liszt85
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Posts posted by liszt85
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I got an email from a Professor who read my application and told me that my transcript was missing from the file. I sent her a scanned copy and told her that I had sent one along with whatever material she had already seen and so its most probably a mix up on their part and she apologized and then sent me an email saying that she was extremely interested in having me join her lab and that she was about to recommend my name to the committee for admission into the program. She also briefly mentioned what pay I'd get. She also asked me if I had any other financial constraint and to please let her know if I did. I replied telling her about my plans to bring along my spouse but was careful enough to make it clear that I only mentioned this because she specifically asked me if I had any other constraints and that even if the dept is unable to offer further financial aid, I'd still be very interested. Its been 2-3 weeks since that. I emailed the grad secy who told me that it was "reading week" and that most of the professors were on leave. They'd meet only in MArch. So I'm guessing that I shouldn't be worried too much about this. I suggest you contact them too. They probably have a good reason too, one that does not mean your application is in jeopardy.
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Overall, I really enjoyed visiting the department. The strongest points in my mind were:
- A fantastic funding package (with summers and 2 years of fellowship included) that means you never really have to worry about money. The grad students were pretty enthusiastic about this. Funding for conferences semeed plentiful as well, and it sounds like grad students attend them quite easily.
- A really friendly and well-connected department. Interacting with the professors in both a formal (interview/tour) setting and a social setting was equally comfortable, and the interest that everyone had in one another seemed really genuine. All in all, the department seemed like a legitimately happy place to be, and I think most of us visiting were impressed with how welcoming and supportive it seemed.
- Lots of interdisciplinary work and collaboration (we had the opportunity to meet faculty in related departments during the visit), which in my mind is quite important.
- The projects students were working on seemed to be what they were truly interested in, rather than simply the agenda of their advisors.
- As you mention, no qualifying exams. Probably not a reason to pick a department on its own, but it sure is nice...
I didn't get to interact too much with Janet Pierrehumbert myself, but people that did work with her seemed to be having positive experiences. In fact, even when asked, nobody seemed to be having any really negative experiences overall. Naturally this can be attributed to some recruitment bias, but overall the students seemed sincere in their enthusiasm for the department.
I'm glad to hear that! I might have financial concerns because of having to support my wife too on this stipend (as she would be unable to work due to being on a F2 dependent visa) but I think we should be able to scrape through.. There's a good chance that I'd attend NU. The interdisciplinary work at NICO is what I'm interested in most. I'm very happy that you had a good experience when you visited and this will weigh heavily in favor of NU when I sit down to make a choice. Thank you!
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I agree that schools need some sort of common assessment for all applicants, but the GRE is not the answer. It is ridiculously expensive to take, and ridiculously expensive to get your scores sent out. And they keep raising the price for score reports--I believe it was only $16/report last year when I applied. At least you can order online now: before you had to mail in the form or order over the phone, and they charged you an extra fee for ordering over the phone.
I disagree, however, with those who think the test isn't teachable. I, for one, took the GRE, was unhappy with my scores, paid a ridiculous amount of money for a name-brand course, and raised my score around 150 points. The types of questions that put on the test are so particular and always fit certain types and patterns so that if you understand how they write the questions/what format they're conforming to, what they're trying to test with them, and the best strategy for quickly answering them, you will do much better on the test than someone who merely memorized formulas and vocabulary. I think that, perhaps, is why many people don't improve their scores with books--when self-teaching, perhaps, they tend to focus more on vocabulary and math formulas than on testing strategies. All the major testing companies guarantee that they will raise your score by 100 points, or let you take the class again, and some even refund your money after a certain lack of progress on your part. They're certainly not losing money, so I imagine they're doing something right. Not to mention the fact that newspapers publish articles every year on how the children of middle-class and wealthy parents have an advantage in admissions because their parents can afford test-prep courses. Even my large, city public high school had it's own pathetic version of a test-prep class that it required of all honors students.
