<p>All thoughts are welcomed.</p>
<p>Georgetown.</p>
<p>Stanford 10 char</p>
<p>Per 1995 NRC rankings of faculty quality:
1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. UCLA
4. U Mass
5. Penn
6. Chicago
7. UC Berkeley
8. Ohio State
9. Cornell
10. UC Santa Cruz</p>
<p>These rankings are now quite dated; new rankings due out in the fall. Nonetheless, any school making that list in 1995 is worth investigating.</p>
<p>For an LAC, I'd investigate Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I'm at the University of Chicago, and linguistics majors love the program. We also have good options (in terms of double majors, research opportunities, and departmental interest) for students who wish to study linguistics along with anthropology.</p>
<p>I second and third Georgetown!</p>
<p>Adding some limited knowledge mostly based on overheard gossip:</p>
<p>Certainly ##1-7 and 9 on that list remain strong. Not to say anything bad about Ohio State or UCSC, but I've specifically heard the others discussed. However, there is some question whether MIT has any kind of vibrant undergraduate linguistics program, and indeed whether MIT will have any kind of linguistics program at all when Noam Chomsky officially retires. There are lots of good people there (although it probably won't be #1 anymore), but they don't feel the love from the administration.</p>
<p>Two other colleges that I have heard on short lists of places to study linguistics: Yale and the University of Toronto.</p>
<p>My linguistics-professor sister-in-law recently gave the following advice to a family friend who asked about studying linguistics at a LAC: Lots of LACs have one or two strong people, few if any more than that. If you really want to study linguistics at a LAC, the choices are basically Swarthmore -- which has an actual functioning department, and from which one can also take courses at Penn -- or any of the five-college schools, which can piggyback off UMass' very strong department. She also thought the Claremont Colleges, collectively, might have decent linguistics offerings. I will note that she does not think much of LACs, where she has spent some time, and much prefers the atmosphere of her own large university.</p>
<p>Great ... we are looking at the Claremonts. Can you recommend any other LACs that might be on the next level of admission rates?</p>
<p>THX</p>
<p>As others have suggested--Claremonts, Five Colleges, Swarthmore (and its consortium, perhaps). Of these, Pitzer and Hampshire are probably the least competitive (although they're certainly not safeties!). </p>
<p>A quick search also turns up Reed and Macalester--but be sure to look at course catalogs to see what is actually offered--sometimes a "Linguistics" major isn't really linguistics at all, but some interdisciplinary program crafted out of foreign language, philosophy, cognitive science, etc. That's not necessarily bad, but it's good to know what you're getting into. </p>
<p>I was doing this search not so long ago (now happily settled at Swarthmore as a linguistics major). Best of luck, and feel free to PM me with questions.</p>
<p>I think the Claremont Colleges and the Amherst consortium cover a fairly broad spectrum of admissions selectivity (especially if the student is a woman).</p>
<p>With some interpretation, and reading between the lines, I believe my sister-in-law's take on linguistics at LACs was this: Lots of places can give students a couple of fine introductory survey courses, and some courses on what their specific faculty members do. But 4-5 courses will basically exhaust almost any LAC's real linguistics resources (maybe 7-8 in the case of somewhere like Swarthmore). To go beyond that, or to delve deeper into areas that aren't the specialty of the specific people there, you need access to more faculty. Really, no one should go to any LAC to study linguistics. If you want to go to a LAC for other reasons, fine, but if you also want to study linguistics make certain you will have access to a real linguistics department elsewhere. Or else content yourself with a good taste of the field and save more for graduate school.</p>
<p>Like everyone else in the academic world, she gets her information about programs from colleagues, former students, current students, applicants to grad school, and old friends, and by reading publications and attending conferences. She knows a lot about lots of graduate programs. But except for Swarthmore, with which she has had a long relationship, whatever she knows about specific LACs, she knows more or less by accident -- she happens to have a friend there, or there's someone there doing something like she does. She doesn't have (or care to have, since they're not competing with her for grad students) comprehensive knowledge of individual LACs' strengths and weaknesses. She does know and like some people here and there, including at Pomona and (I think) Smith.</p>
<p>"Really, no one should go to any LAC to study linguistics."</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree with your sister-in-law, JHS. If what she says is true, no one should go to an LAC to study anything beyond the 4-5 most popular majors there. Yes, one is going to have more courses offered in ANY department at a big school. But that hardly means that one can't get a perfectly fine education in linguistics at Swarthmore. I can't speak for any other schools, not being familiar with the programs there, but a quick scan of the course listings shows that in the past three semesters Swarthmore has offered ten different linguistics courses, plus five or so cross-listed with other departments. That's not even counting seminars. A student can take at most twelve courses in the major, over eight semesters. Most take 8-10. Trust me, there's enough there for many/most people. </p>
