A PhD in Linguistics?

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi all, this is my first post on this friendly forum, and I hope I can receive your help.</p>

<p>I have just finished my BA in CS, and will be in a CS Master program in the US since this fall, but I know I am extremely interested in Linguistics. I had thought of applying to grad program in Linguistics, but I later perished the thought because I know I did not take any Ling courses during my BA years and I did not have writing samples in Linguistics field, and this will make the reason for rejecting me straight.</p>

<p>Now that I have been admitted in a CS master program, I do not want to give up seeking opportunities in Linguistics. Will you please tell me what I can do to form a powerful shot at top Ling PhD program until when I got my CS MS two years later? Should I try taking courses and go for a Ling MA in my current school at the same time? Should I try to participate in Ling research and get papers published?</p>

<p>Finally, could anybody here tell me about linguistics grad program in ivies, such as harvard and penn, etc.</p>

<p>Thank you very much!</p>

2

<p>Just one more question: I have GRE Verbal 610 and AW 5, do I need brush these up a little bit to secure my chance?</p>

3

<p>There seems to be so much suggestive misconception in your original post that I don’t know how to start.</p>

<p>Well. first of all, I really don’t think your basic CS degree is going to be a hindrance to doing “linguistics” at the grad level. In fact, I see it as a plus. The thing about “linguistics” is that it’s a very generic title for a very diverse field of study. There’s the formal Chomskyian linguistic structuralism, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguisitics, sociolinguistics, applied linguisitics and then (right up your alley)… computational linguistics. Under computational linguistics, we can find an even finer distinction in the field, such as corpus linguistics, linguistic simulation, evolutionary linguistics etc. My point here is: Linguistics as a general field is being done in a very multi-disciplinary way, such that I see students from varied background as a plus, not a minus.</p>

<p>The real hindrance, as I see it, is the lack of specificity in your understanding of linguistics albeit your professed interest in it. What exactly are you interested in? Given your background, the most natural pathway seems to be doing linguistics through computers. But even this, as I mentioned, is very vague. There is a whole range of linguistic-based projects that can be pursued technologically such as natural language processing, corpus linguistics, evolutionary language simulation etc. But then again, this may not be your idea of linguistics or what you’re interested in. Given your acceptance into a masters program, I’m sure you understand how important the statement of purpose is. So I think the best thing you could do is to invest your 2 years getting involved in a CS-based linguistic project to beef up on the concrete understanding of what doing “linguistics” is, then write up a phenomenal SOP.</p>

<p>On another note, being a graduate student, I think you should understand that the better linguistic programs may not necessarily reside in the ivies, not to mention what sort of linguistic sub-fields you’re talking about. To be honest, the only ivy that would come under a linguist’s academic radar is UPenn (for sociolinguistics). You’ll be surprised at how “un-ranked” the other ivies are with regards to the linguistic discipline at the graduate level. Some better linguistic program are in MIT, Stanford, UCLA, Georgetown. Though outdated, the NRC ranking done in 1995 should give you some idea how the linguistic programs are ranked: </p>

<p>(<a href=“http://consusrankings.com/1995/08/13/national-research-council-report-best-linguistics-doctoral-programs-1995/[/url]”>http://consusrankings.com/1995/08/13/national-research-council-report-best-linguistics-doctoral-programs-1995/&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

<p>For specific linguistic sub-fields (which should be what you’re aiming for), the better programs are at universities such as Carnegie Mellon (computational linguistics), UCSB (interactional linguistics) etc.</p>

<p>Finally, your verbal and AW scores are fine. You just need to know what you want to do in “linguistics”.</p>

4

<p>Limnieng, thank you very much for your detailed and insightful answer.</p>

<p>Yes, as a CS major, the first linguistic thing that came to me was the Computational Linguistics. I have done relevant research in this field, my BA thesis is about it and I have a related paper currently under review (though more NLP-oriented than CL-oriented).</p>

<p>However, by reading literature inside Linguistics, I found my interests extend into fields such as lexis, semantics, syntax, historical ling, etc. Therefore, I believe I can a strong interest in the overall Linguistics field. Another thing that I think MIGHT be a plus is my proficiency in English, Chinese, German and Japanese. But again, I am not sure if this really helps. I think the problem with my Ling application is that, as a long-time CS man, I do not know what exactly is looked for by adcom in an applicant. Most Linguistics Admission pages are quite vague about this, unlike CS department.</p>

<p>Thank you also for your recommendations about linguistic grad program. This is a definitely helpful advice.</p>

5

<p>Grad school application is very unpredictable. But I think one thing that all adcoms do very much look for is how your background FITS their current faculty and research program.</p>

<p>That is to say: What adcoms look for varies according to the different university specialization and program.</p>

