LinguisticMystic

You'd make a good sociolinguist!

Don't choke! No, but seriously, I bet it went better than you thought. The fear of failure never truly leaves completely, so it can't be all that real... right? Right?

Yeah, job placement and department productivity, etc. are stats that I think are incredibly important and are among the many factors I'm trying to weigh in my decision-making. It's not very easy, I'm finding. For example, UCLA of course has a great record in these respects... but I also like the program and faculty at McGill whose experimental linguistics track is pretty new. Makes it a challenge to compare. Bluh. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just boil it down to one thing. I might just go with gut instinct!

I've gotten two notifications after 5PM Friday (email & phone call) and a Saturday phone call. Nothing on Sunday though. Maybe it's more likely to get a "personal" phone call/email on the weekend/after hours. My weekday correspondences have been more form-like. Shrug.

I don't know how I would use these rankings for personal decision making. So I'll go with the latter choice. I'm curious to know what other people think, though. I get having a crude (coarse-grained?) sense of top-/mid-/low-tier, but what do the specific numbers do for a single person? Unless I were tasked with some objective which implicated the global perception and fate (destiny?) of particular graduate programs, then maybe I would care. Thank god it's just me and my cat out here!

Wow, congratulations! What an exciting day! Perhaps I'll see you at Chicago in April, Onze. I have to figure out if/how to attend as well.

During my lecture today I was telling the class about Peter Ladefoged making a model of his vocal tract by filling it with "wax" and soon after I noticed I got an email from UCLA. How appropriate! Must be a sign. But seriously, I'm still in shock. Thanks!

I hope you just "reverse-jinxed" it and we get a deluge of admissions decisions today!

Wow, is not it too early to make a 15-16 thread?

Got my admittance notification from McGill. Who's going to their open house at the end of the month? Feel free to message me! I'm very excited.

Yep, that's the same thing I was told! That's great--and I agree about their research being very exciting. Yes, we will definitely meet at Stanford now! I'm pretty excited--now that's it's official I have my invitation (just had to answer my phone this time). I look forward to meeting you and the others attending!

I think that's the best way to go about it and your reasoning is legitimate, I believe. As far as I'm aware, it's much more important to have a writing sample that showcases your analytic and research skills versus your ability to put together a literature review. Maybe if you discuss in some detail the direction you're taking for your MA thesis in your statement of purpose, that will strike a good balance between emphasizing your expertise in your current/desired field of study and your ability to form a thoughtful, cohesive research agenda and carry it out in your BA thesis. That would apply in the case where they choose to read your BA thesis...

Yay, my first ridiculous personal attack from Loric. I'm barely able to muster a reply from beneath the substantial weight of all my misplaced grief. Haha.

I don't actually think we owe Loric an answer to such a silly question.

How long are both? That would far exceed the 20 page limit, I imagine... I'd be prepared to pick one to submit it alone. After hearing back from them, of course. That's good advice from Fuzzy. But you know. some programs I applied to requested so many materials from me that I'm kind of astounded at the thought of them truly sifting through everything in my file. So it's definitely worth asking! And yay, Loric finally infiltrated the linguistics subforum.

Director of graduate studies.

That's great! My interviewer mentioned that there was a handful of people with similar interests that they were considering. I'd love to see their department continue to grow in that direction (well, mostly if I get accepted and decide to attend, that is!). Go lab phon! ETA: Now I wait for "mysterious Palo Alto phone number" to call me back (hopefully). Eek.

Phonetics/phonology + variation.

Thanks! I'm just overly nervous. Obviously.

If I don't get another call or email from them tomorrow should I contact the dept? I should really say who I am in my voicemail message... Ugh.

Missed a call from Palo Alto. Ahhhhh, going crazy!

Oh yeah, good point. I actually did have to know what I was talking about when we discussed research! That was important, naturally. Fortunately I like talking about my speciality and they're up to some cool stuff at McGill!

I just did a Skype interview which I had been pretty nervous about. It turned out they mostly just wanted me to clarify my prior background in linguistics for them. And then the rest of the conversation was just informal chatting about the program/research, etc. Just thought I'd throw that out there as another possible reason for an interview because I wasn't actually anticipating that!

Copy-paste your results into Excel (or other spreadsheet) which works nicely. Go from there with your program of preference? I would use R.

I've learned (painfully, sometimes) that you can't expect your circumstances to change your outlook, happiness, or attitude towards life. But sometimes it takes experience to appreciate that.