<p>I agree that if someone really wants lots of specific course offerings in, say, Gaelic syntax, an LAC is not going to be their best bet. But the LAC experience has value too, and wanting a linguistics major is not a reason to discount all LACs outright. Just my two cents...</p>
<p>Middlebury - great language program.</p>
<p>My DD IS considering women's colleges so the Claremont Colleges, the group around Smith and Swarthmore are great options for her. Thank you.</p>
<p>She at present is interested in cultural anthropology/linguistics so the breadth of the LAC approach is fine for now. If she wishes to pursue it in grad school then i think the depth of coursework in a larger school will be more important.</p>
<p>etselec: I'm not sure I agree with my sister-in-law, either, but in any event her position is really not so far off what you said (if you read what I wrote carefully) -- the LAC experience and structure can be valuable in its own right, and worth sacrificing some linguistics depth for. The difference may only show up in 3-4 courses, which isn't a lot in a college career. </p>
<p>I KNOW however, that she would advise you, as a Swarthmore linguistics major, to get yourself to Penn for at least a couple of upper-level courses. AND to be leery of some of those cross-listed courses, which are really catalog-padding (something everyone does). </p>
<p>Also, recognize, that Swarthmore probably has a more extensive linguistics program than almost any other LAC, and its department effectively consists of 4-1/2 people, not all of whom are around every semester, plus the occasional visitor. Most LACs, certainly of that size, don't have that many offerings (other than of the cross-listed variety).</p>
<p>Finally, it's nice that you respectfully disagree with her, but she probably knows a good deal more about linguistics at Swarthmore than you do after your year there. She has spent a lot of time there over the years, and knows the department really well. (And likes them a lot, and has a lot of interests in common with some of them.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, it's perfectly fair for you to discount her opinion because, as a matter of personality, she doesn't "get" LACs. It's certainly not a choice she has ever made for herself, as a student or as a teacher, and her relatives who did make that choice are not good advertisements for it.</p>
<hr>
<p>Middlebury: great language program, but I think no discernible linguistics. They're not the same thing at all. Sort of like the difference between having a good engineering program and a good math program.</p>
<p>A couple more things:</p>
<p>To be fair to Swarthmore, it does A LOT to make certain its linguistics students get a first-class education. One of the reasons my sister-in-law knows Swarthmore so well is that they occasionally have her advise honors thesis-writers (and sit on their oral exam panels) where what they are doing falls more into her area of expertise than those of her colleagues at Swarthmore. I don't know of any college that does anything like that as a regular practice; it's very impressive. And it's very easy to take classes at Penn.</p>
<p>Also, David Harrison at Swarthmore is a budding cultural-anthropology/linguistics rock star. There's a documentary about his work on preserving vanishing tribal languages that's looking for distribution; it apparently presents him as the Indiana Jones of linguistics.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Really, no one should go to any LAC to study linguistics.
[/quote]
The top five undergrad producers (by percentage) of future linguistics PhD earners are all LACs. Why should no one go to St John's, Reed, Swarthmore, Grinnell or Pomona to study linguistics? They don't have real linguistics departments? BTW, the data don't say that these future PhD earners studied undergrad linguistics.</p>
<p>
[quote]
One of the reasons my sister-in-law knows Swarthmore so well is that they occasionally have her advise honors thesis-writers (and sit on their oral exam panels) where what they are doing falls more into her area of expertise than those of her colleagues at Swarthmore. I don't know of any college that does anything like that as a regular practice; it's very impressive.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Swarthmore has a panel of three (?) outside experts give the written and oral exams for all honors program seniors -- about 30% of the graduating seniors each year. Between 100 and 200 visiting professors decend on campus each spring right after classes end to sit with each candidate in four areas of preparation. The visiting professors determine whether the student receives Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors, which in turn translates to the grades in the major and minor fields.</p>
<p>vossron, it is true that many who have PhDs in linguistics did not major in linguistics in undergrad school. </p>
<p>Like someone else here, I also have a sister-in-law who is a professor of linguistics. Actually, she has already retired at age 38. Anyhow, she went to Williams for undergrad and Berkeley for grad school and got her PhD there in Linguistics. I might add that she won a scholarship when admitted to Williams, from Williams, that paid for her graduate education AFTER Williams.</p>
<p>
[quote]
it is true that many who have PhDs in linguistics did not major in linguistics in undergrad school
[/quote]
Those of us on both the pro and con side of future-PhD statistics being an indicator of quality undergrad instruction have from time to time asked about the undergrad majors of PhD earners. Have you seen such statistics? They could be helpful.</p>
<p>Pitzer and Pomona evidently have a joint Linguistics/Cognitive Science Program. I'm no expert but the course offerings look pretty extensive, albeit with a bent toward the cognitive side:</p>