Funding in so-so program, no funding in dream program...

[lagarconne]

I am quickly moving into panic/crisis mode.

My dream program accepted me. Absolutely no funding.

Another program, that is a bit too euro-centric for me and doesn't focus as much on my chosen areas has accepted me with an out-of-state tuition waiver and TA position.

I mean, would it be completely nuts to turn down funding and pay full out of state tuition for my dream program, with the possibility of a TA position for my next year (but no guarantee)?

I have heard many times that going into debt for a humanities degree is not wise.

Thoughts?

[fuzzylogician]

Is this a PhD or an MA program? How much debt will you go into? I would certainly advise against doing an unfunded PhD; I'm less familiar with the funding situation for MAs in the US but I'd probably advise against doing an unfunded MA too. Can you reapply to your dream program next year? Are they more likely to have funding then? It looks like they want you there, so I think it's completely fair to be very honest with them, tell them they are your dream program and you would *love* to accept the offer but you can't afford to take on that kind of debt. You'll apply again this year and if there is funding, you will definitely come. It's a risk but it could pay off, and in my opinion it's just not worth it to get into debt otherwise. Meanwhile if you can defer your other offer for one year and work full time this year, that's probably the best solution I can see.

[Athenrein]

I haven't heard back from anyone yet, but this is the exact thing I'm scared of. I really don't want (more) debt. Right now the loans from my MLIS are manageable, but I really don't want out-of-state tuition loans.

Personally if I were in your situation, if it were an MA program, I would probably go to the school that offers funding even if it's not a perfect fit. Though from what I've seen for US schools, most MAs aren't usually funded. But for a PhD, I would follow fuzzylogician's advice and try to get funding for the dream school next year. For med, psychology, engineering, or the hard sciences, the debt is probably worth it, but for social sciences / humanities, it isn't.

[PhDreaming]

lagarconne - my advisor (a linguistic anthropologist) told me to NEVER pay for a PhD. If you do, you are doing it wrong. If you are the right fit for a program, they will want you and they will fund you.

Kind of blunt but I think she makes a good point. I am paying for my M.A. right now but am only applying to schools that I know will be able/willing to fund me for the PhD level work.

[charlemagne88]

On 1/6/2012 at 11:22 PM, PhDreaming said:

lagarconne - my advisor (a linguistic anthropologist) told me to NEVER pay for a PhD. If you do, you are doing it wrong. If you are the right fit for a program, they will want you and they will fund you.

 

Kind of blunt but I think she makes a good point. I am paying for my M.A. right now but am only applying to schools that I know will be able/willing to fund me for the PhD level work.

I see that this is super old now, so I don't expect you to see this or even respond, but if you do I'd be thrilled. I'm having the hard choice of having to choose between CU-Boulder and Indiana University Bloomington. I'm confident I will like CO more than IN, but I'm worried that CU doesn't really offer much in terms of phonology... can you relieve any of my hesitation about the program???

[fuzzylogician]

2 hours ago, charlemagne88 said:

I see that this is super old now, so I don't expect you to see this or even respond, but if you do I'd be thrilled. I'm having the hard choice of having to choose between CU-Boulder and Indiana University Bloomington. I'm confident I will like CO more than IN, but I'm worried that CU doesn't really offer much in terms of phonology... can you relieve any of my hesitation about the program???

You could always start a new thread if you think on one will see this one... 

Here are some questions to think of as a first step: is this a Masters or a PhD? If it's a Masters, are you planning to apply for a PhD after, and is it a one-year or a two-year program? Did you get to visit one or both places? Did you meet your potential advisors? 

I will be the first to say that location is important (to me), but there are other factors that would weigh in on my decision, too. 

[historicallinguist]

On April 22, 2016 at 10:08 AM, charlemagne88 said:

I see that this is super old now, so I don't expect you to see this or even respond, but if you do I'd be thrilled. I'm having the hard choice of having to choose between CU-Boulder and Indiana University Bloomington. I'm confident I will like CO more than IN, but I'm worried that CU doesn't really offer much in terms of phonology... can you relieve any of my hesitation about the program???

What about funding? Which school offers you more funding? Also, what about fit? Are you really wanting to do phonology yet the school that offers you the better funding does not offer what you want in phonology? If this is the case, all you need to do is to consider whether you want to take priority to get into a program with better academic support but less financial support, or the other way around, i.e., with more financial support but less appropriate academic support.

[charlemagne88]

17 hours ago, historicallinguist said:

What about funding? Which school offers you more funding? Also, what about fit? Are you really wanting to do phonology yet the school that offers you the better funding does not offer what you want in phonology? If this is the case, all you need to do is to consider whether you want to take priority to get into a program with better academic support but less financial support, or the other way around, i.e., with more financial support but less appropriate academic support.

The funding is basically the same, with a slight advantage to Indiana because it's a lot cheaper to live there. Indiana definatly would have more academic support -especially because I can work inter-departmentally... 

 

I feel that both schools are great, and I have to choose between what school would support my passion (Indiana) and what school is "smart" in terms of career choice (Colorado). -Colorado has a strong comp ling program and I'm confident I could get a job after the MA if I can't get into a PhD program where as I might not have the same chance after the MA in Indiana....  

 

Also I've already confirmed in Boulder, but then I got a late offer from Indiana which is another problem. agh

On 4/22/2016 at 0:20 PM, fuzzylogician said:

You could always start a new thread if you think on one will see this one... 

Here are some questions to think of as a first step: is this a Masters or a PhD? If it's a Masters, are you planning to apply for a PhD after, and is it a one-year or a two-year program? Did you get to visit one or both places? Did you meet your potential advisors? 

I will be the first to say that location is important (to me), but there are other factors that would weigh in on my decision, too. 

