I have applied to University of Iowa and Boston University for their MA in linguistics programs. I’ve been accepted to University of Iowa so far; financial aid info is yet to come. I was thinking of applying to Long Beach, San Jose, and San Diego State universities in California. But now I’m not so sure about applying to those schools.
My goal is to eventually get a PhD in linguistics. And my interests are semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition and South Asian linguistics. I’m also interested in morphology, historical and comparative linguistics, and quite possibly Hispanic linguistics.
I want to know what is your opinion of the linguistics programs at BU and U of Iowa (specially U of Iowa since I’ve been accepted there). And do you think I should apply to above Cal state schools?
Since this post was moved here and has replies, but your other post was exactly the same and had no replies, I deleted it - just to consolidate.
I don’t know anything about linguistics. The National Research Council has ranked both Boston’s and Iowa’s PhD programs as high-ish mid-ranked programs, so they seem to be solid places.
In most fields, I think, the ranking of your master’s program doesn’t really matter so much if you intend on a doctoral program. You just need to go to a place where you can get good research experience and good recommendations from professors. So if you can afford a pricy top-ranked MA in linguistics, that’s one thing - but the Cal States will probably be fine. You should ask the professors at the Cal State programs in which you are interested how often students go onto PhD programs, and where they usually go.
Are you a California resident? The program is expensive to OOS applicants. Also, are you applying to SDSU for the fall of 2015? The reason I ask is that most of the grad school applications have closed or are closing. UCSD has an excellent program that is combined with SDSU if you plan on going into a speech pathology, Ph.D., which would emphasize Spanish-speaking research in morphology.
@juillet I didn’t mean to be redundant. Thank you for deleting the other thread. My professors think that U of Iowa is better than Cal States for my research interests. So I guess I’ll stick with that.
@aunt bea thank you very much for your reply! I’m not a CA resident. I’m a PA resident. I was thinking of applying to Cal states, because they are still accepting applications for Fall 2015. I decided to apply for Masters in January this year. And most programs have deadlines in December and early January. So I had limited options. I was actually surprised that U of Iowa and BU had Feb 1 as their deadline. I’m actually quite surprised that U of Iowa gave me a decision in less than two weeks. Now, I’m just waiting to hear about financial aid from them. I’m not interested in speech pathology. I was actually quite miserable in my undergrad linguistics program, because it was in communication disorders department.
@Pureza - no, I know, it’s not your fault. Someone suggested that you post here and you did (which is fine) but then your first post was moved (which was out of your control).
Anyway, I was assuming you were in-state for the Cal States and considering them because they were less expensive. But if you aren’t, then I see no point in applying to them, unless they are significantly cheaper than U Iowa even for an OOS student.
