psycholinguist

Heh. I just printed off nine pages of data for my thesis, and then decided I'd done enough work on it for the day. Meeting with advisor in twenty minutes. Fortunately, he's a nice guy. And I had a bad cold over the weekend, so I'm still in 'err on the side of taking it easy' mode. Though I don't know how long I can keep that up with my schedule! * laughs *

Thanks! That one's a bit of a stretch in more ways than one, admittedly; even if I did (somehow) get into BCS, I'd have a hard time getting funded since they don't seem to have a lot of money for international applicants (I'm Canadian). Ah well. I think I'll only worry about that if I end up having to worry about that. * laughs * I know, eh? What use is decaf coffee? Heck, the very phrase is pretty much oxymoronic. There're a couple of (ancient) threads about the field under Humanities - Languages, but that just calls to mind the whole 'You're a linguist? How many languages do you speak?' thing...

Getting 'a life'? What's that? How would one go about obtaining one of those? * grins * Same here! I wasn't so happy about it after the last break-up I went through, of course, but now I'm grateful for it. Gives me the freedom to move anywhere I might want to go. Except maybe the moon.

What does it say about MIT that I know which building you're talking about even though I've never been there and have only been on their ling-department website about twice? * laughs * (For the sake of solidarity: technically I also applied to MIT, and technically I'm also anticipating a rejection...except in cognitive science. But that's just a minor detail.) I know a professor who went to MIT for her Ph.D., and from a medium-tier university in Toronto that I didn't even realise had a linguistics program...and her advisor was Chomsky himself. I'm still trying to figure out how she did that.

Wow. It actually all came to less than I expected, even including the Barron's book, the cost of the GRE, the GRE score-reports (including one copy that went to a program I didn't even end up applying to), two last-minute cross-border parcels, and all of the admission-fees. Oh, wait. I had to take the bus to the nearest actual city and stay overnight there at a hotel before taking the GRE, because even though I live in a university-town, there's no test-centre here. (Go figure.) That probably puts the figure higher than I thought. Darn. Now I don't want to think about it.

Originally I had a list of eleven programs to apply to, but for some odd reason I couldn't get all that excited about three of them, so I ditched them on the basis of thinking that if I got into none except for one (or more) of those three, it wouldn't feel like much of a consolation to me. Applied to the other eight, and though I did gradually (and mostly inadvertently) develop a top-three list, I'm also aware that I'd be happy to go to any of them (assuming enough financial support overall). One was a safety, but at a school I'm quite fond of for personal reasons; in fact, I'm already a tiny bit sorry that I've already pretty much ruled out going there. Though not sorry enough to change my mind. * grins *

I'd find things in advance for you and your mom to do together in the cities you visit, then mention a) that since you'll need to be living on your own at grad-school, you'd prefer to tour the actual campuses alone in order to get a more accurate sense of how you by yourself feel in the respective environments that they offer; but that you thought of some ideas for spending time with your mom otherwise. That way, everyone wins (well, theoretically, at least).

Heh. Yeah, probably not. If they've been teaching for years and years, they've probably been called all sorts of things. (I'm reminded of this comic.) Personally, I default to 'Dr. X' when I haven't met the person, 'Prof. Y' when I have, and...well, actually, I still can't get comfortable with the idea of calling a professor by his or her first name. Maybe it's thanks to having gone to a really uptight private high school, where it seemed weird even to know that the teachers HAD first names.

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 *)

Of the two schools I've heard from, I got a full stipend for one, and about a half a one for the other! This whole 'prospective grad student' thing is pretty awesome sometimes. Okay, or more like 'very occasionally'. But still.

Fair enough. That's an interesting link to propose! (Though I might be a bit biased, of course. Heh.)

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!

Yeah. Attend. If there ARE any nasty surprises, you'll want to have a backup-plan in place, and exploring other schools is a good way to help yourself prepare at least one of those.

Same here. Fortunately I'm still an undergrad, and in an honours program, so that's easy enough! * grins * The unknown is scary, but there's nothing to be done about it. I know it's hard not to think about it ALL THE TIME, but try to focus on the present. If you have time to kill, take up a new hobby or sport (yoga, anyone?), or start learning a new language, or spend an entire afternoon at the library making a list of books you'd like to read. If you can turn the limbo-period into something productive, then it will go faster AND you'll have achieved something at the end of it. Falling into the cycle of waiting and worrying and attempting to reassure yourself and waiting and worrying and attempting to reassure yourself...etc. is easy, but in the long run you'll be better off if you just give yourself a break. The decisions are out of your hands.

My college once accidentally spelled it "Universtiy" on the SPINE OF THE YEARBOOK. They only noticed once a few physical books had already been printed.

Yeah, congrats! Would being in D.C. be a major plus for you?

* laughs * 'Hi, I'm here for the Ph.D. in fuzzy logic?' Also reminds me of this shirt.

Congrats! I first heard from the University of Toronto on 19 January, and though I've been getting a lot of enthusiasm from a lot of different professors (and have cleared the phone interview with no discernible problems), I still haven't been officially accepted. Heh!

I'm into really obscure indie rock, kind of in and around power-pop for the most part; I get (almost) all of my mp3s from eMusic. Oh, and I also like classical music (mostly Baroque/Classical, but with a few Romantics thrown in there - Faur

I applied twice to McGill (linguistics/psychology), twice to the University of Toronto (ditto), and once to the University of Waterloo (just psychology). Nothing from McGill so far. U of T psychology is interested; I did a casual phone-interview and was invited to the recruitment-weekend. As for U of T linguistics and Waterloo psychology, I think I'm going to withdraw my applications; those were backup choices, and with one and a half acceptances amongst my top three choices, I already have a difficult decision to make.

* laughs *

I agree. Some students also have eclectic interests and could lose interest as a result of any implication that they wouldn't get to work in more than one area, so the department was probably trying to emphasise the more interdisciplinary options that they offer.

One of the schools I'm going to visit emailed me asking whether I wanted two nights at a hotel, because students from out of town like to take a second day to explore the city that it's in! I'm not sure whether this is a typical attitude amongst graduate programs, but surely anything you could do that might help you explore the local area (and maybe discover that you really like it) would be met with approval on the part of the programs in question.

Quite the opposite for me; I've had more success than I expected. I applied to eight programs (at six schools; I'm feeling a little torn between two fields) and, having had my applications met with a lot of enthusiasm by two of my top three, I already feel as if I have a hard enough decision to make! By this point there's really only one more that I'm eager to hear from, and I don't think I'm going to care all that much if I don't get into it. Wholeheartedly agreed. Sometimes you just sort of have to sit back and let things happen, then make the most of how they turn out.