psycholinguist

More the former, as far as I can tell. I'm waitlisted at my top choice at the moment; the supervisor I want there says that they have strict quotas and can't make any more than a certain number of offers. Odds are that they want you almost as much as they want the people they accepted, and they would be very happy to take you on if anyone turned them down this year. After all, if they "wouldn't exactly be elated" to have you around, they probably would have rejected you outright. I personally wouldn't want to be so in-your-face as to demand to know my placement on the waitlists, but writing the programs thanking them for putting you on them wouldn't be such a bad idea, as it would show the departments in question that you are enthusiastic about them.

Hey, any input that comes with good intentions is valuable, and anecdotes have their place too! * grins * w00t! Congrats on the decision! Best of luck!

Eeeee, congrats!

Thanks! How are you doing? Ohio State going well?

Thanks so much! I'm just so pleased that they considered my application at all. Goes to show, I guess, that it never hurts to request an appeal and see what happens. (For the benefit of those just joining us here in this thread, I ought to clarify: I'm talking about the University of Toronto, and their MA program. * grins *)

Oddly, based on my experiences last year of getting a top choice but not being able to attend, I found that situation much better than simply being rejected. I realise that my experience was pretty idiosyncratic, but I think I'd still rather get in somewhere and not be able to attend than be flat-out rejected. I got into UCSD for a combined Ph.D. in linguistics and cognitive-science - the only such program offered anywhere, as far as I know. That was a great match for my interests, and I was thrilled; I promptly flew out to San Diego to visit. There, the department of linguistics was very upfront about the fact that since I am not an American citizen, they couldn't offer me either funding or the tuition-reduction that Americans get once they establish California-residency. However, just getting to meet the department was a lot of fun, and thanks to the fact that I had to be in California, that was the nicest spring-break I've ever had. (I even went up to L.A. at the end for a couple of days to see some friends.) The faculty-members did what they could for me (even trying to arrange for me to make money by teaching French, though that didn't work out either), and they were as sorry as I was that the funding-situation in California and in most of the UC schools in general didn't allow them to fund international grad-students. Going there would have meant a huge pile of bills, which I don't need, and getting either loans or a job in the U.S. would have been difficult at best for me. However, the department and I parted on good terms thanks to how welcoming they were and how hard they tried to find a way of getting some money for me, and I still have a thoroughly positive view of the department. If I'd received a rejection-letter, I would have resented it and scowled at the stupid department for not accepting me. And not had a very pleasant vacation, either. I mean, I would have gotten over it, but it wouldn't've been a better outcome.

Appeal was successful! Professor came through and re-sent the letter, and now I'm on the waitlist! I am thrilled.

Traditionally that's been true, and it's still a good point. However, while doing a BA in the States I got the feeling that things are changing; most of my professors were aware of more Canadian universities than just those two, and one of my psychology-profs (not a Canadian, for the record) surprised me by being able to name four or five other than them and knowing a fair bit about the sorts of research going on at them. I think it was Maclean's that did a study on this a few years ago - about whether it's better to aim for a Ph.D. in Canada or the U.S. - and it was inconclusive. The best they could say was that having an American Ph.D. might help you get a job in the States.

First of all, congrats on both acceptances! I really don't think you could go wrong with either of those. Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the University of Alberta and I've never been to Edmonton. However, input: 1. The funding makes a huge difference. But would it be impossible to find research-work at the U of T? 2. I think the fact that you already know that you like Toronto is important. Edmonton is supposed to be a neat city as well, but personally I don't think I could live there: the days would be really darn short in the winter, and it isn't close to a lot of other interesting things. Then again, a change might be exciting as well! 3. Are there extracurricular programs and such that could be of interest at either one? Massey College, for instance?

w00t! Have lots of much-needed quiet-time and let yourself recover from the craziness.

First of all, congratulations! • Neighbour-issues: I would go talk to your RA again about the fact that your neighbours are having a significant detrimental effect on your quality-of-life, and that your health may suffer as a result. If nothing can be done, talk to the residence-hall director or housing-office. Any chance of having the neighbours sternly warned to stop being so utterly disruptive? Of procuring a room-change for medical reasons? Could you move off-campus for a month or two? Heck, even a week in a hotel-room could be a huge help, if it's convenient and affordable. • Drug side-effects: hang in there with it; you and your sister have similar genes (well, assuming that the two of you are biological siblings), and the same drug will probably work in similar ways on both of you. As mathamathick says, stick to a schedule in order to eat enough (and eat balanced meals with simple ingredients, and so on). Also, you can recognise the flip-side: you're not getting distracted by hunger, you're not snacking incessantly, etc. • Thesis/awards/grad school/etc.: take a lot of pride in your acceptance, and keep going with the thesis! Hopefully once the stress of the other issues is reduced, that'll resume coming along well on its own.

