chillofrito

This is a pretty wacky thread ya'llve got going on here.

This happened to me. I turned the offer down, and as a result, am going to wait another year and reapply.

I turned down my (mostly unfunded) offer from Georgia. So no school for me this year. Lord I hope this economy improves or even with my new and improved strategies for acceptance I'll be going nowhere, ever.

Would you mind telling me a little about your background? GPA? GRE scores? Experience?

Really? You couldn't do good work at a second tier institution and let your reputation speak for itself?

Well, got a nice rejection email from the chair yesterday. So now I'm just waiting on word about funding from the one school that accepted me. What a great idea it was to apply almost exclusively to state schools. Oh well, I consider myself fortunate anyhow. Good luck to everyone else.

We are all unhappy with the application process but ultimately They are in charge so I suppose they can pretty much do whatever they want, and I wouldn't dwell on it too much if I were you.

Okay so one international. . . man they must be hurting. Did they let any other information slip? Obviously I'm not their top choice but since they are mine, I'm hoping I'm on the wait list. I have a school I'd like to go to that I can fall back on but man, Santa Cruz. . .

Fit is obviously the most important. However, at this point its a moot issue since I didn't apply anywhere that wouldn't be at least a workable fit (for instance, didn't apply to any depts that are strong in socio ling ). Money and location are more important to me than reputation, since I count on my work speaking for itself. I might be overestimating the quality of my work, but if I count on doing mediocre work there isn't really any point in pursuing this whole thing anyway. However, if they don't give me money I won't go, and I can't be happy in a place I don't like and since not happy = not good work for me, its a no brainer.

Has anyone heard anything? Notifications began March first, officially. Unofficially I seem to remember someone here saying they had been accepted but turned the offer down, about three weeks ago. Is no new bad news?

``What about going to a program for a year and then deciding to transfer to another program?'' Who writes your LoR's in such a case. Surely not your current advisor/profs. . .

Hi everybody. Now, I realize that every program is different etc, but maybe someone can give me some insight into this. After being rejected from a handful of schools, and planning what I'd do to get in next year, a got an acceptance. No word on funding yet. After a day or two of being excited, I started getting paranoid about money. So I was looking over my application, and I definitely checked a box that said `I will require funding to attend UX.' Anyone else get a box like this on their application? Do ya'll think it matters? It seems so small, what if they didn't notice it. They aren't going to admit me without planning on handing over a wad of cash, right? Thanks!

That's a nice analysis. Though I note that the description of the faculty isn't as bleak as it looks at first: rather than having an interest in linguistics, a lot of them are in fact real linguists. I have a strong interest in theory but have so far worked in Romance theory so it might not be a bad fit. It might be fun to be one of the only theory students. I guess it all comes down to money.

Ha! I already have an MA (In ling), and a reasonable amount of experience, but still didn't get in anywhere!

I got an acceptance today from U of Georgia, close to my last choice. I've been rejected from everywhere else so far (Stanford, UCSD, UT Austin, Arizona) and am still waiting to hear from UCSC (close to my first choice) but not holding my breath. I have to wait another week to hear about money. I'm thinking I won't go without a free ride since I've barely even heard of the UG ling dept. Anyone else know anything about this school? I will be looking for a job when I'm done, and although I tell myself my work speaks for itself, its possible coming from a no-name dept will not look good. So I'm asking you people to reassure me, and tell me all about how UG is an up and coming dept with lots of interesting projects and work. . . Its hard to get a feel for a dept from the website, and I suppose I'll go and visit before I decide. . . what do you all think? Anyone else here accepting their bottom of the barrel choice? This is good, right? Why do I feel so nervous?

For those of you who got interviews, what part of your application made you stand out from the rest? Did you contact professors at all of your application departments? What criteria did you use to choose who and where you would write to? Obviously, departments are known for things like syntax and semantics vs phonology or theoretical vs anthropological. . . did you use criteria that were even stricter than broad fields? For example, I like phonology, and have done most of my work on phonological topics. But I just kind of fell into to it, what if I end up wanting to do syntax more? Thanks!

Hi, I've been rejected from every school I applied to. Some I expected (Stanford) and other shook me up a little (Texas, Arizona). I have two F's on my undergraduate transcript at a mid-level public university. I don't really know what was going on. It was nine years ago now, though. Since then I've gotten an MA in Linguistics at a top-two rated public school. However, its not really known for its linguistics `program.' I also have presented original work at an international conference. This summer, I will present some more research I'm doing right now. I was pretty lazy really, because I assumed my MA (and thesis) and experience would get me in for sure. I could have finished writing at least two journal articles, which I think, and this has been suggested by others, are publishable. I only scored 1230 on the GREs. . . but I didn't study. This has come as a surprise but also a wake-up call. I want to be a linguist. I want to be paid to research and travel. But I'm obviously going to have to work. All that to say that you aren't alone in being rejected. However, if you really want to go to graduate school, waiting another year won't kill you. In the meantime, do every single thing you can think of, because you won't be the only one applying, and plenty of those other people will have done every single thing they could.