeky. I wonder how many of those who submitted to these schools (on average about 130) actually submitted theses (that concern theoretical linguistics or a related field). As expected, sometimes I feel sure that I'm going to get into somewhere, and at other times I feel less optimistic. Oh well, may the Great Waiting Period begin. :-\

Hahahaha. Indeed, I'm prone to reading too much into the "We received your application!" emails as well. We now know what it feels like to enter The Great Waiting Period. Oddly enough, I received three confirmations from UCSC, in which none of them contained any truly interesting information. Snarf.

Considering what was said in older topics in this forum, usually the schools inform admitted/waitlisted applicants by the end of February. (Perhaps this year will be different!)

Does anyone know how important those Diversity Statements were for the UC applications? Those essays were sort of sprung on me at the last minute. California is pretty much done... now for UMass, MIT and Rutgers, all of which are due in January.

I'm surprised you were able to scrape money for Stanford, considering their application fee is so expensive! When my parents found out about the figure, they weren't too pleased haha.

Rushing to finish applying to places hahaha. UCLA/SC are due today! X_X

Hey! Most theoretical linguistics programs accept students based upon how strong their research paper (which usually is linguistics-related) is. I'm not sure whether or not UHawaii Language Documentation/U of O stress submitting a writing sample, but just in case: what was the research about? It's good that you took those linguistics courses, that'll definitely be a plus (in addition to the Fulbright).

Hey Hopefulapplicant! Indeed, I'm a big fan of distributed morphology. When I started doing research for my compounds thesis, I came over this article written by Heidi Harley on the distributed morphology of compounding, which provided an elegant account. I'm probably gonna read more into the subject in grad school (if I get into one of them (!)). Glad to hear someone else out there is going through the difficult process (though it's not like I would wish such a thing on another haha). If things work out for us, we're definitely gonna end up crossing paths at some point in the future. Good luck getting into UCSC—that and MIT are my top two . I was talking to one of my professors, and he said that Sandra Chung and Judith Aissen (amongst others) were amazing as well, so UCSC's great for anyone interested in syntax. It's too bad these schools take on so few grad students.... Again, best of luck. And congrats on the verbal score, that's just awesome.

Hey guys, Double major: Linguistics and Mathematical Economics Double minor: Mathematics and Cognitive Science Cumulative GPA: 3.7 Linguistics GPA: 4.0 GREs: 620V/800Q/?W (pending) Honors thesis: On the Typology of Coordinative Compounds Undergraduate Linguistics Club President I'm applying to MIT, UCSC, UCLA, Stanford, UMassAmherst, Rutgers and Ohio State. I'm interested in studying syntax, morphology and semantics through a (formal generative) typological lens. If the opportunity ever arises, I would also like to study some computational linguistics. For now, my top two choices are MIT and UCSC. Quite nervous, and willing to accept some much needed advice if you have any. Also down to chat about anything, since most of you are probably in the same boat: I'm into linguistics, math, (older) video games, (Rutgers or Jets) football, hockey and classical music (especially harpsichord, for some reason). Welcome aboard!