<p>Therefore, it might be helpful to first gain an understanding of the target program you want to get into, who their faculties are, what EXACTLY do they do and HOW they do it, then channel your energy into doing something similar for your current CS masters. This will definitely score a lots of points.</p>

<p>It’s great that you’re really interested in the general Linguistic field, but the truth is, you still have to gain an in-depth knowledge of one specific sub-field to make yourself stand out in a Ph.D. application. There’s nothing more off-putting for the adcom than reading a SOP where the candidate simply keeps professing love for linguistics generally without being specific about what the candidate has done in a specific discipline. Furthermore, there are camps in linguistics that are not only at odds with each other, but are fundamentally incompatible in terms of premise, concepts and methodology. Therefore you will look very unappealing unless you have a focus.</p>

<p>Good Luck</p>

6

<p>Thank you again, Limnieng!</p>

<p>Seeing a thread about ‘PhD saturation’ on this forum, I also wonder whether Linguistics graduate programs are mostly saturated and have limited space for new students. I even heard that some Ling programs only recruited 3 people only.</p>

<p>There are so MANY CS applicants, but various CS depts also recruit MANY, therefore you can say it is hard to get admission into a CS grad program considering the ratio. But I would like to know what is the case with Ling depts, the same with CS, or a much more fierce competition for limited seats?</p>

<p>Your replies are appreciated!</p>

7

<p>I think it’s really difficult to say if most Linguistic Depts are “saturated”. In the first place, I have trouble understanding this idea, that departments would limit quotas of students due to an over-supply of a certain discipline in the market? In my mind, academic departments are not overly concerned about their student’s employability DURING THE SELECTION STAGE FOR NEW PH.D. STUDENTS. Of course, the individual student’s faculty mentor is going to be anxious to push students to graduation and find employment NEARING THE END OF THEIR STUDIES, but such concerns don’t seem to surface at the point when adcoms are selecting potential new graduate students.</p>

<p>The real factors determining the number of new graduate recruits per year are:

  1. Size of department and number of faculties
  2. Amount of funding available from Graduate Division
  3. Potential fit from applicant pool</p>

<p>A large department with many undergraduates courses and faculty members will definitely need more graduate students to support the overall structure, to teach courses and to ensure the generative process of scholarship for the specialization each faculty provides. So these departments will definitely recruit more students. In turn, these sort of departments will also receive more emphasis and more funding from the graduate division to support new graduate students. Finally, I think departments are usually willing to take in one or two more students (or one or two less) if the applicant pool turns out to be good (or bad).</p>

<p>Therefore I think in term of success of admission, it’s really about the number of applications received by the department yearly and how much resources the department traditionally has yearly to support graduate students. This is the admission rate which should be freely available on the websites of the individual departments. Naturally, prestigious departments or schools will receive a lot more applications, driving down their admission rate. But the quota set by individual department does not seem to have anything to do with “saturation”, it just about the resources available.</p>

<p>But practically, it no help thinking about things like these and worrying about them, because from your own point-of-view, all you need to do is to make yourself as outstanding as possible (remember, in the sense of being the best FIT with the department). The rest is beyond our control.</p>

<p>On another note though, since you mentioned “saturation” and the market, you would really have to think about what you want to do with a linguistic Ph.D… Having interest is great, but after the Ph.D., you may find yourself out of a job for years to come…</p>

8

<p>Re: Post #3- On NRC’s ranking of Linguistics Ph.D. Programs</p>

<p>The latest NRC Ranking on Linguistic programs is just out today. Instead of having a definite hierarchy, NRC has chosen to give ranks in terms of range. Nonetheless, we can still satisfy our urge to rank stuff using PhDs.org (link: [Linguistics</a> Rankings — PhDs.org Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/linguistics]Linguistics”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/linguistics)) which utilizes the NRC data but customizes the criterions we deem important. By placing importance to only the NRC Quality measure (equal weighting of extremely important to both regression-based and survey based quality score), Research Productivity (all criterions included as extremely important) and Student Outcome (only placement rate and overall support & outcome as extremely important), the list below ranks the top 11 Linguistic Ph.D. program (just because there were 2 equally ranked universities in the 10th position) in the U.S. (with the range in front and the relevant department behind).</p>

<p>1-1 John Hopkins University (Cognitive Science)
2-2 University of California-Los Angeles (Applied Linguistics)
3-9 University of Massachusetts Amherst (Linguistics)
3-9 University of Pennsylvania (Linguistics)
3-10 University of California-Berkeley (Linguistics)
3-12 University of Maryland-College Park (Linguistics)
3-13 University of Chicago (Linguistics)
4-14 Stanford University (Linguistics)
5-15 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Linguistics)
5-16 San Diego State University (Language and Communicative Disorder)
5-16 University of California-San Diego (Language and Communicative Disorder)</p>

<p>This list may provide a good gauge on the better current linguistics program in the U.S.</p>