And I, for one, don't think anybody should spend any money on getting tutored for GRE! Its an easy test. All I did was read through 15 word lists (the most important ones like A,E, S, T, etc) a few days before the test. I also did 2 practice tests. I also read through a high frequency word list and I got 2 words on the test from that list. I know I'd have scored much higher on my verbal had I done all the 50 wordlists but its a waste of precious time, and I had better things to do. I got a 610 on the verbal and a 780 on the quant (after screwing it up pretty bad). So I don't see how anybody can score bad on a GRE unless they were not taught enough math at the school level. Most indians (engg and sciences) and all my friends have 800 on their quants. Even the worst students here have 800 on the quant which is why I say I screwed up real bad on the test, so please don't think that I'm trying to boast here. These are just facts as I've observed them.
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The funding offer from NU includes summer funding and makes it $20.5 per year including summer funding and they also say that they guarantee four funded summers. Its best to ask your program what it is and its always okay to ask them about issues that you aren't clear about.
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Any idea what the rule is for F1 student visa holders (international grad students)? Some websites say that a federal tax of 14% will be levied on the stipend alone and some people who've done internships in the US tell me that they get back the amount when they file for tax returns because F1 visa holders are not liable to pay tax. Does anybody in here know what the actual rule is? Is it true that I can get back all the money when I file for returns?
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Funding's extremely important as I'm moving to a place which is diametrically opposite to mine on the face of the earth with a wife who will be unable to work, within just a month of our wedding :| I will probably be offered admission by OSU and McMaster in addition to NU but the funding at both places are low. NU's 20.5K is decent enough to give me hope that we'd be able to scrape through. This is where Arkansas comes in. Its a lowly ranked program and the professor from the Psychology dept wrote to me saying that even as my application was one of the strongest they'd received, it would be difficult to fund me as my primary research interest lay in the work of a professor from the music dept (music cognition). So I wrote to them asking to withdraw my application and the music dept prof requested that I wait a little longer as she was trying hard to find alternative sources of funding for me. I hear that Arkansas can offer quite a bit of money (~30K per year)! I hope I won't have to accept Arkansas because of the money it offers but the very fact that I'm still considering Arkansas speaks for how important the money factor would be in my decision.
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The advantage of a 1-bedroom over a studio is space and privacy. I do not know what your/your wife's needs are, but if I had to share a single room with someone for a year, I'd go nuts. That's just me, though. The building I used to live in at 7000 N. Sheridan (Sheridan Road and Lunt Avenue) was great and I know it had one-bedroom apartments - really big ones, with separate living and dining rooms -for $825 a month including heat. That might stretch your budget a bit, but is well worth it if you want some space. I know for certain that in the same area you can find a (still nicely-sized) 1-bedroom for $700 or even less in many cases. The management company who ran that property was called Urban Equities. You can google them - they kept the building and grounds in pretty good shape and weren't half bad as far as management companies go.
I hope this is helping. I don't mean to knock Evanston, I just feel like it's really expensive and not quite as diverse as the northern areas of the city.
That's some great bit of info! Thanks so much.. and yea, I agree about the studio. I had plans to look for a studio only so that we could do with something cheaper for the initial bit and then maybe look for something better when we save a little cash. Also, I'd be away for most part of the day but yea, one year in a studio would be too much lack of privacy. One more question, would I be able to find furnished apartments at similar rates? If these apartments that you mention are mostly not furnished, how much approximately do you think would it take to furnish a place (beds, chairs, tables, lamps, a long couch, etc)?
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I was visiting there this past weekend, along with 9 other prospectives (though it sounds like not everybody accepted was there?) I got the impression that the department was shooting for an incoming class of 5, as that's what a few of the cohorts were according to some of the grad students I met. (Two years - the current 2nd and 3rd year class there - only had one student matriculate each year, actually, so maybe they're trying to boost the number a little bit?) Their website also says that they usually have an entering class of 4-6 students.
Anyway, that's vague and not terribly well-informed, but it's my best guess.
