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Phonologist

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Posts posted by Phonologist

  1. Why avoid OT hubs? I had professors strongly recommend Rutgers specifically because of that.

    Well, there's the possibility that OT will soon give way to something else, in which case places like UMass and Rutgers will most likely curl up into a ball and just start blindly throwing punches, kinda like with the University of Connecticut and syntax. There's really no guarantee that OT will be such a hot thing in 5 years. Second, while I like working with OT, I'm not interested in working on OT, which is what you do at UMass if McCarthy is your advisor. To me it's like a bunch of carpenters sitting around designing a new hammer while not getting much carpentry done in the meantime.

    And yes, the Stata center is ugly, but there's BAR inside.

  2. Hey Phonologist. They told me the same thing. Once I get my inevitable reject from MIT, I'm not sure where to pin my hopes. UCLA was my undergrad so it was kind of my sure thing. I'm phon too.

    I know, this sucks. UCLA and MIT are by far my top choices, and I was really, really hoping UCLA would come through, because nobody gets into MIT. I'm regretting not applying to UMass now though, but I was advised to avoid the OT hubs (including Rutgers).

    Does being an undergrad at UCLA really give you a better shot? At my alma mater (another top 10 program), you'll never get in if you did your undergrad there.

  3. I know that considering my signature the following is going to end up looking like a hugely hypocritical attempt at sympathy, but...that totally sucks! What a drag. Though a waitlisting is better than a outright rejection. (Don't give up on any Bruce-Hayes-related daydreams that you might have just yet. * grins *)

    Haha, thanks for the support. I'm wait-listed for funding, though they say there's a good chance I'll get it. I'm not giving up hope yet!

  4. Just out of curiosity (since as my username suggests, I'm kind of into this sort of thing), does anyone know of any actual citations for the phenomenon? As demondeac says, it's quite apocryphal - I've also seen the 'study' attributed to Cambridge and Harvard - but I do think it's very interesting and would like to know if it's been scientifically investigated!

    It seems to follow from the word superiority effect, where letters are more readily recognized when presented in a word (lexical item) than when presented alone or in a nonword. I don't think that the exact position of the letters matters (though there probably is a locality threshold for longer words), which might explain the effect at least partially.

  5. I would avoid this guy completely. Your work doesn't need to be "brilliant" for you to do well even in top programs; making the distinction between "very, very good" and "brilliant" is pointless and your professor had absolutely no reason to say that.

    I guess even if I improve, he might make a comment about me not being a consistent student, which also looks bad.

    Improving is a good kind of inconsistency. If this professor might twist that around and only say that you're an inconsistent student, then he's clearly out to get you or something.

  6. Haha, this reminds me of when I was applying for undergrad. People were trying relentlessly to find some way of "hacking" UCLA's website to find some indication that you may have been accepted. Everyone was like "IF YOU CAN SIGN INTO THIS YOU TOTALLY GOT IN" even though it was like some webpage for adding value to a meal card or something like that. Then if you couldn't sign in there, people would say that the particular error message you got might be a clue. In the end, none of those things could really tell you if you got in or not; you just have to hear it from the horse's mouth.

  7. I decided long ago that I'm only going to date outside of academia. Not only because of the feasibility aspects (two-body problem, etc.), I just don't want to come home at night and talk about advisor drama, dissertations, or whatever. Plus being close to someone who isn't involved in higher education has a way of keeping you grounded, I think.

  8. In the US, we may be cutting mail down to five days a week instead of six days a week because the post office is struggling. :( What a cruel thing to do in notification season!

    I know, and Tuesday of all days. When I first heard about that I thought for sure they were going to stop delivering on Saturdays. This is totally throwing a wrench into my Netflix scheme; I get two at a time, but I stagger them at every other day so I can have one delivered every day (except Sunday, obviously). Damn.

  9. I've just been endlessly fascinated by my field since taking the intro class almost three years ago. Being a grad student and hopefully being a professor are kind of secondary achievements for me; I'll be happy as long as I get to be a linguist. Before all of this I was considering law school (ha!).

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