Dinali

I'm in the same boat, and have nothing to offer you in the way of comfort. I do have to say that every time I see any of your posts, I do a spit take on your program. It's definitely not something I'm expecting to see . . . ever.

100% with you on that. The UMass site actually spells it out suchly: Not to mention they apparently just gave up on updating the website months ago. It still shows none of my stuff arriving, even though they verified by phone back in December that my file was complete.

I've never really gotten into semantics (beyond the intro stuff of course). Who's big in that field? I never thought of UCLA as being a semantics place; who would you work with there?

Based on the year you said you started, I think we're about the same age. Oddly though, I never really got into computers or online stuff until much later, 1998 or so. That would make our "computer ages" much different. Probably have to account for that kind of variation too.

It's not a theory, only a hypothesis! But I'm not in favor of multiple similar topics, nor am I saying that it's efficient or beneficial to constantly repost the same questions, I'm just curious about the motivation for doing so. If you had been born in 1986, then interactive forums would have been around for your entire living memory. Would you see them primarily as a resource or as a community? Would this perception influence the way you use these and other message boards?

Oh yeah, quite definitely either way. I'm looking forward to it.

Broke, broken and alone, sitting at a window at a third-rate assisted living facility gazing out over the slum and grumbling about the state of the world until I finally wither into death in a puddle of my own drool.

No. No I don't. I just know the longer I'm not in my field, the less I know about it, and the less qualified I become. I cannot countenance not working in my field the rest of my life, so I really don't know what I would/will do. Unfortunately your pessimism is my likely reality.

Maybe that's a function of age too. I hypothesize that younger people tend to have grown up with the internet as a communal place, and see boards like this as conversations with friends, where the same topics can be (and usually are) rehashed ad infinitum. On the other hand, earlier generations, for whom the internet was not a significant part of their youth, see forums as more like conferences, with no need to revisit a topic unless new research has surfaced. This is a pet theory I've been nursing based on perusal of a variety of internet boards over the last couple years. I've seen a pretty strong distinction between these two attitudes, and from anecdotal information I'm willing to bet there's an age correlation. So who's in sociology and wants to design an experiment?

Okay, I see responses in the DB to every place I applied except MIT, but I've personally only heard from two. Does anyone know what that means? Am I on unofficial waitlists at Rutgers, UMass, and Chicago? Shunted to a second round of scrutiny? Is this the time to call or write an email reiterating my candidacy? If so, how does that go? I'm seriously in the dark as to this whole process. I think I'm a great applicant, but a terrible applier, if that makes any sense. Thanks

I noticed that too. It's just a coincidence, I swear!

I think it's something wrong with the drop-down menu, at least in some browsers. When I typed "Linguistics" there were all kinds of choices - French, Spanish, Applied, etc. One of them was something really long that caused the line to wrap. It wrapped over and obscured the plain "Linguistics" choice. Theoretical shouldn't be in the list in the first place, but more people are choosing it who would normally choose plain Linguistics if it weren't obscured.

Poor linguistics people from grad apps past! I wonder if happy is happy at UMich? Did linguisticsguy ever find out where else happy was offered? Did Guest ever get funding anywhere? Someday soon, this'll be us. Well, hopefully, since none of them seem to be around a year later.

I once bought a book to help beat procrastination but I never got around to reading it! (the sad part is it's true: http://www.amazon.com/Beat-Procrastination-Make-Grade-Life-Saving/dp/sitb-next/014027801X)

Another practical way to get at least an idea of the rankings is to start with a couple that you know are good (MIT and UCLA are good bets) and look at where they have been hiring from recently. Then look at where those universities have been hiring from, and those, and so on. You'll find a few hubs and will be able to build a network pretty easily. I say "practical" above, because if you're looking for where you can get the best education, then it's almost anywhere; all you need is one good scholar and a library. If you want to know the best university to graduate from in order to find a job, the above method will probably give you a solid idea.

One of my professors told me that Chicago is poised to catapault back to the upper ranks of theoretical linguistics. I was going to apply there anyway but that recommendation moved it up a bit in my personal rankings.

I don't know. I haven't heard that, and when I was there the class size was pretty stable. What DOES happen is that ling is the most combined major there. Not as in double majors, but as in Spanish and Linguistics, Linguistics and Spanish (yes, both!), Linguistics and Psychology, etc. One of the reasons for this is that following one of these combined majors relieves you from having to take one of the very difficult advanced courses in Syntax or Phonology. IF changing a major from pure Ling to Ling and XXX counts as dropping the major, then yes, I totally believe it. (For the record, I'm pure Ling and aced both courses : ) (to see how ridiculous it is, go here: http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/catalog/catalog08-09-3.htm#50532359_marker-30547 and do a search, see how many times Linguistics comes up.)

I've had a lot of people [non-linguists who took a linguistics class] say the same thing. It also reminds me of the first ling class, Intro to Linguistics, which is a prereq for ling courses and major and also satisfies a GE at UCLA. When I took it, there were about 100 people at the beginning of the course. By the third week, it was down to 35. But several of the non-ling who stuck it out ended up changing their majors. I think it's got to do with the same confusion of placement we encountered in this forum. It's a rigorous science hidden in a humanities department. People take it expecting something like English and instead get physics and biology and statistics. For some this is their niche. The rest run screaming.

Have you thought of applying to any European universities? If I don't get in anywhere this year, I'm definitely going to include Paris 7 in my list next year.

cheers! Congrats

Oops, sorry Ridgey. I cut the wrong quote. Fixed now.

I'd say you were quite lucky to have gone to an inexpensive school. I worked ~30 per week as an undergrad and it covered about half my expenses, and the school I went too wasn't particularly costly. I'm still paying off the other half. Adding to that the far greater costs of grad school is not an option, simply because, given the low average starting salary of a humanities professor, at some level of debt it becomes mathemetically impossible to pay it off. Hence funding is more common in humanities.

I'm focusing on phonology too, but I still dig syntax so hard that I had trouble choosing.

Really though, would you want to go anywhere with the banana slug as a mascot anyway? They chew their own penises off while mating! {just kidding. I've heard nothing but good about their ling program )

First I gotta say that's awfully dick of SC to treat you like that. There are relatively few universities that have strong ling programs, and refusing to consider applicants from outside that little circle is shortsighted. There are plenty of great candidates who might happen to not have access to a rated university. I was lucky to be a California resident, but if I hadn't been, I could never have afforded the out-of-state tuition it would have taken to go to UCLA. The bad news is there aren't really any books that cover the advanced topics. The fields move too fast. In my intro to syntax class we used Carnie's Syntax: A Generative Introduction, (http://www.amazon.com/Syntax-Generative-Introduction-Introducing-Linguistics/dp/0631225447/ref=cm_lmf_tit_8_rlrssi0). This had been published two months before the start of the class, and the professor already highlighted several portions and told us how they'd been up- or outdated. All my advanced classes had coursework books the professors made out of recent journal articles and had us buy piecemeal or just photocopied and handed out. Some advanced books are just collections of working papers -- good luck with those! Realistically, how much can you learn in the next couple weeks anyway? A better tack might be to come up with a plan for summer preparatory study and lay it out for them so they know you're not going to be resting on your laurels if they accept you. A way to do that might be to go to the current advanced undergrad and intro grad class websites and download the materials available. Make a book for each area you're weak in. See if they have summer courses and offer to move to SD early and take them. If you really want some lightning preparation, I'd suggest going for depth instead of breadth. Pick a couple of articles on the same subject recently published by someone you'd like to work with at SD and struggle through them. Read the cited articles too, if you have the time. Then steer steer steer conversation to what you know. Whatever you do, good luck to you.