I was made an official offer and I have to let them know by April 15th. They told me that they would offer this to the next in the waiting list if I choose to decline. So I'm guessing this is the normal procedure for the international students that they admit since we cannot be expected to visit NU. I have also filled in my participant decision form for the Summer Institute, an orientation program for incoming international graduate students. I really think I'd like the linguistics program at Northwestern. They have no candidacy exams and qualifying papers (QPs) instead which is a concept I'm quite comfortable with and one which I think makes much more sense than conventional comprehensive exams. What more could you tell me about the place from the visit? I'd love to know how you perceived the place, the atmosphere, etc and what you thought about the faculty from interacting with them. I would be working predominantly with Janet Pierrehumbert if I decide to accept the offer..
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I'll be taking along my wife, who will not be working. She will come on a dependent visa. I have to support both of us on my stipend, but I think I can make it work, even if it means living on about $700 a month in Chicago (after the rent and utilities). You are two people with two stipends.. I'm sure you will somehow make this work!
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Dad's a total freak.. cheated on mom all his life, then cheated on the other women he'd been with, and now got remarried. Left town after spreading vicious lies about the nature of my mom's relationship with a 20 year old boy whom she considers her son (he used to travel 3 hours to get to his college where my mom teaches and she let him stay with her in the house so that he could concentrate on his studies and not on traveling and getting to college hungry. She fed him and treated him like a son and he now treats her like a mom and is about the only person taking care of her at the moment as both me and my sis study about 1000 miles away from home)
My mom's very supportive, is selling some land so that she could give me some money to start off life in the US, especially since I'd be taking along my future spouse.. So I cannot depend solely on my stipend, need some extra cash to fall back on. I constantly keep asking mom to join us in the US, at least after she retires, but she insists that this is where she belongs and all I want to do is get away from this country.. I hate it here. I hope she changes her mind when I get a job after my Ph.D and joins me wherever I'd be.
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The aid package also contains free housing in plantain leaf houses. Each grad student gets one to him/herself. There's also a compulsory meal plan which would enable smooth bowel motion every morning. Its what they call a "self-sustaining" meal plan.
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Any idea about the entering class strength at Northwestern? I saw at least one other person in here who's got accepted by NU.
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Anyway, as lame as there promo videos were, I think they have a sense of humor! They probably are laughing at how lame these vids are themselves. (I've got to justify my still wanting to go to Northwestern
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As you can see from my signature, I've been rejected by WUSTL and Minnesota Psychology. Now what's left are: McGill Psychology, McMaster Psychology (which I think I'l be admitted into because of a positive mail from the prof after reading my application), OSU Psychology (awaiting funding decision), Minnesota Cog Sc new phd program (results will come by mar 15) and UCD Psychology. How would you rank these places? Also compare them to the NU offer that I have.. My research interest is music cognition. That way McMaster and UCD look the best to me but the funding situation is of utmost importance to me as I'll be bringing along my future spouse (we intend to get married this June before grad school). So if you have an idea about the funding standards at these places, do reply and let me know how you would rank these programs. Thanks!
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I voted for computational psycholinguistics. Computational linguistics isn't "just" engineering; I'm interested in language acquisition, and one way to test a model of language learning is to write a computer program that does exactly what the model does, give it real data, and see if it learns the linguistic structures that we know humans must be able to learn.
As I see it, this is the only real way to test claims towards the ``poverty of the stimulus:'' claims that the speech kids hear doesn't contain very much information about linguistic structure. Real speech might contain a lot of cues that are not useful in isolation but can be useful when integrated by powerful (and psychologically-evident) statistical algorithms. And the only way to see how these things hash out is to actually expose these algorithms to the stuff kids hear and see how well they do.
Hey I see that you've been accepted to Northwestern too. What's your first preference? I'm seriously considering accepting their offer. I have applied to Edinburgh Informatics too but didn't take out the time to write a detailed research proposal. So technically, my application is incomplete. I had applied to Steve Renals' and Mark Steedman's projects. I didn't bother to complete that application because I think I value the Northwestern offer higher. If you're equally serious about NU, hopefully we'll end up studying together!
