Linguistics Applicants for Fall 2021

[iCelestia]

On 2/20/2021 at 10:01 AM, Saina92 said:

Thank you very much Ivan. Unfortunately, I have not received any offers yet. Still waiting to see what happens and this waiting time is such a torture tbh ☹️

Fingers crossed 

Good to see fellow Iranians here. Hi Saina. may I ask which grade you're applying for? 

[Saina92]

1 hour ago, iCelestia said:

Good to see fellow Iranians here. Hi Saina. may I ask which grade you're applying for? 

Hi iCelestia,

Thank you! I have applied for both PhD and MA positions. Actually, since I already have an MA, I have only applied for one MA position. The rest are PhDs. How about you?

[iCelestia]

2 minutes ago, Saina92 said:

Hi iCelestia,

Thank you! I have applied for both PhD and MA positions. Actually, since I already have an MA, I have only applied for one MA position. The rest are PhDs. How about you?

I am to defend my M.A. thesis in September. So I'm doing my due diligence!!! for possible Ph.D. programs in UK,US, and CA. I sincerely hope you receive good news soon.

[Saina92]

24 minutes ago, iCelestia said:

I am to defend my M.A. thesis in September. So I'm doing my due diligence!!! for possible Ph.D. programs in UK,US, and CA. I sincerely hope you receive good news soon.

Awesome! Thank you very much for your positive vibe! I hope you have a great defense session and succeed in your future plans for entering a PhD program ☺️

[best cranberry]

@IvanC it took me a while to respond to your situation because I forgot my log in but your situation with school X broke my heart. I’m rooting for you to get into your other options ?

[IvanC]

1 minute ago, LondonN said:

@IvanC it took me a while to respond to your situation because I forgot my log in but your situation with school X broke my heart. I’m rooting for you to get into your other options ?

Thank you so much! I have hope I’ll be officially accepted to another school! ?

[kso1634]

Is anyone else feeling inadequate throughout this admissions cycle? I applied to PhD programs and kept getting differed to the MA programs (not that there's anything wrong with MAs, funding is just the biggest issue for me). And I get into my dream program and am dependent on other people to accept or decline offers to see if I get funded, which determines if I can go or not. It just kind of sucks and I'm feeling a little hopeless right now. 

[Saina92]

42 minutes ago, kso1634 said:

Is anyone else feeling inadequate throughout this admissions cycle? I applied to PhD programs and kept getting differed to the MA programs (not that there's anything wrong with MAs, funding is just the biggest issue for me). And I get into my dream program and am dependent on other people to accept or decline offers to see if I get funded, which determines if I can go or not. It just kind of sucks and I'm feeling a little hopeless right now. 

Hi

I totally understand you and please know that such feelings are very natural. Do not lose your hope and stay positive. You are not inadequate! The problem is that this year seems to be much more competitive than the previous ones. Stay strong and I hope you will get admitted with a good funding package! 

[kso1634]

19 hours ago, Saina92 said:

Hi

I totally understand you and please know that such feelings are very natural. Do not lose your hope and stay positive. You are not inadequate! The problem is that this year seems to be much more competitive than the previous ones. Stay strong and I hope you will get admitted with a good funding package! 

Thank you so much! I just had a virtual visit with one of my POIs and I'm feeling a lot better after it in terms of feeling like my ideas and dreams are even good enough. Still no word on funding, but I've kind of resigned myself to simply having to wait it out.

[Saina92]

20 minutes ago, kso1634 said:

Thank you so much! I just had a virtual visit with one of my POIs and I'm feeling a lot better after it in terms of feeling like my ideas and dreams are even good enough. Still no word on funding, but I've kind of resigned myself to simply having to wait it out.

I am very happy to hear that. Great news! Fingers crossed 

[best cranberry]

For anyone who’s been accepted/committed to a program, has anyone gotten cold feet? Like I feel really nervous not like I won’t do well but just like I’m scared of making the wrong choice

[kso1634]

3 minutes ago, LondonN said:

For anyone who’s been accepted/committed to a program, has anyone gotten cold feet? Like I feel really nervous not like I won’t do well but just like I’m scared of making the wrong choice

I totally get that! I'm looking at apartments in Bloomington (rather prematurely I might add as they told me they're still working on a funding package when I was offered an admitted student visit). I'm just really excited, but also nervous because of moving and meeting new people and that I won't do as well as I hope to or not meet expectations.

[best cranberry]

19 minutes ago, kso1634 said:

I totally get that! I'm looking at apartments in Bloomington (rather prematurely I might add as they told me they're still working on a funding package when I was offered an admitted student visit). I'm just really excited, but also nervous because of moving and meeting new people and that I won't do as well as I hope to or not meet expectations.

