Dinali

If it's German find someone from Cincinnati and see what they think. There's a lot of German influence there, most famously the Cincinnati "please."

Here's mine to the rejectors: You can all just kiss of into the air Behind my back I can see them stare They hurt me bad, but I don't mind They hurt me bad, they do it all the time Yeah yeah Yeah they do it all the time (Maybe eight was for being rejected by grad schools?)

When I discovered Grad Cafe, read the posts, and realized how badly I screwed up my application.

Yeah, the negative sounds okay to me too. I'd be more inclined to investigate an Irish influence though, since Irish-English tends to use "so" more liberally than others.

There was a guy in my high school who was from Eastern Kentucky. He had the following pattern of second person pronouns: Sing/informal: thee/thee Sing/formal: you/ye Plural: ye/ye People made fun of him a lot (not me, I thought it was awesome), and he made obvious attempts to drop the "thee," and only used it if he got excited about something and forgot. He was never able to change any of the three "ye's" though. He had other very distinct grammatical stuff going on, as well as a pretty thick accent that sometimes made him hard to understand. The bad thing was that he was a very nice, very intelligent guy, but he'll be stereotyped as a dumb redneck all his life because of that accent.

To add to that, I once found a studio in Brentwood (walking distance to north campus) for $650. However, competition was incredibly fierce for it, and I didn't have good enough credit to come out on top. But you can find good deals if you are lucky. I'd also recommend Palms as a place to look. A huge number of UCLA grad students live there, it's pretty reasonable, and there's a bus that goes straight to UCLA. I split rent with a grad student on a big condo with a balcony we could see the ocean from (on a clear day) for $750 each. Palms is pretty boring though, and lacks in your criteria for diversity (save the diversity you'll find among the student pop) and little shops and things. Shopping streets like this are actually pretty rare though. There are pockets here and there, like Venice or West Hollywood, but for the most part people in LA get in their cars and go places instead of walking down streets, so no real effort is made to consolidate areas. I agree that, even if you rely on the bus for your daily commute, definitely have a car for weekends and breaks. LA rightfully owns its title as the king of car towns, and the bus system is not designed to go very many places. Additionally as I mentioned above, things tend to be very spread out, so if you wanted to go four places it's unlikely you'll find all four on the same block (unless it's four different burrito places). As far as bicycles, I'm not sure how feasible that would be. I mean, there are militant bicyclists everywhere, but for a normal person I don't think it would be safe. Freeways or the big avenues are the most direct routes to most places. The big avenues are not bike-friendly at all. The littler streets weave around so much it'd be difficult to put together a direct route. And you're dealing with huge amounts of traffic and drivers that aren't used to bikes sharing the road, as well as frequent massive freeway on- and off-ramps. If I were coming from Westwood or just south of Wilshire (lots of overpriced housing there) I'd bike, but even from Palms, which is only 5 miles away, I'd be scared to. Edit: I thought of something to add regarding buses. I did actually live for a little under a year without a car, so when I say a car is necessary, it's from actual experience, not theoretical observations. In addition to simple lack of coverage is that they skip stops pretty frequently, especially if a homeless person with a cart is waiting to get on (the LA homeless treat the bus system like rolling shelters, boarding then riding around for hours). So even if you have a route that is convenient, it's not necessarily reliable. The Big Blue bus routes that go into UCLA seem less prone to that, but it'll be something you encounter if you take the buses to other places.

Maybe the Kentucky upcountry? Various dialects up there count among the most conservative in the language. They retain forms that died out hundreds of years ago everywhere else.

I've never heard this. Where does this happen?

Congrats! I'd think a call like that would make a decision much easier.

ditto all

I actually hate this song, but it's ingrained in my memory from overplay on the radio, and it does seem oddly appropriate here: I suppose I could collect my books and go on back to school Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool Or find a rock and roll band that needs a helping hand (This also applies to the downstairs thread "What am I going to do if I don't get accepted!")

Some years ago I took a week and visited (by bus and train) some highlights of the Camino - Pamplona, Burgos, Leon, and Santiago itself. I actually arrived and heard Mass at the cathedral on St. James' Saint day, on a Sunday, which apparently if I were an actual pilgrim (or Catholic at all) would have earned me plenary absolution. I've wanted to go back and do the route for real ever since. But anyway, in Santiago I got a very nice heavy hardbound unabridged Spanish-Galician dictionary. I horsed that thing across Spain, France, and Italy for three more weeks. It was my only souvenir from that whole trip. (Maybe I should have mentioned THAT in my SoP.)

I'm thinking about it. Looks very interesting, and can't beat the location. If I get accepted somewhere I was considering a celebratory hike along the Cami

I don't think many of us are really holding our breaths for an MIT acceptance. You've clearly got an incredibly strong app based on the places you've already been invited to, and I truly hope you get in (and decide to accept, thereby freeing up a UCLA slot ). I'm still crossing my fingers waiting to hear from the "lesser" places.

Hehe. Well THAT wasn't what I was expecting from the link!

Welcome to our corner of the board! You've already had an effect here, since (assuming you entered your Amherst decision in the DB) as soon as I saw you got mail from UMass I actually took an hour off work and checked my PO box. Nothing.

