<p>I was wondering what's the best college for undergraduates who want to pursue linguistics in college. Obviously HYPS are all amazing, but what about the best of the best or even any other colleges? Just curious what you guys think....</p>
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Obviously HYPS are all amazing
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<p>Such an assumption. No, HYPS are not, by definition, amazing, in this case linguistics. Princeton does not even have a ling department. I would be hesitant to place Harvard in the top 15 or 20. Yale is okay, but not "amazing."</p>
<p>The best privates, as judged by the NRC and Gourman, are MIT, Stanford, Chicago, Penn, and Cornell. My personal favorites are Penn and Stanford. MIT is mainly theoretical and has a weak applied program; Chicago's course offerings are limited; Cornell is somewhat in between, as many of their courses may or may not be offered for a while. Stanford also seems to be better at the grad level, though exceptional undergrads can take grad courses.</p>
<p>The best publics are Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, Ohio State, and UMass-Amherst. I'd give the tip to Berkeley and UCLA.</p>
<p>Between publics and privates, I'd say Berkeley and UCLA are the most well-rounded.</p>
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<p>Ha ha. I just love saying that HYPS are amazing because I think they always are. Honestly, I think that even if the program isn't great, you're still paying for a name, and they all seem pretty good just for job connection, but I honestly wouldn't know. <em>shrug</em> </p>
<p>Then again, the linguistics program stinks at Princeton considering it doesn't exist. :P In general, I just didn't want more "Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford" standard lists because I already know enough about the Ivies unless someone actually knows more info about it. </p>
<p>What do you think about UMich for ling?</p>
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Honestly, I think that even if the program isn't great, you're still paying for a name
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<p>Even if Harvard's or Yale's programs aren't ranked very high, that definitely wouldn't be a consideration if admitted, simply because they have awesome resources: excellent library collections, great professors, great facilities, etc. I believe Yale is partnered with a phonetics/phonology lab, too.</p>
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What do you think about UMich for ling?
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<p>Hmm, I'm undecided on Michigan. The NRC ranking places it quite low; Gourman places it very high, though that might be because Gourman's a bit biased toward Michigan. I would think it might have a strong program given its peers, though other schools haven't shown such a trend, so I don't think that'd be valid logic.</p>
<p>I was curious about this before, so I posted in the Michigan community. I didn't get many helpful responses, so I'm led to believe that Michigan's ling department doesn't stick out too much.</p>
<p>Alexandre might be able to shed some light on the issue.</p>
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<p>I know a linguistics PhD at Chicago who did her undergrad in linguistics at Harvard and she felt the program was weak there. From what I've heard, Penn is where it's at.</p>
<p>There are a lot of variables to consider in choosing any kind of school and any kind of program in any kind of school. First, will you like the school itself? You kind of can't show up at Chicago and expect to study linguistics without examining the rest of the school and making sure that it works for you.</p>
<p>Secondly, along with what kyledavid pointed out, you probably also want to consider variables like quality of professors, class sizes, size of programs, opportunities for undergraduates, prestige of school/prestige of program. Are you interested in going to grad school for linguistics, or do you want to study linguistics as an undergrad and then go on to law school or something else?</p>
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<p>Well, I was just curious about linguistics as undergraduate majors. I wouldn't know what to do afterwards because I still don't know what I want to do with my life (I don't want to go to law school, however.) </p>
<p>I suppose, though, I would want to go to grad school to study linguistics, considering I have a lot of interest in the subject and would love doing research and whatnot.</p>
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<p>I was just curious if you had concrete post-graduation goals because it might play into where you might choose to go to school. Then again, those goals are highly subject to change anyway.</p>
<p>If I were you, I would look at schools for linguistics listed by Rugg's Recommendations or the College Board Book of Majors along with the suggestions here, and do research on each school and the relative ease of doing linguistics research in each program, if that interests you. You might also want to whittle down your list of schools by selectivity as well as other factors.</p>
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