Oh thank god I’m not the only one x) like because I worked for so long to get here, it took a while for the news to sink in and now that it has, I’m simultaneous grateful and terrified ?

[paulacole]

9 hours ago, LondonN said:

For anyone who’s been accepted/committed to a program, has anyone gotten cold feet? Like I feel really nervous not like I won’t do well but just like I’m scared of making the wrong choice

Yes! Exactly this and beyond... not only am I afraid of making the wrong choice of school, but I'm also afraid of making the wrong life choice!

Tbh I wanted to post something similar but I have been afraid to say it out loud. How can we have worked so hard, only to start having second thoughts once the acceptances start coming in?! I suppose it might be weirder to be having absolutely no doubts, though.

I'm sure you'll be happy with whatever you choose though - every decision is the right decision!

 

[best cranberry]

4 hours ago, paulacole said:

Yes! Exactly this and beyond... not only am I afraid of making the wrong choice of school, but I'm also afraid of making the wrong life choice!

Tbh I wanted to post something similar but I have been afraid to say it out loud. How can we have worked so hard, only to start having second thoughts once the acceptances start coming in?! I suppose it might be weirder to be having absolutely no doubts, though.

I'm sure you'll be happy with whatever you choose though - every decision is the right decision!

 

Yeah I hesitated posting it because I didn’t want to come off as ungrateful ?

[HuenLing]

Hi guys! I hope you are doing very well. I am recently very upset because my offer was rescinded. I received a Ph.D. offer in linguistics from KU, but I was told last night that due to COVID-related financial constraints, they can only accept two students, so they withdraw the offer and I was moved to the waitlist. It is very disheartening. I have no other funding offers for now and it seems I will be very likely to take a gap year and reapply next academic year. I could not do anything right now. I'm posting this because it seems that unprecedented things are happening which we do not expect at all.

Edited March 3, 2021 by HuenLing
typo

[Mrotonya]

3 hours ago, HuenLing said:

Hi guys! I hope you are doing very well. I am recently very upset because my offer was rescinded. I received a Ph.D. offer in linguistics from KU, but I was told last night that due to COVID-related financial constraints, they can only accept two students, so they withdraw the offer and I was moved to the waitlist. It is very disheartening. I have no other funding offers for now and it seems I will be very likely to take a gap year and reapply next academic year. I could not do anything right now. I'm posting this because it seems that unprecedented things are happening which we do not expect at all.

I am so sorry to hear this. Please make sure that next time you make your decision right away, especially if you think that you are most likely to accept the offer. It could be illegal, and you could file a lawsuit if they rescinded your offer while you have already committed. I hope this will be a lesson for the rest of us. Last year the same situation happened at the UA: They minimized the amount of stipend to the applicants who didn't accept their offers "on time" although their offers showed that they still had time to make a decision. 

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is just my opinion.

[IvanC]

Hi everyone!

I was OFFICIALLY accepted to Illinois! I’m so happy! 
 

Thanks for all the prayers and positive thoughts! ??✨

[goodvibesandall]

1 hour ago, IvanC said:

Hi everyone!

I was OFFICIALLY accepted to Illinois! I’m so happy! 
 

Thanks for all the prayers and positive thoughts! ??✨

Woohoo! 

[paulacole]

16 hours ago, IvanC said:

Hi everyone!

I was OFFICIALLY accepted to Illinois! I’m so happy! 
 

Thanks for all the prayers and positive thoughts! ??✨

GO IVAN!

[best cranberry]

On 3/4/2021 at 11:17 PM, IvanC said:

Hi everyone!

I was OFFICIALLY accepted to Illinois! I’m so happy! 
 

Thanks for all the prayers and positive thoughts! ??✨

WOOOOOOOO

[AnxiousBeaver]

On 3/4/2021 at 11:17 PM, IvanC said:

Hi everyone!

I was OFFICIALLY accepted to Illinois! I’m so happy! 
 

Thanks for all the prayers and positive thoughts! ??✨

congrats Ivan! So excited and proud of you! Did you receive your funding offer yet?

[VLE]

Hello everyone, 

I just read all your conversations and I must say I feel really happy about the people that got accepted to their program of choice. I was not accepted to the two programs I applied to this year, and even though I thought about this year's application as an "experience", I do feel really sad. I don't know what I did wrong, but I think I will figure it out. I would really appreciate your insight here. I might have applied to a program that does not really match my interests. I assure you I did extensive research on the Universities programs, but still I feel like I have a strong topic, but maybe my SOP was not strong enough. 