My entire SoP would be completely different if I could write it now. I didn't focus on the correct things at all. I also think I would have put my writing sample and some other info on a website and referred reviewers to it in my application, just so I could track traffic to it and see who's looking at what when. (It would also allow me to continue to edit/modify said sample until they actually looked at it.)

I have visited UMass, MIT, and UIUC, and of course I was at UCLA for awhile. I decided not to apply to UIUC because of the visit, simply because the pluses about the place weren't strong enough to counterbalance the major minus (the small town). UMass is in a very similar location, but Boston is a BIT closer than UC is to Chicago, the program is a BIT (or a lot) stronger. All the other places I applied to are in major cities (except New Brunswick? But close enough to NYC to count), which is my natural habitat. UCLA: None of the campuses I visited were as nice as UCLA's (which you're familiar with even if you haven't visited; it's played colleges in hundreds of movies and TV shows). The rest of LA can be quite detestable though. This is my undergrad department, so it would obviously be impossible to communicate the entire nuance of my impression in a couple lines. To summarize though, it's a great department, very personable and welcoming. There's a lot of interaction, with some pretty blurry lines between the top undergrands and the first year grads (all of the advanced undergrad courses are also intro grad courses designed for students who didn't come from linguistics or a top ling department, so they're often even in the same classes). There's a lot of space to go do your own thing though. Also Campbell Hall is in a great location -- close to a food court that makes the best burritos on campus, steps from the research library, and right next door to the buildings for language and history departments. MIT: would be my top choice even if the program there weren't as strong, because Boston is such an awesome city. Visiting MIT was intimidating at first, because you're in a building that's a world-reknown architectural masterpiece/eyesore (opinions vary) and Chomsky's in there somewhere! as well as a multitude of the biggest name people in a wide variety of disciplines. Being a linux guy, I was actually more nervous about the chance of happening upon Richard Stallman that Chomsky. I didn't get to interact much with the department here and just explored the campus thoroughly. UMass: was much less imposing, with a plain little brick building and a hand-written sign on the door that said to go around to a side entrance for Linguistics, and had a little drawing to show which door. Everyone was pretty cool, but they obviously had their own things. I did get to sit in for half a class (I visited in the first week, so everyone was new). Amherst is a VERY small town, but has a vibrant student community; understandable since there are two world-class colleges there. UMass was an agricultural college until fairly recently, and it shows on campus. There are huge cow pastures in several directions, and the campus is very spread out. However, this being New England, there are towns and small cities every ten miles or so, so it's not like you're ever actually in the countryside. And of course Boston is an easy daytrip. I didn't apply to or visit NYU specifically, but I live and occasionally work in lower Manhattan. The impression from the outside is that it's quite unlike any other college, in that there's no campus per se. Even Columbia has a discrete campus, but NYU is a building here and there spread out over several blocks, with regular apartments and businesses in between. It's in one of the most absolutely hopping parts of town though, and I've walked through the Village at 3am and pushed through crowds as thick as you would find at 3pm. And don't assume that's all students either. In any other place a major university would dominate the landscape, but in Manhattan it's barely a drop in the bucket. Above any others that you're considering, I would recommend visiting this one if you're not familiar with NYC, because it is a completely different world.

So how YOU doin'?

Last September I drove to three nearby campuses that I was considering and dropped in to check the place out, no calling or emailing first at all. I was welcomed at all of them, was guided around campus a bit, talked about the department, sat in on a couple classes, even went to a Friday BBQ at one. The only excuse I gave was "I happened to be driving through." Maybe it has to do with being in a major with very small departments, but I don't see why this would be a problem at all. I mean, we grant the people in these chairs of power the status and character of fickle gods, but in reality they're just people. Besides, if they seem angry or annoyed, don't tell them your real name

Isn't that going to be a significant handicap in grad school?

I have a friend who applied to 11 different law schools, and due to a very rocky early college career, got 10 rejections and a waitlist. Summer wore on into fall and she had found a FT job and just about forgotten her law aspirations. Then, one Thursday, she got a call from the school that waitlisted her asking if she still wanted the spot. HELL YEAH! she burst out. The semester started the FOLLOWING MONDAY. Not notify them of intent to register by the following Monday, but four days to pack up, pick up, and turn up on campus half the country away. And to rub salt in the wound they emailed her a summer's worth of preparation reading to do. Of course she's in the top 3% and in Law Review now, so it worked out pretty well.

Two of the top departments in my field don't even require GRE scores, which really makes me scratch my head about what the others think is so beneficial about them (although for another one I think they only require it as a school policy; the department doesn't look at them). I think ETS is like the Ticketmaster of higher education -- until sufficient numbers of bands/universities stop using/requiring them, they'll have the advantage.

Ugh. I kind of figured that. One of the DB entries (maybe yours?) mentions that they were only able to hand out 3 slots. That would be a lot of pressure to perform as a full third of the department for your year.

Well they finally updated [some of] my information on the UMass website. I don't know if that's someone actually looking at the application or if it's just some poor office worker slogging through a pile of mail. Probably the latter. Bear in mind that I mailed a package to them on Dec 13, so they are WAY behind. There's also a strongly worded note on the UChicago site explaining that they won't do anything by email or phone and that letters haven't been mailed yet and won't be until next week, so please please PLEASE stop calling until March 16 at the earliest. I wonder if the entries currently listed in the results DB are informal notifications or what. No other change in status anywhere. Peace frog all