vaaarr

Formally accepted Berkeley's offer of funding (notified at about 1:00 AM today CST) over UMass Amherst's offer (notified that I was off of their waitlist at about 3:30 yesterday) and Cornell's. I went from having one offer with funding to three offers with funding in about six hours on April 14. Let this be a cautionary tale to anyone who might think "they're definitely not going to fund/de-waitlist me, I should just accept [other place]!"

Much of the linguistic anthropology I've read doesn't even concern itself with the spoken word. I'm assuming you'll be fine in linguistic anthropology if you choose to go into it. By the way, just to give a shout-out to my own (current) school, UChicago has a goodly amount of overlap between the linguistics and anthropology departments, and we produce a good amount of scholarly material in this sort of area. Michael Silverstein is the most important faculty member in this respect (he keeps an office in Anthro but has a joint appointment to Anthro AND Linguistics AND Psychology), but there are plenty of other faculty, grad students, and even some undergrads who find the environment well-suited to veering off in this direction.

I would say that sounds okay, especially if you've been accepted, but perhaps investing in (and wearing) a simple pair of flats or low heels would class the outfit up just enough.

Seems that MIT has sent out acceptances/rejections, finally. I didn't fare well here but it was a long shot anyway...

Aaah. Not to dredge this up again, but that is terrible news to hear about one of our own. There will be a hole in the experience of Berkeley's campus visit to contend with... My condolences to her loved ones.

Thanks for the timely responses, hain and jimmy. One question, though: when you say "traditional apartment building," are you referring to (relatively) high-rises? I'm only curious because I live in one of the less built-over neighborhoods of Chicago and the apartments here are unusual in terms of floor plan, sort of all shaped like a horse-shoe around a big central courtyard. As in: http://achicagosojourn.blogspot.com/2008/08/courtyard-apartment.html I'm certainly not expecting a courtyard, and I'm actually starting to want to get rid of mine (lots of echoing party noise and slamming doors).

I've been accepted at Cornell and I got all sorts of promotional info recently. But it didn't tell me much about some things I'm curious about. 1. What sort of housing OUTSIDE of (Cornell) university-run housing would a graduate student on a stipend most likely find waiting for them? Location, spaciousness, connected/separateness, age, working status of appliances, etc. 2. How necessary is a car for amusing oneself? 3. Is it even possible to amuse oneself? (Read: what is to do that doesn't require an inter-city trip?) 4. I am native to this area of the world (northwestern PA), so I am aware that Ithaca gets a fairly large amount of snow annually. How is the snow dealt with? Is removal efficient enough that I won't be wading to campus for three days after a major snowfall? 5. How do you (in your experience) get in and out of Ithaca? I am really against the idea of having to get a car, although I can drive, but I hear that the airport nearest Ithaca is expensive. If you can answer any of the above questions (but especially the last one, since I need to figure out my logistics for a campus visit), it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

Actually, from what I can tell, they admitted an unusually low number last year. This year the actual number of admittances is closer to 10, from what I hear in the department chatter, for what it's worth. No clue about specifics. The department is actively expanding the portion you're applying for (the processing lab is brand-new), so I wouldn't be surprised if you had a better chance than you'd expect. I've done most of my research on tone languages as a (broad) group, but most of my work ends up being in Sino-Tibetan. Having STEDT present at Berkeley is marvelously convenient.

And the same to you! Definitely attending the open house. Despite Cornell's big offer, I'm ambivalent, since their P-side is quite small relative to Berkeley's... You should probably also know that we (UChicago, my current institution) have quite a few people interested in the sort of thing you are, to the point where several undergraduates usually get pulled into it (as if into a vortex), and we've recently added lab facilities for a Language Processing Lab that focuses on higher-level (syntax and up) processing in real-time. You may want to contact Ming Xiang (new faculty member, runs the lab. female, if you can't tell the gender of Chinese names easily) and Anastasia Giannakidou [ʝɐ.nɐ.ci.ˈdu], a tenured faculty member who is interested in many of the same areas, if you have any more detailed questions on that, since I can't speak to what they do very specifically. In other news, waitlisted by UMass. Meh.

I will suggest... Wikipedia. And I am suggesting this with a straight face. In all seriousness, Wikipedia has a surprisingly large collection of well-written articles that will give you the gist (for free!) of the field. Start with articles about the broad sub-areas of the field, theoretical vs. applied, because that distinction is VERY important. I don't know about the specific sub-fields of applied linguistics, since I'm theoretical, but for theoretical you may want to further investigate its major divisions (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), because these too vary widely in what they investigate. Also of interest might be psycholinguistics, semiotics, linguistic anthropology, etc: the branches that are a bit harder to categorize in one place or another. Don't let Wikipedia do the deciding for you, though: this is essentially an outline, or...well...an encyclopedia article. Do some more serious reading once you've zoomed in on a sub-area you like.

Well, it's a good thing I came out of the woodwork too, then, isn't it? What's your area of specialization? Trying to gauge how many people from each area they've let in. Did they tell you the same thing about funding (that it's not certain for everyone, and that something "more concrete" will be announced in March)? I'm ecstatic about getting in, but I don't want to have gotten in without any funding. Finally, an addendum to my stats from earlier: rejected by Ohio State (I was expecting this, since they hadn't sent me anything positive) and ACCEPTED by Cornell, with full funding. I'm still set on Berkeley, though.