 

Edited April 24, 2016 by charlemagne88

[rising_star]

@charlemagne88, are you saying that Indiana has better academic support and can support your passion but that you wouldn't be able to get a job post MA if you went there? That doesn't really make sense to me. If you're able to grow and thrive academically and pursue what you're interested in, you should be making yourself competitive for jobs in the process...

[fuzzylogician]

If you aren't confident you could get a job with a degree from Indiana then I don't understand why it has an advantage in your mind. Following your passion is great, but eventually you're going to want to be able to put dinner on the table. That aside, passions change. Your current interests are based on fairly minimal exposure to the field through an undergraduate degree. You are likely to be exposed to new ideas in grad school and you might decide to follow one of them; this is also true for the MA to PhD transition, so keep that in mind. And finally, you've already committed to another school, so we really shouldn't be having this conversation at all. 

[charlemagne88]

On 4/24/2016 at 0:48 PM, fuzzylogician said:

If you aren't confident you could get a job with a degree from Indiana then I don't understand why it has an advantage in your mind. Following your passion is great, but eventually you're going to want to be able to put dinner on the table. That aside, passions change. Your current interests are based on fairly minimal exposure to the field through an undergraduate degree. You are likely to be exposed to new ideas in grad school and you might decide to follow one of them; this is also true for the MA to PhD transition, so keep that in mind. And finally, you've already committed to another school, so we really shouldn't be having this conversation at all. 

Just that I'm confident going with an MA in comp ling has more applications in "the real world" than does an MA in phonology.. that's all I meant by that. You've made a good point that my project is based on my "limited" exposure to linguistics as an undergraduate -although I have already studied and taken many graduate level course work at my current institution. 

 

On 4/24/2016 at 0:09 PM, rising_star said:

@charlemagne88, are you saying that Indiana has better academic support and can support your passion but that you wouldn't be able to get a job post MA if you went there? That doesn't really make sense to me. If you're able to grow and thrive academically and pursue what you're interested in, you should be making yourself competitive for jobs in the process...

 

[fuzzylogician]

56 minutes ago, charlemagne88 said:

Just that I'm confident going with an MA in comp ling has more applications in "the real world" than does an MA in phonology.. that's all I meant by that. You've made a good point that my project is based on my "limited" exposure to linguistics as an undergraduate -although I have already studied and taken many graduate level course work at my current institution. 

I don't mean to disregard your experience at all. I am just saying this as someone who came in with a BA where I took some MA courses and then did an MA before applying for a PhD in the States, and had a change in both the subfield I am interested in and the methodologies I use between those earlier degrees and graduating with my PhD. My core interests probably haven't changed and I think it's possible to find a unifying theme between my earliest undergrad papers and my dissertation and current work. But some things have definitely been refined and changed, at least in part through exposure to ideas I just wasn't aware of before, and through working with people who had different approaches than mine. If I had chosen a different school for my PhD, that was better aligned with my narrow interests at the time, I probably would have come out a different linguist with a different dissertation, but I am very happy to have gone to a school that allowed me to explore and change my way of doing things. In the end, what mattered most was the people I was working with, much more than the specifics of the project I chose. Point being, I don't think that there is just one choice that's "right", it depends on many factors. Location is one of them; decent advising is a big one, and funding is important. Also your post-degree plans and which degree will give you more/better opportunities. It's up to you to decide and again, I don't think there is just one correct choice. I am just trying to spell out what all the different considerations might be. 

[historicallinguist]

12 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

through working with people who had different approaches than mine

Just have some quick thoughts on methodology. While different approaches may achieve the some goal or goals in the end, the works each method entails vary greatly. Method A entail a great deal of works, whether it is in terms of collecting data or analyzing data, etc, in order to either prove or disprove a hypothesis, whereas Method B entail very little work to get the proof or disproof. If we agree that effectiveness=WORK/TIME for a certain goal and that the time we have is a constant (or finite), and, if we agree that we should be effective, then we want to minimize the work we do in order to achieve the goal so as to be effective. In this case, I think method A should be abolished, and Method B should be adopted unless a more effective NEW method C appears. Method A should only be of interest to history of linguistics, not linguistics. An analogy can be found in the field of physics. Instead of studying Aristotelian physics, we study Newtonian physics in high-school and college in our physics classes. Aristotelian physics is only of interest to the history of physics, not modern physics. Thus, I think part of the linguistic inquiry is to find the most effective way (i.e. entailing the least amount of work possible) to understand language. 

[fuzzylogician]

Your post is so incredibly vague. If Method A scholars and Method B scholars agree that B is better than A, then of course this is right and everyone will then be teaching B and perhaps surveying A in some seminar or showing it as an old way of doing things in an intro. This happens.* Another thing that happens is that A scholars don't agree that B is better: B applies to a different data set, has its own issues and limitations, makes some bad predictions of its own. Now we're in a less ideal but far more realistic debate over which is better. You may think that B, but more often than not even if I (and most other linguists) agree with you, it's important to note that A does have a point. There will be ways in which B is not perfect, and most likely B (or A) is another step in our path of improving our theories and results. The next step in our theory could be an improved B, or an improved A, or a C that takes from both and maybe from some other theories as well. So best you can do is either know you are an A/B scholar and just do that, or (better, especially for a beginning scholar), go to an open-minded place that lets you study both and supports you in choosing which one to use in your work.

*Note here that your example refers to theories that are 2000 years apart, more or less. But what I assume you actually had in mind are theories that are at best 50 years apart. Makes it more complicated to have the perspective to know which is right and which is wrong, and it's a bit arrogant, if you ask me, to assume that there even is a fully right and a fully wrong theory. And as for Newtonian physics, that is an interesting example, because we actually know that it is technically "wrong", but still very useful in many many cases, and worth teaching alongside quantum physics.