So I applied to Georgetown (socio) and Chicago (Ling anthropology) and my topic is related to the linguistic experiences of migrant minors (to be very general). I feel really passionate about my topic, but right now, it feels like I should be applying to other type of programs like SLA(T), educational linguistics, etc. 

 

Does anyone have a focus on language and migration? I would really love to hear/read your ideas. 

 

Again, congrats to those accepted!!! :D 

[JessC]

 

4 hours ago, VLE said:

Hello everyone, 

I just read all your conversations and I must say I feel really happy about the people that got accepted to their program of choice. I was not accepted to the two programs I applied to this year, and even though I thought about this year's application as an "experience", I do feel really sad. I don't know what I did wrong, but I think I will figure it out. I would really appreciate your insight here. I might have applied to a program that does not really match my interests. I assure you I did extensive research on the Universities programs, but still I feel like I have a strong topic, but maybe my SOP was not strong enough. 

So I applied to Georgetown (socio) and Chicago (Ling anthropology) and my topic is related to the linguistic experiences of migrant minors (to be very general). I feel really passionate about my topic, but right now, it feels like I should be applying to other type of programs like SLA(T), educational linguistics, etc. 

 

Does anyone have a focus on language and migration? I would really love to hear/read your ideas. 

 

Again, congrats to those accepted!!!

Hey!

I was in your same situation. I felt defeated after receiving my rejection letter last year and that feeling lingered into this application cycle--so much so that I wanted to give up on linguistics as a whole. I can't offer many words of advice on how to get rid of the feeling but I can share some of the things that I did this application cycle that strengthened my application, more specifically my SOP. 

I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I swear this changed the way I write completely. I had a SOP ready to send but after reading this I reframed the whole thing and got a much stronger essay out of it.

Along with On Writing Well, I read Graduate School Admission Essays by Donald Asher. I went through the samples and selected bits and pieces from them and incorporated them into my SOP (in my own way of course).

I took the following advice into account _deeply_:

- show them you have plans for after the degree

- show them what you want them to know without explicitly stating what you want them to know about you. This is better explained in the Asher book but I'm adding it here because it really stuck with me.

- “draw a meaningful thread through most major events in my life and show how those antecedents compelled me to go to grad school” (found in the link below)

This link has really helpful tips: http://thespeechblog.com/making-your-personal-statement-stand-out/ 

These are some of the things that I found that moved the needle for _me_. I hope you find some benefit in these resources as well.

[VLE]

21 hours ago, JessC said:

 

Hey!

I was in your same situation. I felt defeated after receiving my rejection letter last year and that feeling lingered into this application cycle--so much so that I wanted to give up on linguistics as a whole. I can't offer many words of advice on how to get rid of the feeling but I can share some of the things that I did this application cycle that strengthened my application, more specifically my SOP. 

I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I swear this changed the way I write completely. I had a SOP ready to send but after reading this I reframed the whole thing and got a much stronger essay out of it.

Along with On Writing Well, I read Graduate School Admission Essays by Donald Asher. I went through the samples and selected bits and pieces from them and incorporated them into my SOP (in my own way of course).

I took the following advice into account _deeply_:

- show them you have plans for after the degree

- show them what you want them to know without explicitly stating what you want them to know about you. This is better explained in the Asher book but I'm adding it here because it really stuck with me.

- “draw a meaningful thread through most major events in my life and show how those antecedents compelled me to go to grad school” (found in the link below)

This link has really helpful tips: http://thespeechblog.com/making-your-personal-statement-stand-out/ 

These are some of the things that I found that moved the needle for _me_. I hope you find some benefit in these resources as well.

Hi Jess!,

This is actually very good advice! I do feel a little deflated as I really want to do a PhD and do research in this topic as my way of living. I also love teaching, so this is a little discouraging. Like I said, this was my first try in the American system, so I think I really have to work harder next year. 

I will def. read the texts you mentioned and give my writing skills a boost. I am still finishing an MA in social sciences, so I still have a lot of adrenaline going on. I am in the process of making interviews and analyzing the data, so I feel really excited about the writing process. I haven't got much time to feel bummed, so I will get to work and get better at researching, writing and proposing. 

Do you think I should contact both universities and ask for an evaluation? I would really like to know what the evaluators thought about my whole application. Is this possible? Is it something schools could/would be willing to do?

I figured that if I want to apply again next year I might as well correct/improve my application based on what the evaluators thought of it. 

Again! Thank you for reading this and giving an opinion on it.

May I ask what is your research about? 

-V