Hello all: I'm applying to several programs and I've started hearing back from them. I figure I should let people know what "the bar" is, so to speak: MY RUN-UP TO THE BAR: Domestic (U.S) student 3.84 GPA (3.95 major) GRE 730V 740Q 5.0AW Aiming for phonetics/phonology specialization Nearly two years as phonetics-area research assistant to two different projects A year's work on a syntax/narrative ability corpus project before that (not as related) No publications or talks, minor academic honors 3 (from what I can tell, good) letters of recommendation from supervisors/one professor Writing sample on articulatory instability of voiceless sonorants as a contributor to tonogenesis in certain linguistic areas CLEARED THE BAR (accepted): UC Berkeley HIT MY KNEE ON THE BAR (rejected): UCLA (within the last 12 hours, it's been quite a day...)

I'm an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and live in Hyde Park, so I feel that I should provide a counterweight to some of the posters who have come before me (and maybe provide a more recent assessment of goings-on, especially on campus safety). Hyde Park is about 30-40 minutes from downtown Chicago by public transit and about the same by bike if you're in good shape. Wikipedia has a nice map and statistics on the population, so I won't bore you with that. People are generally a bit hippyish here in a way that's a bit hard to describe, but it's generally a nice populace. There's a broad mix of housing not owned by the University, with quite a few apartment towers, although it's mostly large 3-story U-shaped apartment buildings with courtyards. Even numbered (east-west) streets are mostly residential, as are most of the named (north-south) streets. There's no one commercial strip, but rather three or four areas lined with small shops and several larger shopping centers spaced about, mostly towards the lake and on the odd-numbered streets. This is because the University occupies much of the land away from the lake. The end result is that if you live in the right (not way at the western edge) part of the neighborhood, you'll be within walking distance of anything you might need, food/toiletries-wise. Within Hyde Park, there is a lot of transportation to be had: the streets are extremely bikeable, a Metra (light commuter rail) line runs near the lake, and there are three buses that do circles around the neighborhood and through campus. The university also operates a shuttle service at night that makes getting to and from campus easy once the buses stop running. Getting downtown isn't a breeze, but I'd hardly call it difficult. Both of the major south-side El lines (red and green) sit well to our west, across Washington Park and in a fairly sketchy neighborhood. You can take a bus to either of those and get downtown from there, or you can ride the Metra downtown (it's a bit more expensive), OR you can take any number of express buses that run up Lake Shore Drive right downtown. Or you could do what I do sometimes, and bike up the lakefront path--if the wind is with you you can actually beat public transit, on occasion. The long and short of it is that it's certainly not the city center, but there are plenty of ways of getting around. HP has more amenities than most people posting before have let on. There are all kinds of inexpensive if not award-winning restaurants, several convenience stores, two supermarkets, many smaller food stores (which I personally prefer), salons and barbershops, four independently owned bookstores, at least three or four museums (more if you count really small art exhibition spaces and temporary spaces), two liquor stores, and plenty of coffee to go around (most of the shops are on campus). I'd say it's cheaper to live here than in many other neighborhoods, although that might just be for lack of a commute: you will rarely NEED to leave the neighborhood unless you're going to go do something fun elsewhere. What Hyde Park doesn't have is a movie theater for NEW movies (we do have Doc Films, though, a very nice student-run cinema, that screens films from all eras) or a significant retail (clothing, furniture, etc.) sector. There isn't much of a nightlife: no clubs, but three or four decent bars (five counting the University-owned Ida Noyes Pub), but they all close at at least the usual 2 AM, if not sooner. People sometimes joke that the main library is the hottest social spot in Hyde Park. Finally, contrary to the impression you might get from its location, the neighborhood actually has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in Chicago proper--the shooting someone mentioned a few pages back is a rare happening, thankfully. This is largely due to our having the second-largest private police force in the world cruising around at all hours. The typical crime pattern is people from neighborhoods much further south coming and committing petty crimes (burglaries, the occasional mugging, the rare car theft). The University takes pains to prevent this, though, as you might have guessed by the existence of the nighttime shuttles. There's also a service called SafeRide in which smaller shuttles are on-call and provide pick-ups and drop-offs if you're not on a shuttle route or they've stopped running. Apart from that, things are well-lit nearly everywhere, there's a decent amount of foot traffic at most hours, and I honestly have yet to feel threatened while walking around at night, which I do often enough. Other (frequently sketchier) neighborhoods almost don't need to be mentioned, even if they do form a part of Hyde Park's milieu, because you will almost never go into them. They're food deserts and lack entertainment facilities, so they're essentially byways for the buses you'll be taking to further neighborhoods. One, Woodlawn, does bear mentioning: despite a higher rate of crime, a LOT of students (grads included) live there for the incredibly cheap rent and refurbished apartments that are starting to creep into the area, and also because it's so near campus. It even has a coffee shop now. If you don't mind a nearby turf war between two gangs and also don't mind participating in slow gentrification, then Woodlawn isn't that bad a place to live. Feel free to ask questions if you've got any!