I'm with ozugo here. Last year I had only two offers, and one of them I couldn't afford. So I panicked, thinking that I had no other options at all, and hey, if they wanted me and it looked okay, how bad could it be? Well. By the end of a single semester I was disillusioned and burned-out and feeling sick about having decided to go with it. Although I liked the people in the program, academically it was a very poor match for my interests - something that I only could have known ahead of time if I'd visited the department, which I hadn't because I hadn't had the time and I assumed it would be okay. But now here I was, dreading the thought of ever having to go back there after the holidays. So I talked to some advisors, signed a few forms, handed in my keys, found a job elsewhere for after New Year's, and left the program. It probably would have been better if I'd taken the entire year off, and then I wouldn't have taken the place of someone who had really wanted to be there. (Minor issue, but it did leave me with a little bit of guilt.) So yes, do visit the program, and ask lots of questions! If you feel encouraged, go for it. If you don't, then put it aside and apply again next year, and in the meantime find a way to strengthen your application and/or refine your interests and SOP. The mistake I made was thinking that I had to be in grad-school or I wouldn't be happy. On the contrary: that program was such a bad fit for me that I've been happier with the fairly menial IT desk-job I've had since January than with the one semester I did at last year's safety-school. Best of luck!

Your best bet at Cornell would probably be Munther Younes, who does do Arabic linguistics (albeit mostly phonology). Graduate students apparently nominate several advising professors to a sort of committee that oversees their work, so you could probably select him and a couple of linguists. No one there is really doing a lot of sociolinguistics or pragmatics at the moment, though.

Welcome! Love the username, too. Things I would advise: 1. (Already done.) Identify professors you'd like to work with. Being a good match for the department's and the faculty-members' research-interests is so important. 2. Contact these professors. Just simply emailing them and saying, 'Hi, I'm [name], and I'm applying to graduate programs for [semester]; I'm interested in your work and am wondering whether you're taking on students for then' can make an enormous difference. 3. Other people here have pointed this out lately, but finding faculty-members of interest at less-prominent institutions is easy if you just sort of follow citations around looking for papers that fascinate you. (Also, going through a long list of schools that offer linguistics MA/Ph.D. programs is a good way of finding schools that might be good bets but don't immediately come to mind.) 4. Learned the hard way this week: watch your LOR-writers closely, and if they haven't submitted their letters and the deadline is looming, nag them. Don't just assume it isn't your problem. Good luck!

Thanks so much! It's okay. I've asked if they do appeals since I am not eager to be held accountable for a professor's procrastination, and even if they don't, it gives me a chance to get some more research-experience somewhere before applying once again.

Thanks! They rejected me too, unfortunately; one of my LOR-writers didn't get her letter in on time, so my application was considered incomplete and thrown in the recycling-bin. Oh well. I got through disappointment last year, so I can do it again. And I could always go live in a box! * laughs *

Congrats!

Rejected. Not horribly disappointed, but now this means that if the U of T doesn't want me either, I'll be back here next year.

Hey, congrats!

BookMooch.com is another great site like that.

Heh, thanks! It's really just that I've given it a lot of thought over the years. There is a point there. I know a person who doesn't really identify with either gender, and who therefore really appreciates the fact that Facebook a) allows users not to set a gender, and uses the pronoun 'their' to refer to users who opt not to.

And welcome to you as well, starfirerapture! w00t for sociolinguistics (and sociolinguists)!

I have very little to add to the great advice above, but I just wanted to say hello and welcome! (Despite my name, I'm also a socio/historical linguist, though I'm more interested in syntactic/semantic than phonological change.) A good strategy when looking at a particular school is to scan the list of its linguistics-department's faculty-members and their respective interests in order to get a feel for the types of research going on there. I met Rachel Mayberry when I toured UCSD last spring; she's great, and is certainly interested in language-acquisition (albeit that primarily having to do with sign-languages). UCSD would be a good bet for you if you also have interests in cognitive science (including developmental aspects of language); they even have a concurrent Ph.D. program in linguistics and cog-sci. I'm pretty biased because I'm Canadian and looking primarily at schools up here, but Toronto and McGill both have people doing sociolinguistics and language-acquisition.

Yeah, this is an old debate in sociolinguistics. The problem is that 'his' is inescapably associated with the male pronoun. There's no getting around the fact that, like it or not, the same combination of phonemes (and letters, in writing) also serves as the male possessive pronoun in English. It's no help that no one wants to be seen as espousing traditional patriarchial views, which can seem the case in many contexts with the 'him'. (Consider something along the lines of 'None of the students in the engineering-department was late handing in his homework'. It sort of looks as if the writer is either unaware of or in denial about the existence of female engineers.) The weird thing is that 'their' has actually been used as a gender-neutral third-person possessive pronoun for centuries. I think it was even the dominant one in the mid- to late eighteenth century. Then a prescriptivist grammarian (a female one, at that!) began publicly criticising this use of 'their' and proposed very outspokenly that 'his' be used in lieu of it. That was the 'correct' form for centuries, until the feminists protested. (And they do have a point, as mentioned.) So, yeah, there are no easy answers here about whether 'his' is gender-biased or gender-neutral, but I suggest that anyone uncomfortable with both 'their' and with 'his' simply use (as herself the elf mentions) something such as 'his or her'.

Welcome! It's not an automatic in. Not by any means. I graduated with an honours degree from a top American college and had one heck of a time getting into graduate school last year. Why? Because it was clear that I didn't really know what I wanted to do, that I was torn between two fields. Yes, your ability to handle a lot of work does play a role, but being a good match for the department's research-interests is what is crucial. My guess is that a strong department probably wouldn't take a 4.0 kid from Princeton with multiple publications if he or she hadn't shown in his or her application that he or she was keenly interested in a subfield being studied by at least one faculty-member at the institution in question. You can take pride in getting to where you are, but assuming that the name alone will be able to take you further is always risky.