psycholinguist

Ooh. Good to know. (I'm a Canadian with an acceptance to one of them, so...)

Thanks so much for the advice, anythingtwice. I'm also very much considering attending the U of T next year (as mentioned in a couple of other threads, I visited last weekend and LOVED IT), and this is all really good to know.

I have no background in statistics at all, aside from the very basics (i.e. I can calculate d' and kind of know what t-tests are). Doesn't seem to have scared anyone away so far. I don't know whether my Q-score (730, which is pretty good though not nearly as high in terms of percentiles as my other scores) had anything to do with it. Either way, though, I've been met with more enthusiasm by psychology grad-programs than by linguistics ones. So I'd go for it! (The other thing I should mention is that some programs require psych grad-students to take stats, which could afford you [ahem, and me] a chance to catch up.)

I have two friends in that position, both with GPAs at least .3 higher than mine. I'm experiencing something akin to survivors' guilt. Congrats, though!

Ah, sorry. This is the downside to having insisted on being vague for the sake of the thread (thanks to wanting to point out the potential importance of a campus-visit in general rather than simply announcing to the world all of the ways in which the University of Toronto struck me as awesome). Heh. Haven't been to UCSD (also known as Second Choice) yet, actually. It and the U of T had open-houses on exactly the same day, and I'd committed to attending the latter's before I got my acceptance from the former. Instead, I've booked a visit to San Diego over my spring-break in a week and a half, so that I can fly out to California, visit the campus for one day, and then lie around on the beach for most of a week before returning to the usually-frozen-although-at-the-moment-it's-55

Afraid I'm not going to be around to help establish the linguistics department, but my suggestions for courses are: 504 Intensive Pig Latin 511 Making Up Language(s) 523 Alien Communication (also ANTHR 620, ASTRO 502) 531 Intensive Pirate English (also CCHD 505) 540 Field Methods in Collecting Stupid Quotations 541 Beginner Irish Curses (also DANAHD 508) 542 Intensive LOLcat and 1337-5P34K (also CS 501) 555 The Art of Needless Terminology 556 The Art of Needless Synonyms for Already-Needless Terminology 563 Seminar in Talking to Yourself (also COMM 592) 569 Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism 577 Song Lyrics: Deconstructionist Viewpoints (also ENGL 684, MUSIC 612, PHIL 491) 580 Intensive Hip-Hop Lingo 592 How to Pronounce Welsh Words Like "Annwfn" (also DANAHD 510) And, of course: 603 Canadian as a Second Language

Hang in there!

Absolutely, and your visit wasn't any less useful than mine! People are after different environments. Things I liked about Toronto might well be things that others hate about it, and vice versa. I'm unexpectedly feeling very attracted to their Mississauga campus, for instance - I like the thought of working in a quiet, semi-wooded area in buildings with plenty of space and lots of windows - but I can understand why other people wouldn't be too happy about the 40-minute commute each way from the downtown campus.

Congratulations to all!

Last time I did this, I got my undergraduate university. This time, I got UCSD. Go figure. Then again, I don't know if all of the schools I applied to are included.

I'm in a similar position for one of the schools I applied to; I'm leaning towards the newbie, though, since his interests correspond better to mine than the more-established professors' all do.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/AAAAAAAAA!

That's true. It just seems a bit weird when a faculty-member tells me, 'ask Anne about that', or 'Oh, Will deals with this sort of thing' to go up to the person in question and not call him or her that.

Ouch! I know that in my undergraduate department (or maybe in linguistics in general), staying on for a Ph.D. is discouraged; faculty want you to get acquainted with different people, different places, different viewpoints, etc. Not sure whether it applies to other fields, though, or whether it at all accounts for your case. Regardless, I'm really sorry to hear about it!

I'm starting to have dreams about making a huge mess of future campus-visits. Weird, especially since the first one I did was very much a success and since I'm not feeling at all anxious about later ones.

That's pretty much the best thing ever.

Nope. I'd (pseudo-)secretly be very interested in seeing what my professors wrote, of course, but I get enough background compliments from them (often passed on by friends) that I don't really mind not being able to. One of the professors on the receiving end at a school I visited also said to me, "You could get in anywhere!" My GPA and GRE-scores are solid but not through-the-roof, so I assume that it was mainly the letters that gave him this conviction. (Slightly inaccurate though it has turned out to be, I was very flattered and thanked him right away for the remark.)

Congrats!

I'd email the department, mention that you're going to be in town anyway, and ask whether they would recommend that you visit.

What a nifty story!

Could anything be too nerdy for this group of people?

Trying to. They're not convinced that merely being a bright person with a fairly good vocabulary and some interesting muscial abilities amounts to being a mutant, but I'm working on persuading them. Though the fact that the guy is a mind-reader isn't helping very much.

Before I received my first rejection (yesterday), I didn't think I would have a preference. However, I do: for being notified by mail. Throwing a letter into the recycling-bin is satisfying, whereas deleting an email feels like denial. * laughs *

Mine came just before a phone-interview. Professor X and I had originally settled on 4:00 as the time, but he emailed me partway through the afternoon, mentioning that he was busy and needed to wait until 4:40. That was fine with me, so I wrote back saying as such. Then, around, 4:25, he emailed me again, saying, 'Actually, I'm done a bit early. Are you available now?' I wrote back, 'Sure, anytime is fine from now on.' Pressed 'send'. The phone rang.

Oh no! Sorry about that, SWRM! However, note that this is the only school I've visited so far; it's very possible that any of the other ones I applied to would be just as exciting for me. I didn't say anything about having discovered that First Choice wouldn't be so good after all; it's just that I shouldn't have dismissed Third as much as I initially did based on the information available online. No one can go to more than one school (as far as I know), so even when more than one program corresponds well to your interests, you need to turn at least one place down. It's a pity, but it's necessary. In fact, I respect your decisiveness! * grins * Ah, yes, the aforementioned diametric-opposite situation. But then, as you say, the title of the thread applies just as much!