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What more could you tell me about the place from the visit? I'd love to know how you perceived the place, the atmosphere, etc and what you thought about the faculty from interacting with them. I would be working predominantly with Janet Pierrehumbert if I decide to accept the offer..

Overall, I really enjoyed visiting the department. The strongest points in my mind were:

- A fantastic funding package (with summers and 2 years of fellowship included) that means you never really have to worry about money. The grad students were pretty enthusiastic about this. Funding for conferences semeed plentiful as well, and it sounds like grad students attend them quite easily.

- A really friendly and well-connected department. Interacting with the professors in both a formal (interview/tour) setting and a social setting was equally comfortable, and the interest that everyone had in one another seemed really genuine. All in all, the department seemed like a legitimately happy place to be, and I think most of us visiting were impressed with how welcoming and supportive it seemed.

- Lots of interdisciplinary work and collaboration (we had the opportunity to meet faculty in related departments during the visit), which in my mind is quite important.

- The projects students were working on seemed to be what they were truly interested in, rather than simply the agenda of their advisors.

- As you mention, no qualifying exams. Probably not a reason to pick a department on its own, but it sure is nice...

I didn't get to interact too much with Janet Pierrehumbert myself, but people that did work with her seemed to be having positive experiences. In fact, even when asked, nobody seemed to be having any really negative experiences overall. Naturally this can be attributed to some recruitment bias, but overall the students seemed sincere in their enthusiasm for the department.

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I'm a new person, just heard about the board. My interests are psycho (I have a few years of lab experience from undergrad) and now computational after reading about it and sitting in on a grad class. I'm applying to 10 schools jointly with my wife, so we're nervous about getting in. So far I've only heard one accept, my update is:

Yes: Wisconsin

No: Austin, Yale, Amherst, Cornell, Arizona

??: Michigan, Indiana, OSU, Maryland

And I just heard from Arizona/Amherst yesterday by mail.

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And I just heard from Arizona/Amherst yesterday by mail.

Welcome to our corner of the board! You've already had an effect here, since (assuming you entered your Amherst decision in the DB) as soon as I saw you got mail from UMass I actually took an hour off work and checked my PO box. Nothing.

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Overall, I really enjoyed visiting the department. The strongest points in my mind were:

- A fantastic funding package (with summers and 2 years of fellowship included) that means you never really have to worry about money. The grad students were pretty enthusiastic about this. Funding for conferences semeed plentiful as well, and it sounds like grad students attend them quite easily.

- A really friendly and well-connected department. Interacting with the professors in both a formal (interview/tour) setting and a social setting was equally comfortable, and the interest that everyone had in one another seemed really genuine. All in all, the department seemed like a legitimately happy place to be, and I think most of us visiting were impressed with how welcoming and supportive it seemed.

- Lots of interdisciplinary work and collaboration (we had the opportunity to meet faculty in related departments during the visit), which in my mind is quite important.

- The projects students were working on seemed to be what they were truly interested in, rather than simply the agenda of their advisors.

- As you mention, no qualifying exams. Probably not a reason to pick a department on its own, but it sure is nice...

I didn't get to interact too much with Janet Pierrehumbert myself, but people that did work with her seemed to be having positive experiences. In fact, even when asked, nobody seemed to be having any really negative experiences overall. Naturally this can be attributed to some recruitment bias, but overall the students seemed sincere in their enthusiasm for the department.

I'm glad to hear that! I might have financial concerns because of having to support my wife too on this stipend (as she would be unable to work due to being on a F2 dependent visa) but I think we should be able to scrape through.. There's a good chance that I'd attend NU. The interdisciplinary work at NICO is what I'm interested in most. I'm very happy that you had a good experience when you visited and this will weigh heavily in favor of NU when I sit down to make a choice. Thank you!

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Being the pessimist that I am, I'm now thinking: just because MIT said they'll make their decision by the end of the month doesn't necessarily mean that they'll let us know by the end of the month. But yes, good luck to us all!

I don't think many of us are really holding our breaths for an MIT acceptance. You've clearly got an incredibly strong app based on the places you've already been invited to, and I truly hope you get in (and decide to accept, thereby freeing up a UCLA slot :P ). I'm still crossing my fingers waiting to hear from the "lesser" places.

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I see there are a few other Yale admits out there. Are you going to accept? I'm leaning toward it (the department just hired some great people and is expanding). I'd love to know who else might be there.

