McGill

[Epyion]

I applied to McGill this application season (to start sept2011)and would like to share some of the info/impressions I received.

I applied for the MA ling program and was invited for an informal interview from a prof interested in my application.

- Concerning BA to PhD applications: During the interview, he asked why I did NOT apply for the PhD program. Which I thought was weird since, as has been commented on above, in Canada its normal to get an MA before a PhD. So YES, McGill will and does consider applications straight from BA to PhD, and it seems likes it is even preferred in some situations.

- Importance was placed on having participated in a project in an area your interested in studying.

- I was told by the Graduate Chair that many apply that haven't majored in linguistics and that's not seen as a problem, instead they care about whether you are focused and know what you want to research to a certain extent

After the interview, I was ultimately rejected because the prof realized that our interests didn't align, which was an interesting experience because McGill's ling program advertises itself as course-based and non-thesis. The prof was a sociolinguistics prof and I'm not really into sociolinguistics and was only interested in going to McGill for their strong theoretical program. So I guess you can say the rejection was mutual, but part of me wishes I pretend to want to study it so that I could get accepted and then change my mind about what I wanted to research in later, but that would've led to other complicated problems probably...

Anyways, some advice on how to increase chances into getting into McGill for ling:

Apply to study sociolinguistics or sociophonetics or socio-something like that. Most who go to McGill are interested in SLA or formal syntax/semantics, which is what McGill is good at, but they have a sociolinguistics prof that doesn't get many students to supervise because people interested in socioling either can't or don't want to go to McGill (in that the coursework is heavy theoretical and sociolings either don't want to or don't have the background to keep up with the course work). So if you can do the theoretical and want to do socioling, then there might be a spot at McGill for you!

[itaal]

McGill does have a strong preference for admitting students directly into the PhD program. They actually lose money every time they take in an MA student.

I'm not sure about recommending a socioling person apply to the program though. The program has a strong focus on theoretical linguistics with a few people specializing in (second) language acquisition and neurolinguistics. But even these people were trained in theoretical linguistics and their work is often based on formal linguistic theories. A student with little interest in formal linguistics might find the first year painful. And s/he probably won't have many peers working in the same area.

I actually felt the socioling prof is a bit isolated from the rest of the faculty in the department. They all get along very well. It's just other people often work together on something, but he seems to be on his own most of the time. (That's just the impression I got. I've never taken a course with him.)

Edited April 2, 2011 by itaal

[Epyion]

I agree with what you say about it not being the best place for sociolinguists, especially the traditional field, but if you have your heart set on McGill, that could be a strategy. It would be ideal for someone interested in socio-phonetics or dialectology, because the prof has done some cool stuff in those areas in the past and at least sociophonetics is kind of a mesh of theoretical and socio- linguistics. And he seems like he'd be super supportive of any student he has.

And yeah, I also got the feeling that the socioling prof was a bit isolated, and felt that would carry over to anyone that had him as a supervisor, in the sense that the rest of the grad student community would not be researching in socioling, leaving you academically isolated as well. But gaining thorough training in theoretical linguistics while being a sociolinguist would definitely give you an interesting edge that many sociolings lack, so there's good things and bad things about it, and sociolinguistics at McGill shouldnt be overlooked just because of its strong theoretical emphasis... but just for the MA, you should definitely do your PhD elsewhere...