pangur-ban

Thank you! I'm really excited about it!

My stats are kind of weird, which I think is why my acceptances have been unpredictable. I think it probably helped that I took LSA courses at Berkeley with my two POIs from MIT, and asked them for quite a bit of advice on problems outside of class, so they remember me. BA: East Asian Languages and Cultures, from a good school. 3.0 GPA (I... was not a good student.) (4 years out, working as a Japanese translator of novels/comics, teaching English in France, some other less interesting stuff.) MA: Irish, from a good school in the UK, equivalent of a 3.9~4.0 GPA, thesis was using linguistic evidence to date some ancient inscriptions MA: Linguistics, from my local university, 4.0 GPA, my writing sample/thesis-to-be is on stress/prosody in Old Irish verbs, will finish in May. GRE is... good enough to make pretty much any cut-off, but not especially impressive. I expressed interest in phonology/morphology of the Celtic languages, and that having Harvard (and its Celtic department) nearby would be a huge help to my research.

Yeah, I think mine is the only acceptance posted so far, and they have probably more coming. And who would sit on this kind of news, eh?

Thank you everyone for the congratulations. I got an email from Irene Heim. I dunno if maybe my phone was busy or off or something? *cough* Although at least hearing she was going to be the one to notify admitted students makes me feel somewhat more certain that it's not just some cruel mistake...

Okay, disregard the above. I just got into MIT. Holy crap!

I've already done two unfunded MAs, so taking out more loans would be a bad idea at this point. My only options if I don't get funding somewhere are staying where I am, where I could probably get a TA/RA-ship, or dropping out, getting a job, and applying for funding & programs yet again next year. And neither really appeals. *sigh*

Yeah... well, there's always next year, but if I don't get in somewhere with funding this year, my options are not very attractive. All I've heard so far was the yes from Chapel Hill and a no from Berkeley. Some of the others have started doing interviews or acceptances, so I assume I'm out there.

Both in the forum and in the results for linguistics. I am still anxiously waiting to hear from my top choice, which in previous years would've made decisions by the end of last week, but I suppose budget problems don't help any. I am seriously regretting missing the deadline on every independent source of funding... : /

I wouldn't take that too seriously as 'results'. Someone emailed their POI and was told they were out of the running. It's possible the adcom is still trying to make their final selections before they send out official notification. [edit:] Oh, or they didn't necessarily email them, but that's the impression I get from the "via Other" (unless MIT is notifying by telepathy or something this year?).

Thank you! My main worry is because I'm transferring out of a PhD program rather than leaving a terminal MA, and it seems the faculty is split on how happy they are when people do this. But I do plan on letting professors know why I'm missing their classes so much, and I hope they'll be understanding. I've overloaded my schedule this semester in terms of courses and various extracurricular commitments, so I'm preemptively worried about how things are going to be around crunch time, especially if I've lost a bunch of weekends to conferences and visits (ever the optimist in hoping to do more than one). But I just did the math and found out I can do some pretty mediocre work and still get the 3.5 I need for the degree, if I can just manage to write the thesis in time, so that is some comfort. Thanks also for the info on visits! It should be pretty affordable if I'm basically only paying for my flight and a couple of meals.

I certainly hope so. But I am still neurotic.

I haven't asked yet, but they didn't offer to pay, and as a state school, I'm not sure what their funding situation is. I will ask for rides to and from the airport though, and hopefully someone in the department will put me up for a night or two. Otherwise, I have a friend there who offered to house me. I'm a bit worried about my attendance for classes this semester at my home institution though. Most have a 2 or 3 absences policy before they start taking points off your final grade, and I'm already missing a day for a conference in March, and I'll have to miss a day to visit here, then if I visit other schools or ever get sick, it could be a problem. I suppose my GPA won't matter much, but I think I have to have a 3.5 or so overall to get the MA here.

Well, I have the option of staying where I am next year also, but the fit isn't fantastic, so yeah, it's nice to have somewhere else to go. And with better weather too... Hm, I don't think I did much, really. I replied to their email that I was thrilled to be admitted and I'd let them know my plans regarding a visit (which I should probably get on top of soon) and then I told my parents and they took me out for dinner. So, I guess the most exciting answer to that question might be, "When I found out I got into UNC-CH, I ate half a chicken!!!"

And a couple more now too. The season begins... I predict the next few weeks will be horribly stressful for me. But the Chapel Hill admit was mine, and it is a huge relief and I'm excited about it. But I'm still anxious about the others.

I also got a paper accepted to a conference, so I sent out an updated CV and a note about my higher GPA from the fall term to all of my schools. 4 of the 6 responded that they would add it to my file, and I also got the bonus of hearing I'd made it past the first round of cuts at one of my schools.

It might also be worth noting that the cut-off for admission to graduate school in the UK seems to be a 2.2 frequently, and the cut-off GPA in the US seems to be 3.0, so it might make sense to equate the two. I second the above posters that a high 2.1 should be in the neighbourhood of a 3.5 or so.

I'm applying for a PhD in linguistics, but if I could do it all over again, I'd want to be Indiana Jones. (Is that cheating?) But anyway, I'd want something that involves studying ancient languages, deciphering unknown languages, and lots of travel and excitement.

Or you can look through the results search from previous years to see which schools did interviews. I made a little chart for myself of the range of dates people in previous years were notified by the schools I applied to. Hopefully this'll keep me from getting too anxious about my applications. Well, until those dates, at least.

It seems like Weiss's new book wasn't publicized very much. I only heard about it because I read a lot of linguistics/philology blogs and one or two of them mentioned it. The one blog post in particular I remember had lots of praise for it, so I'm looking forward to taking a look myself. I should see if the library has it yet. If not I guess I could request it, since the $75 price tag isn't bad, but it's a bit hefty for something outside my area. And I adore "Percy Jackson". I read all five books in two or three days, and although it annoys me a bit*, the premise, the stories, and the characters are so much fun, I'm willing to overlook it all. I'm really looking forward to the movie, too. I'd recommend reading it if the idea of it appeals at all. *It's obviously written for kids, I would've liked more detail on the Greek myths, the occasional comments about girls being annoying piss me off, and there are inconsistencies in the "archaic" speech of one of the characters. (Happily, I'm not a classicist, so I can't comment much on the treatment of the myths.)

I think that would show an impressive dedication to creativity!

Pf, like art history programs care about that. I have a 3.0 undergrad GPA from an institution with grade inflation aplenty, including four failed courses (three *in my major*), one D, and a whole bunch of generally mediocre grades, and absolutely no reason for it, except that I was young and stupidly rebellious against things like homework.

Haha, good! I was a bit reluctant to mention I've been reading this children's fantasy series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) and the latest book by my favorite genre author (Jasper Fforde). But, I should find out tomorrow if my conference proposal was accepted, and if it was, that might be enough to scare me back to doing work. And if not, I'll probably celebrate that I avoided public speaking by drinking heavily.

Well, the amazon.com descriptions made it sound like it was about the spread of Latin through Europe and the history of its use, while I was expecting a history of the phonological and morphological changes in the language itself, which is what the Weiss book is (though I have not read it yet).

Oh, *that* kind of history of Latin. How was it?

The book you read on the history of Latin wouldn't happen to be Michael Weiss's new one, would it?