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Hi Vishnu,
Evanston can actually be quite expensive. Look on craigslist and the apartment people's website for rents. One of my roommates was paying $800 a month (including utilities) for his studio in Evanston last year.
Your best bet for living cheaply near Northwestern is Rogers Park, which is the northernmost neighborhood in Chicago (it abuts Evanston) and is diverse, inexpensive, well-served by public transportation, and convenient to the beach. You can get a decent 1-bedroom for around $700 in Rogers Park, including heat; factor in roughly $50 a month for electric (if you're good about conserving energy) and $30 or so for internet (if you want it) and cable (if you want it) and you're still well within your budget. Folks might tell you RP is dangerous but I think that's an old reputation that just hasn't been updated - I was working part time as a bartender and temping for a while and would regularly take the CTA home by myself at 3 or 4 in the morning and was never even nervous. Particularly around the Morse stop, the area is frequently patrolled by Chicago police and stays busy enough that you don't need to be nervous. The commute to NU will be about 30 minutes at the most.
Personally, I think you get a lot more out of living in Chicago in terms of rent, transportation options, and city amenities like Park District facilities and programs and the public library, but if you really must live in Evanston, definitely talk to the Housing Office at Northwestern (every school has one) about what they recommend. In terms of the rest - $600 is not a lot of money for two people to live on. You could probably get by on $400 a month for groceries, though if you attend a lot of functions where they give you food you might be able to save money on that.
Won't your wife get bored without a job? I'd go stir crazy, though I guess some people prefer it.
My wife has no other option! They don't allow F2 visa holders to work at all. She loves painting and singing. I was hoping that she'd find some interesting program in NWU, even if its a ug program and then apply for some scholarship back from here in India (maybe at the US consulate). She holds a masters in Physics. I do not know what options she might have of getting employed and even if she finds work, I do not know if they'd convert her F2 into a type which permits work.
$700 for a 1 BR apartment in RP would be nice, and hope I can find a furnished place. The university gives me a free pass for the transit system. So traveling shouldn't be a problem. Btw, wouldn't a studio in Evanston for $800 including utilities be a better idea than a 1BR apartment in RP for about the same (including utilities)? If RP used to have a reputation for crime, I wouldn't want to have my spouse stay alone for most part of the day and a long way away from where I work.. If its Evanston, I could maybe have lunch with her back at the studio/apartment and then go back to the University, etc and also end up spending a little more time with her in the process.
Thank you for the advice.. more's welcome!
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Absolutely! NU had asked for writing samples, publications, etc. They took the pains to read through everything that a candidate had to offer. I am extremely satisfied with NU's admission procedure and the effort that they've put into it. I mean when you read a single author paper or a first author publication, you should be able to judge the caliber of the student.
ETS is like the Trinity College of Music London or the Royal music examination boards which go to the third world countries, charge an obscene fee for conducting these examinations which anyway have no value anywhere in the world at any respectable music school. TOEFL is another joke of an examination.
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Aside from that, on a lighter vein, have you ever watched this promo video of NU?
The guy who speaks of acceleration at around 10 seconds into the video got his units wrong. :| They tried too hard to sound nerdy.. -
I do think it reflects at least partially on the grad school's culture, or at least the dept's way of interacting with students. I am being extremely well treated by NU that I'll try my best to attend, and am hoping everything else matches with what I'm looking for. In fact, they've treated me so well that I almost wish the other places would reject me so that making a decision would be easier! I don't deal with a grad secy, its a professor of the dept who interacts with me. He's called me once and he's put me in touch with about 6 other professors from different departments, working in areas that I have even the slightest interest in. The highly interdisciplinary nature of the program and the diversity of the options that he's put before me is simply irresistible as far as I'm concerned. I also had concerns regarding taking my spouse along and the first thing they did was to extend an invitation to her as well to attend social events hosted by the Summer Institute to which I was nominated (for orientation purposes). They pay a separate stipend for the same. They hold English conversation classes and take us out to parties and picnics and other social events. The professor also put me in touch with his former grad student who had also brought along his spouse when he attended NU so that I could ask him for advice about living in Evanston. So they're trying their best to answer my questions the best possible way and are absolutely and thoroughly professional about it. I think it speaks volumes about their work ethic and culture too. Therefore, NU stands higher in my esteem than before now that they've been treating me so well. If I have to reject their offer, it would be a very difficult thing for me to do.. There are of course other places like U Minn and Berkeley whose decisions I eagerly await. If I get accepted by either, I would have a hard time making a decision (though Berkeley would win hands down, it would be difficult emotionally to reject NU coz I've fallen in love with the place, have been watching youtube promo videos, etc), why does this process have to be such a pain?! :|
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Yeah, but shouldn't the cost of living be somewhat lower in Evanston (which is where the grad program in Psych is located)?
