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nyrrac

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Everything posted by nyrrac

  1. Hi! I am doing my PhD for career advancement. I did my MA a couple of years back and managed to land a research and teaching position in a university which I enjoy very much. But it started to suck when I realized that I'm not going anywhere - no promotions, no research funds, no job security. It sucked even more when I did the research, the write up, etc only to get a by line (if I 'm lucky and the POI liked me) in the research paper! So I had enough and applied to grad school. During my admissions interview, when I was asked why I wanted a PhD, I was honest with my reasons and told my interviewer that the PhD is a gateway for me to do more research in my field, get the required funding and most importantly, credited for it. My brother told his med school interviewers that he was in it for the money. The panel was surprised by his candor, laughed and admitted him. I think the admissions panel have heard loads of different versions of the "burning passion" line and sometimes they appreciate when one is honest with them!
  2. Somehow Cake wrecks and Stephan Pastis gets me through the day... http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/
  3. 1) I'm in a Linguistics program if that helps... 2) I had an interview with my potential supervisor over Skype as part of the admissions process and she already had (and read) my research proposal, CV, etc but she wanted me to explain in my own words A) my research project in detail how I came about having this proposal C) what implications do I predict my research would have D) whether this research is just a curiosity or I am really interested in academia E) what do I foresee myself doing with the PhD Basically these are the things that you would answer in your SOP. I waited for the questions and answered them (upon hindsight, it felt more like an interrogation than an interview ). I thought I screwed up the interview really badly so I decided to wing it with the "Do you have any questions for me?" question by asking her what she thought about my research proposal, how I could improve it and (I still can't believe that I asked...) what are my chances of getting admitted. I thought I had nothing to lose anyway. She told me how to improve my research proposal and gave me the standard "our admissions is very competitive" spiel. Well, I guess you could start by really reading up on the area that you are interested in working on, think about your research proposal more (particularly how you are going to conduct the research, the ethics involved, the implications, etc) and the implications of your research (how would your research contribute to the current academic community of your field). You could ask, very politely, on the professor's thoughts on your research. I hope this helps and all the best in your interview!
  4. I know what you mean. An acceptance without funding is the same as a rejection letter. My first acceptance letter is to a top university but the university funding is highly competitive (7% of the applicants get it) and the department only funds ONE grad student a year. I think I would have better luck winning the lottery or finding gold hidden in my back yard Keep your hopes up. This is admission season... you might get a better offer with funding!
  5. Are you applying for a taught program or a research program? Taught programs look at your 2 recommendations and your transcripts. The research program is trickier. You need to write to a professor (whose research interests matches yours) with a research proposal. If said professor likes your research and has the space to supervise you, then he/she will ask you to formally apply to UCL. That's how my department (Linguistics) work anyway. Hope that helps
  6. I think English Words by Heidi Harley is a good place to start. It introduces the history and structure of English from a theoretical linguistic standpoint. You would have an idea of how phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics work in the analysis of English words. The book is a little wordy... sometimes it reads like a transcript of Harley's lectures however, it's pretty easy to understand unlike the other textbooks into the different sub-specialties. She even goes into historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and language acquisition theory. From there I think you can figure out if you do like linguistics as well as which field (theoretical or applied) you like to research in
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