esgalerin

Look at the faculty listings at schools that you're interested in and some that you're not. You should be able to figure out whether a school will be a good fit for you based on what the faculty's research interests are. Don't apply to a school just because it has a big name. If your interests don't match theirs, you almost certainly won't get in. If you haven't been out of school for too long, I'd also suggest getting in touch with your former professors and asking for advice on applying to grad schools. If you get lucky, they might have some suggestions on schools for you to check out. (You're going to have to contact them eventually for letters of recommendation anyway, so you might as well get that out of the way too.)

I'm not sure that you need to convince anybody of the connectedness of your previous degrees to the one you're applying for. It seems to me that your SOP should mainly answer three questions: What do you want to do? How are you prepared to do it? and Why should you do it here (the school that you're writing to)? Of course you can go beyond answering these questions, but when you're limited in how much you can say, I'd stick to those main points. Good luck with your applications!

Davis is very much a college town, so there are a ton of apartments near campus. Plus, it's a very small, so there is no part of town that's more than about 5 miles from the main part of campus. You can peruse your apartment choices (and anything else you're curious about) on Davis Wiki. Even if you live on the edge of town, there's a very comprehensive bus system that has stops within reasonable walking distance of most apartment complexes. If you have a car, you may want to consider living in a nearby town instead because housing in Davis tends to be on the expensive end of things. Cheapest place I ever lived was a 2-bedroom for about $1000/mo that seemed like it hadn't been renovated since the 80's. (On the other hand, I've heard that renting a house in Davis with a few other people is cheaper than living in an apartment, but I've never looked into it very much myself.) Like any town, there's the occasional violent crime in Davis, but it's extremely rare. I (as a fairly small female) would have no qualms walking through town in the middle of the night. The biggest thing you'd need to watch out for is theft (especially bike theft) and that can be avoided a lot of the time by being smart. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions about Davis. Make sure to look through the threads that already exist on the cities you're interested in also. They'll already have answered a lot of your questions.

Nothing to contribute since I haven't applied yet, but I'm eager to see what other people have to say. Thanks so much for that link and for starting this thread!

Thank you! Good luck yourself! (:

I don't have any concrete advice to give, as I'm going to be applying this fall myself. I just wanted to say that I've been wondering the same thing myself lately. On one hand, it's summer vacation right now. Maybe professors won't be as eager to hear from prospective students so early in the season. And if they just get a quick email now, they might not remember by the time applications come around. On the other hand, if I do email them in September like I originally planned to, they'll probably be inundated with similar emails as well as work emails as the academic year starts up. =/ I was also thinking that grad students doing research related to what I want to do might be more inclined to reply on account of having gone through this process more recently than their professors have and probably not being quite as busy. Is it standard practice to email grad students directly, though? I'm guessing that a lot of it just depends on the individual, but it'd be nice to have a few guidelines about what's acceptable.

Well, you seem to both want and need a PhD to get to where you want to go. No one but you can determine whether that's the right path for you. As for the more pragmatic side of the job search, I'll leave that for somebody else to comment on.

Haha, the system probably just rounds your GPA to the nearest thousandth, and you just happen to have ended up in that unenviable position of being so close, yet so far. Sorry for getting sidetracked with the applied linguistics thing. I didn't know that there were such things as ESL/EFL or SLA PhDs. They just look like applied linguistics to me. (Of course, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) If you mainly want to teach ESL, I don't think you need a PhD for that. At the least, it's certainly not a requirement, but I'm guessing that you think it might make you a more desirable job applicant? You'll have to wait for someone more familiar with the ESL job market to comment on that.

What do you want to do with your PhD? Do you want to do research on language acquisition/learning, or do you want to teach ESL? You might consider looking into linguistics programs that specialize in applied linguistics. A lot of linguistics programs seem to offer full funding (tuition + stipend) for PhD students. The only school I can suggest for that is UC Davis. (Full disclosure: I'm doing undergrad here right now.) I don't actually know very much about the specifics of the program or the research because it's not my field, but I can tell you it gets HOT here. As of this typing it's 90ºF out, and this is considered a fairly cool day. Over the weekend, it's supposed to hit 104º. If that's the sort of thing you're looking for, you'll have to wait for people who actually know a thing or two about applied linguistics to give you better recommendations. I will say that from what I've heard, it really is a tough job market out there for Linguistics PhDs. But if it's what you want, go for it. At least you won't have to sink too much money into it. (Your GPA is 3.999? They couldn't have rounded up?)

From what I can tell, MA programs are a lot less competitive than PhD programs are. You say that you "used to have" a minor in Econ, so I assume that you stopped taking Econ classes partway through undergrad. Presumably your grades went up after that? I think if you mention briefly in a personal statement/SoP that your poor grades came from an unrelated field, you should be okay. Again, though, you should take everything I say with a grain of salt since I haven't been through this myself. If it makes you feel any better, I'm applying to PhD programs with an overall GPA of 2.9. I've had my panicky moments about whether any grad program would want me and a couple of my profs have had to talk me down. They tell me that because I have a 3.8 GPA if I only take the past two years into account, I shouldn't have to worry too much. One told me that he would actually look favorably on that kind of growth (but in my case, there is a very marked contrast between my first two years and my last two years). My point is that if my professors seem to think I can get into a PhD program with a 2.9 GPA (below the GPA cutoff at a lot of places :S), you can probably get into an MA with a 3.3. Of course, your LoRs and SoP will have to be stronger than those of people with crazy-good GPAs, but most of them are probably going to PhDs.

Any other pre-application people going? Wanna come wander around with me? :3 Or for that matter, anyone currently a student there want to show me/us around and tell me/us about your school? By the way, would it be appropriate to try and arrange a meeting with my PoI while I'm there? I know it's sort of early to be contacting schools, and I don't want to impose when he might be taking a break for the summer. (I don't even really know how campus visits normally work. As far as I know, departments invite candidates on their short list of possible admits. Would it be frowned upon to try to visit by yourself?) Edit: Turns out that Rackham's having an open house on June 28th.

Speaking as somebody who has had zero experience applying to grad schools yet, I think you're on the right track. According to one of my professors, master's programs for people who need a chance to explore some more or to build up the requisite linguistics background before going for a PhD, and that sounds very much like the boat you're in. I wouldn't worry too much about your GPA. I think a 3.8 in French shows that a) you have some sort of interest in language, and you can work hard when the subject is something that you're interested in. It should help if you also got good grades in the linguistics-related classes you took. The one problem that I see with your plan, though, is that terminal MA programs in non-applied linguistics seem to be few and far between. If you can find one that suits you, great. (I know that UC Davis just started one recently if that's any help.) If not, it might be better to see if you can take linguistics courses as a non-degree student somewhere.

Cool. Thanks for the info, guys. I'll take a look at Indiana for sure.