I wonder if that stipend is what all prospectives are offered in that program?
I got accepted to the Linguistics program at NU with the same stipend. I think its a university fellowship (1st and fifth years). So yes, if you get a university fellowship, it will be the same stipend ($20,500).
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I have 7.0/10 and have been pretty successful in my applications. I do not know how this score would translate to on a 4 point scale. It will depend on a lot of factors and varies from university to university and mine has high standards. The topper is around 9.2 and the bottom of the class is around 5.5. So my GPA might even translate to 3.0 or might not but if you look at the nonsensical way of conversion, this would get converted to a dismal 2.5/4.0
Extenuating factors do exist but they never are good enough reasons to explain away my two F's in my third semester, but the point is my GPA was once 5.2/10 (!!!) and I did well in my junior-senior years and brought it slowly and steadily up to 7.0 which is quite respectable here. So I guess they must've taken note of the upward trend. I suggest people with below 3.0 GPAs to do the same.. work hard and make sure your grade sheet reflects an upward trend. -
Ok cool.. btw, I notice that you have applied to U of Minnesota too, have you heard from them as yet? I've applied to both Psychology as well as to the new Cognitive Sciences Graduate program there. I hope I get into the Psychology program as I hear its really great..
-Vishnu
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Hi Scout44 and others would might be able to advise me,
I just got accepted to NWU and would like to know more about housing options in Evanston, not far away from the NWU campus. My monthly stipend is around $1710 before taxes. I guess I'd get around 1500 after taxes. Now, I'm an international student planning to move to Evanston with my spouse who will accompany me on a F2 dependent visa. So she will be unable to work. That puts me in a tight spot financially but I hope to make this work. I would therefore look for a 1BR apartment or a spacious enough studio for two, and can pay about $700-900(max) for some such place (and with all utilities included!). I would also need a furnished place. Do you think this would be possible?
If I spend say $900 on a place to live, would the remaining $600 be sufficient for the rest of our expenses (food, occasional visits to the Chicago city, some minimal entertainment)? We are prepared to live the simplest life possible. I also heard from a former grad student that the taxes can be claimed when filing for tax returns. Are all F1 students eligible for this? It was my understanding earlier that this was possible only when the student could show that the money went solely into educational purposes (books, tuition, etc). Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
-Vishnu
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I have now voted for computational linguistics because some of my work will involve a lot of computation as my work will be mathematically oriented since I come from a Physics background. The work at OSU, if I get the funding for which I've been nominated, would be heavily computational.. The funny thing is I've not done much on a computer except plot stuff on MATLAB and some elementary coding. I don't have an inclination for coding but if the work demands it, I'd be willing to do some. The work at NWU won't be so heavily computational but surely will involve computational work as well. If you mean computational linguistics in the sense of say research on how a software could be written to check for plagiarism by string comparison techniques, statistical averaging over the entire plagiarized term paper, etc, that's not something I'd like to do. I would however be interested in the concept of "plagiarizing of an idea" and how one could computationally recognize this. Excuse my ignorance if I do not quite capture the essence of what people normally mean by "computational linguistics".
Honest to goodness panic attacks?
in Waiting it Out
Posted
Same here!
I dreamt of getting accepted by Berkeley :| I got 2 reject emails within a few minutes of each other and I went into panic mode even though I have an acceptance already.