yiqiu1989

Thank you guys so much for your opinions. It seems that all of you suggest me to go to UC Davis. Aha, but all of my friends in my country suggest me to go to SUNY Buffalo. I know it is quite risky for me to go to a program without funding, but I know several professors in SUNY Buffalo do typology in approaches which are exactly similar to mine. So you guys may know that my approach is quite functionally-oriented (quite non-mainstream in US). But Hawkins in Davis do typology in a kind of way which is more formal. I don't know whether the word "formal" can exactly characterize his approach. But I do think his approach does not suit me to a T. As for funding, I know that none of the few students from my country attending the linguistic PHD program in SUNY Buffalo ever obtained fellowship when they were admitted to this program. It sounds pretty bad. They all paid tuition fees for their first year study. But in second year, most of them successfully secured financial support via being employed as TA. In fact, the so-called "fellowship" in SUNY Buffalo is tied with a 4-year TA. Then for those who are not funded, they have to apply for TA year after TA (except the first year). Yet I know it is still risky because places of TA available should first satisfy those fellows. All my friends in my country suggest me to go SUNY Buffalo because they consider "match" is the most important factor. Besides, some professors in Buffalo are quite influential in functionalist camp. My friends do believe that an influential professor plus a match of interest counts everything. And it does sound that the financial situation in Buffalo is not exceedingly bad because I may still manage to secure partial funding in subsequent years as long as my scholastic performance is not so awful. So now I am more torn between the two schools when I know you guys suggest me to go to UC Davis, ahaaaaa.

Hello, everyone. I applied for several 2014 fall linguistic programs (PHD). Now I got two admissions, one is SUNY Buffalo and the other is UC Davis. Currently, my concentration is linguistic typology. Now the situation is like this: SUNY Buffalo only admits me without funding (at least for the first year, because they say that I do not meet the school's presidential fellowship criteria, but I still have chances to be employed as TA in subsequent years if my academic performance is excellent). But UC Davis would like to accept me with funding (TA). I am torn between the two schools. It does seem that SUNY Buffalo is better than UC Davis in linguistic typology; but UC Davis is strong in mind/brain/language. If I choose to go to UC Davis, of course, I would like to try its strongest subfield, but I also doubt whether I can survive the whole program there because I simply have no background of psychology (or any other empirical studies). Of course, this is my own understanding. In fact, I am an international student. Linguistics in my country is rather undeveloped (we do not have any undergraduate major and I study linguistics mainly all by myself), so I am not so sure about these two schools in US. As for the reason why I applied for these schools, it is fairly simple----they have the subfield of linguistic typology in their programs. I know some of you guys in this forum are native Americans and have already been studying in a linguistic PHD program, can you give me some advice?