NC State vs UNC Chapel Hill (Linguistics MA)

[leahmd325]

Hi all,

I'm a senior who's been accepted to a few MA programs and am looking for some guidance on final decisions for where to attend my masters program.

For some background on me, I'm a linguistics student with a background in sociolinguistics, phonetics, and digital humanities. I want to focus on minority language usage (broad, I know) in my MA. By that I mean I want to do research on understudied groups in linguistics, so diversity of research is really important to me. Additionally, I plan on applying to linguistics PhD programs after finishing my MA, so I want to go to a school that will give me a fighting chance at getting into a top PhD program.

I'm having trouble deciding between these two universities because they both offer really different opportunities (UNC is more theoretical whereas NC State is more applied) but also both have research interests I really enjoy. Financially, I have more funding from UNC, but only by $2k/year. In terms of surface-level attraction to each school, I really enjoy them both but I can't get over the name recognition UNC has over NC State. My advisor says NC State has more renowned faculty but I'm just a bit adrift in my decision making process.

Any comments or advice, especially if you have experience with either school, is greatly appreciated!