Best school for linguistics???

<p>Several people have noted that a of people go to grad school in linguistics without having majored in it as an undergrad. I think that's a good reason not to cross every school off your list, just because there's no program or the program isn't tops.</p>

<p>Likewise, I think it's important to note that for some schools with good undergrad programs (Georgetown comes to mind), very few of the undergrad majors go on to grad school in linguistics. They go to law school or any of a number of other careers. For them, linguistics was simply a good way of organizing a liberal arts education.</p>

<p>St. John's has no linguistics whatsoever in its curriculum. So it might be a great place to go to college, and it might be a great place to go to college and then to graduate school in linguistics, but it's a perfectly awful place to study linguistics. Being an awful place to study linguistics isn't the same thing as being an awful place.</p>

<p>Also, it's nice that St. John's leads the pack in producing future linguistics PhDs on a percentage basis. But both it, and the field of linguistics, are tiny enough -- especially going back a few years, before its recent re-energization -- that it may not mean more than one or two future linguistics PhDs per class. That wouldn't make for an especially vibrant community.</p>

<p>BTW, here's a link to a lengthy video interview with the Swarthmore Linguist David Harrison that JHS mentioned. It includes a short clip from the documentary and then a wide ranging discussion of extinct languages and other linguistics related topics. It's quite interesting.</p>

<p>"When</a> Languages Die" author/linguist K. David Harrison feature interview</p>

<p>I see, thanks. When IPEDS captures the undergrad school of the PhD recipient, it would help such inquiries if they captured the undergrad major as well.</p>

<p>It's the National Science Foundation capturing the undergrad school for every PhD recepient in the US since 1920. Well almost every...they capture somewhere above 90% of all PhD graduates each year in their exit surveys.</p>

<p>Ohio State has an amazing program. BA, MA, PhD</p>

<p>I was going to count the courses but the list is too long.
The</a> Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University</p>

<p>JHS: While Swarthmore and the Claremont schools, especially Pomona make a lot of sense because they have linguistics departments in their own right, does your sister-in-law think that is it really reasonable to study linguistics by going to Amherst, Smith or Mt. Holyoke (Hampshire is not exactly a traditional LAC)? It seems as though you'd be spending a large chunk of time on a bus to UMASS for many classes since there seem to be virtually NO linguistics at any of them. Would they even let you take so many classes at UMASS for a special major?</p>

<p>CRD: As I thought I was making clear, I think my sister-in-law's attitude was "Why would you want to go to a LAC to study linguistics?" Clearly, if it were her choice, she would rather go to UMass than to Amherst, Hampshire, etc. But in the particular conversation I was relating, she was being polite, kind, and teacherly towards a 17-year-old family friend who, for perfectly valid reasons, sees herself at a LAC rather than a large university and, for fuzzy, undefined reasons common to 17-year-olds, thinks that she might be interested in linguistics if she got a chance to find out what linguistics was.</p>

<p>The kid's question, like the OP's, was "Which LACs are best for studying linguistics?" It's a perfectly reasonable question. It can be answered in a number of ways, all of which are represented in this thread:</p>

<p>-- These particular LACs have more of an investment in linguistics than others.
-- These LACs have some investment in linguistics and easy access to substantial linguistics resources through a consortium.
-- There are dozens of LACs that offer good introductory linguistics courses, which are probably all you want anyway until you go to graduate school.
-- You can learn a lot of languages at Middlebury!
-- What? Are you nuts? The best LAC for linguistics wouldn't make the top 30 list of universities. If you want to do serious linguistics study as an undergraduate, don't go to a LAC.</p>

<p>All of them are true, not all of them are appropriate. I would really hesitate to steer a 17-year-old away from LACs because of an untested, romanticized interest in a discipline she had never studied.</p>

<p>As for the bus -- the distance between Amherst and UMass is approximately the distance between my son's dorm last year and the building where his science classes meet. It's not exactly an insuperable problem.</p>

<p>Thanks for responding. You were clear JHS. </p>

<p>My D is interested in linguistics, and although not completely sure that's what she wants to study, she doesn't want to totally rule it out by going to a school that doesn't even have it. We're at the stage of assessing feasibility. My guess is that she'll lean toward universities, but there are benefits to LACs that are nice for a kid like her. </p>

<p>I'm familiar with the linguistics opportunities at Swarthmore and the Claremonts, and it seems even possible to do reasonable linguistics at Wellesley because of the cross-registration at MIT, although between MIT and Wellesley combined, it doesn't appear that there are even 4 graduating linguistics Bachelor's degrees in a given year. I had looked into the 5-college possibility, but it didn't appear to be a reasonable choice because of a lack of "home" department to even find an adviser. I thought that there was maybe a little more insight to be had from probing your conversation with your sister-in-law a little further. Sorry if I annoyed you.</p>

<p>ClassicRockerDad--I believe that the chair of the Dept. of Linguistics at Georgetown got his undergraduate degree at Amherst. It goes back to one of the recurring themes of this thread--if you want to go into linguistics, graduate school is the key. If an LAC fits for other reasons, lack of opportunity in linguistics probably shouldn't be the deciding factor.</p>

<p>I would make sure, wherever you go, that they have strong language programs. Most undergraduate linguistics programs are light on linguistics course requirements to make room for actual language study. But you want to be at a school that lets you study one or more languages of interest to you in-depth, including doing a year abroad, which I think is a very important part of a real linguistics education (unless if you are studying classical languages, and even then it might be a good idea). Language courses are typically every day affairs, so if you have to shuttle back and forth to some other college for courses, it might quickly become tiresome.</p>

<p>For some branches of linguistics, I think kenf1234 is right--hence the suggestion of Middlebury. But for others, I suspect a grad student would benefit from having been a math major. Or a neurobiology or a history major. It's perhaps one thing that is attracting so many students to linguistics right now--it's a broad field, and many people can find their own niche.</p>

<p>^^Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but even if you major in mathematics or neurobiology, I think most graduate programs in linguistics would expect you to have studied at least one foreign (or ancient, or sign) language in-depth. Linguistics is the study of language, after all.</p>

<p>You're probably right. But so is Seashore. I have a young cousin who got her AB in 2007 in math, and she's in linguistics grad school in Europe now.</p>

<p>My son (a Grinnell rising sophomore) and I found it very amusing that Grinnell students are near the front of the pack in linguistics PhDs. There is no major there, I think a concentration cobbled together from different departments. I have to wonder if it's just a way of thinking that happens at some schools. Son will be taking his first linguistics course next semester.</p>

<p>Must be a particularly engaging professor ...</p>