<p>i mostly agree with vex's list, though i don't know if i would rank berkeley so high, and i wouldn't rank UCLA in the top 10 except for phonetics. other good programs in the US include UT Austin, UConn (especially for syntax), UMaryland, and NYU. </p>
<p>in general, the ivies don't have good programs. brown, upenn (for socio) and cornell are the exceptions. the south generally doesn't have good programs, and neither do liberal arts colleges in general.</p>
<p>there are many good programs in europe, especially in the netherlands, germany, and italy. in canada, UBC is not bad, especially for indigenous languages. calgary is not bad either. japan has a few decent programs as well, but i think you have to speak japanese to succeed there.</p>
<p>Wow, rhombot... U totally completed my list. I totally agree with your additional schools!! I am not sure about the quality of Japanese universities though. </p>
<p>Also, I agree with you about Berkeley. The thing is that they show their emeritus faculty (like Fillmore) as if they r current faculty. That makes you think they are good. Indeed, their situation is no different from Chicago, which was an excellent school 10 years ago, but it is now definitely not in top 15 (and not maybe top 20).</p>
<p>I also agree with you in that UT Austin, UConn, and Maryland are great schools too. Maryland was once great in acquisition when the very famous Stephen Crain (now in Australia) and his great student Andrea Gualmini (now at McGill) were there. Now, Maryland is not good, if not very bad. However, they are highly good at syntax. I would say that the only reason putting them top is syntax (they have Hornstein, Lasnik and Uria..(something). As for, UT Austin, it is phonetics/phonology together with ASL.</p>
<p>Few high school juniors and seniors are really concerned if their prospective linguistics department is "only good" at phonetics or syntax. Let's keep track of the big picture, shall we? And anyway, you could at least justify your rankings somehow. Oh, and some emeritus faculty are incredibly active in their departments, every bit as much as when they were prior to being emeritus.</p>
<p>Well, the rankings I gave are based on prestige and general rankings. They are not based on phonetics only, or socio only, etc. If you wonder about a certain area (syntax, socio., acquisition, etc.), then I can give you rankings for that also. </p>
<p>For example, in my ranking, Georgetown is not in top 10. But if you focus on sociolinguistics only, then it would be either the top in the world, or the second (after UPenn).</p>
<p>I agree with the rankings of Vex. Here are a few points:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Yeah, UPenn has William Labov (the top sociolinguist).</p></li>
<li><p>MIT has Noam Chomsky (the top linguist).</p></li>
<li><p>McGill has Lydia White (the top second language acquisition researcher)</p></li>
<li><p>And UMass has McCarthy (one of the top phonology people). UMass also has some other famous phonology people like Joe Pater, who is a graduate of McGill.</p></li>
<li><p>Although I agree with the top 5, I have to say that I wouldn't rank UCLA and Berkeley so high. They would be somewhere around 12, 13, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>I would put Edinburgh, UK instead of UCLA.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I don't know much about the other schools, except MIT and Noam Chomsky, but I am undergrad at McGill in Linguistics. It's a small department, but the professors are great and you can go to their office hours and discuss anything. They are all really interested in what they do and allow open forums on issues in linguistics. That being said, I am trying to decide where to apply for grad school for Ling - McGill is great, but I am from Boston and am trying to decide whether I should live at home and apply to MIT/another Boston area school or if staying at McGill is worth it</p>
<p>I'd be interested in hearing about people's experiences as undergrads with regard to the "soft" side of things - range and availability of linguistics and language classes, quality of teaching and advising, relationships with faculty and fellow linguistics students, etc.</p>
<p>Hmm, as far as I know, historical ling. is not any more popular in North America. So, each uni. has at the most one (or in very rare circumstances two) researchers in historical linguistics. So, it is really difficult to name the good schools in historical linguistics.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how the William and Mary or UVA Linguistics departments fair? I'm curious as to how they compare to these great school because I'm kind of stuck at W&M for now due to an early decision application when I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.</p>
<p>Maybe you can ask that on <a href="http://www.lingforum.com%5B/url%5D">www.lingforum.com</a>. I remember seeing similar discussion topics there. But I definiotely heard of UVA linguistics; they should be good I think... I am not really sure though..</p>
<p>Georgetown has an awesome linguistics program, and also offers pretty much every language you can think of. We offer the normal ones: Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, but also Swahili, Russian, Ukranian, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, Greek (ancient and modern), Turkish, Korean, Persian(Farsi), Polish, Hebrew, Hindi, and probably more that I'm forgettting. </p>
<p>As for linguistics, we have great programs in Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics/Discourse Analysis, and Theoretical Linguistics. We have a big department with a lot of renowned faculty, including Deborah Tannen, one of THE experts in Sociolinguistics, who I am taking a class with now. </p>
<p>We also have lot in Spanish and Arabic linguistics, if you are into that kind of stuff (take Campos for anything related to Spanish historical linguistics or Syntax!) </p>
<p>I defintiely recommend the Georgeown program, I love it!</p>
<p>I'm a senior currently looking at 3 colleges for linguistics and maybe political science as well. The ones I'm looking at are Pitt, Miami University (in Ohio) and Ohio State. Anyone know how good these are for undergrad linguistics? What other colleges are good for undergrad?</p>
<p>UCLA
U Chicago
UC Berkeley
U Penn
Cornell
UC San Diego
Yale
U Illinois Urbana Champaign
Stanford
MIT
U Michigan Ann Arbor
Indiana U Bloomington
U Wisconsin Madison
U Washington
NYU
Ohio State
U Rochester
Harvard
U Hawaii Manoa
U Kansas
Rice
U Texas Austin
U Pittsburgh
U Arizona
U Minnesota
UC Irvine
U Florida
U Iowa
U Mass Amherst
UC Santa Barbara</p>
<p>Just to give you some ideas; both of the rankings pin the best schools for ling well.</p>
<p>I agree with all the previous posters -Georgetown for (soft) language linguistics, MIT for (hard) science oriented linguistics.
You might also look into Fairhaven College, a division of Western Washington State U in Bellingham Wash.
Very best of luck to you-</p>