I also noticed the top-notch professors recently hired there; they stole away some of the very best people from the two departments I'm hoping to decide between (I only know for sure that I'm admitted to one of the two, but I'm cautiously optimistic). If I had looked all around the country for departments, I would have very seriously considered Yale as a top choice!

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Ugh, I'm really bummed about MIT. Just this week I had a professor emailing me who wanted to see more of my work, etc. I thought that kind of interest would at least get me a spot on the wait list, but I've heard nothing.

At least I'm done now, aside from my interviews. This whole grad school thing has turned out to be kind of a bust - I didn't get in at either of my top choices, and I don't even have anything definitive from my second-tier choices. These two interviews are going to be very stressful.

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I got an acceptance today from U of Georgia, close to my last choice. I've been rejected from everywhere else so far (Stanford, UCSD, UT Austin, Arizona) and am still waiting to hear from UCSC (close to my first choice) but not holding my breath. I have to wait another week to hear about money. I'm thinking I won't go without a free ride since I've barely even heard of the UG ling dept. Anyone else know anything about this school? I will be looking for a job when I'm done, and although I tell myself my work speaks for itself, its possible coming from a no-name dept will not look good. So I'm asking you people to reassure me, and tell me all about how UG is an up and coming dept with lots of interesting projects and work. . . Its hard to get a feel for a dept from the website, and I suppose I'll go and visit before I decide. . . what do you all think? Anyone else here accepting their bottom of the barrel choice? This is good, right? Why do I feel so nervous?

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chillofrito, if U of G does fund you, you might consider going and then trying to transfer to a department you like more, after they've awarded you an MA. At least that way, you have your foot in the door, get to start doing graduate-level linguistics ASAP, and improve your r

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I got an acceptance today from U of Georgia, close to my last choice. I've been rejected from everywhere else so far (Stanford, UCSD, UT Austin, Arizona) and am still waiting to hear from UCSC (close to my first choice) but not holding my breath. I have to wait another week to hear about money. I'm thinking I won't go without a free ride since I've barely even heard of the UG ling dept. Anyone else know anything about this school?

I know nothing about the school, sorry. I guess it depends on what you want to study and how well they serve that though. I went to their page and it looks like they have one of those ling depts. that's made up of people from a number of different departments who have an interest or side-specialty in linguistics. I know you can get all this from the website, but maybe broken down here it'll be helpful. If you watch Numbers, imagine Charlie writing this on a clear board :D

Professor:Department

1 Anthropology

1 Artificial Intelligence Center

1 College of Family and Consumer Sciences

1 Communication Sciences and Disorders

1 Distinguished Research Classics

1 Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology

1 Humanities

1 Speech Communication and Language and Literacy Education

3 Comparative Literature

3 Religion

4 Germanic and Slavic Languages

5 English

5 Language and Literacy Education

8 Romance Languages

PhD Students:Track

1 Language Theory

5 Historical Linguistics

9 Language Variation and Sociolinguistics

9 Second Language Acquisition

If you want to do Romance or Germanic linguistics, or L2 stuff, this is probably a great place. It doesn't look that good for theory.

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That's a nice analysis. Though I note that the description of the faculty isn't as bleak as it looks at first: rather than having an interest in linguistics, a lot of them are in fact real linguists. I have a strong interest in theory but have so far worked in Romance theory so it might not be a bad fit. It might be fun to be one of the only theory students. I guess it all comes down to money.

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Though I note that the description of the faculty isn't as bleak as it looks at first: rather than having an interest in linguistics, a lot of them are in fact real linguists.

Oh no doubt. They wouldn't have an accredited program if they weren't :) And even the top theory departments are bolstered by valuable contributions from experts in different departments, so I'm in no way saying it invalidates the program. For me the lack of strong theory bent would be a dealbreaker though.

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For University of Georgia, it looks like Alexander Williams is their theoretician. While I don't know him personally, he taught at my college a few years back and was, apparently, a good teacher and does interesting work (syntax). Also, if you go through his CV, he has had job talks at very, very good schools.

Good luck!

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I haven't heard anything yet.

Heard back today: rejected. I'm actually not at all disappointed, though, because I was starting to feel that I wasn't a very good fit for their interests anyway. Plus, I already have enough choices to contend with. So yeah.

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I see there are a few other Yale admits out there. Are you going to accept? I'm leaning toward it (the department just hired some great people and is expanding). I'd love to know who else might be there.

I'm one of the other admits, GenevaLing. Yale has been one of my top choices since I started thinking about which grad schools to apply to. I have to go visit again, and hopefully sit in on a class or two and meet some of the students. In any event, though, it's a great program and I am very seriously considering it.

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