<p>Well, after some research and forcing my daughter to sit down and work through some web pages, I finally found something she was honestly excited about ! </p>
<p>Some may recall the thread I started about the "Really" smart daughter that couldn't decide what she wanted to do or where to go... Well, I discovered pretty quickly that she's only "Pretty darn" smart (LOL!) and that we needed to spend some focused energy on selecting schools and areas of interest.</p>
<p>She's always been interested in languages and anthropology. Tonight we found the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (she made me download some articles!), and the University of Texas program of L.A. This is the most excited I've ever seen her during a search for a major. At one point she said "that's cool - THAT's what I want to do!" (which is always a good sign ;) )</p>
<p>This seems to all be coming together, as U.T. was the most recent of 7 colleges we've visited, and she seemed to like the campus and the town a lot. </p>
<p>So, after thousands of miles in the pickup with "dad", and countless hours on the internet looking at degree programs, we may actually be getting somewhere! Yea!</p>
<p>Anyone know anything about this department or the U.T. dept. of Anthropology in general?</p>
<p>We also noticed in our search that Texas State (San Marcos) seems to have a decent Anthropology department as well, and that was probably her favorite or second-favorite campus. Anyone know anything about it?</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about those depts in particular, but midwestmomof2kids (or something close to that!), who hangs out a lot on the UT forum, knows a lot about the language dept at UT. Try PM’ing her. She has a sophomore dd at UT studying a language.</p>
<p>FYI, my ds really liked the “vibe” at Texas State when we toured. Of course we were there in the summer, so it wasn’t crawling with as many students as it normally would be in the fall and spring. It’s bigger than I thought he would like, but who knows.</p>
<p>I suggest looking at the institutional affiliations of the researchers who wrote articles in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. I further suggest that she write to one of those researchers and ask what schools she should be considering if she wants to pursue a major in the field. </p>
<p>Anthropology is a common major and most schools will have it. Linguistics, though, is less common- she will be able to rule out a lot of schools now. And that’s a good thing!</p>
<p>Unless she is a guaranteed admit to UT-Austin (in which case you’re done, congratulations) she now needs to look for some safeties that offer Linguistic Anthropology, or that offer Linguistics and Anthropology both.</p>
<p>Yea, Texas State (Southwest Texas State U when I was in college at SFA) has really grown. Approaching the size of UT or A&M already…!</p>
<p>Daughter liked the area and campus at Texas State, and surprisingly at U.T. as well. Looks like the U.T. program may be the stronger one, but we’ll have to visit the anthropology schools at each to know for sure. Then look into financial asst. too.</p>
<p>C.F., that’s a great idea. Thanks for the helpful suggestion. I don’t think she’ll have any problem doing just that. </p>
<p>It was so exciting (and a relief!) to see her get genuinely excited when we found the journal for linguistic anthropology. She wants to subscribe to it even. Not sure I was ready for a subscription to a scientific journal when I was 16, so that tells me something right there.</p>
<p>Not sure what a guaranteed-admit to U.T. means, but she’s certainly in the top 5, if not the top 2 at her high school, out of about 140 students in her class, has a 4.0 gpa and scored 2150 or so on the SAT last month. I would imagine those are good enough stat’s to get in?</p>
<p>That’s what I generally think, too. But when I went to look up a linguistics professor at UT-Austin who is a friend of a friend, and whom I have met many times, I find that he is in fact located in their French and Italian Department. All of his background and scholarship is oriented towards linguistics.</p>
<p>I also know that at LACs that offer a linguistics major, language and linguistics faculty ofter cross disciplines to round out course offerings.</p>
<p>“She sounds like she would qualify if she is in a public school. But 140 students doesn’t Tsound like the size of a Texas public school…”</p>
<p>Texas does indeed have a lot of truly huge high schools. But many more are average size 3A schools like my daughter’s, with about 400-600 total students. </p>
<p>My wife teaches science at a nearby 1A school with fewer than 100 total students in the high school. All 12 grades are on the same campus, and she’s the entire high school science department (biology, chemistry, earth science) and she teaches Geometry too! to 9-11th graders. How’s that for a teaching load? I’m still not sure how she does it.</p>
<p>I noticed you were looking at schools in another thread, did you visit Trinity by the way ? I know they offer Anthropology and a minor in linguistics. I’m not sure if you can somehow combine it at Trinity, since I don’t know anything about anthropology or linguistics.</p>
<p>No. We haven’t seen Trinity yet, but intend to on our next visit to S.A. (which seems to be at least once a month these days…).</p>
<p>Not sure if she needs a full-on Linguistic Anthropology program, or a combination of the two programs. I intend to heed C.F.'s worthy advice and have her get in touch with a prof. that has done research in the areas she’s most interested in, using the journal of linguistic anthropology as our guide. Seems to make a lot of sense to me.</p>
<p>I am very familiar with the journal of wildlife management, but I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this avenue for her.</p>
<p>She’s sixteen, right? So, while I think she should definitely investigate Linguistic Anthropology, and eliminate any school that doesn’t have a Linguistics department (all will have Anthro departments, so that’s not a concern), she and you shouldn’t be wedded to this field. A lot can change in six years. She might end up studying something else entirely.</p>
<p>UT-A doesn’t seem to have a Linguistic Anthropology major. Probably very few schools do. This sounds like a cross-departmental field. Probably she’d be able to take one or two classes in Linguistic Anthropology, and the rest of her classes would be more general.</p>
<p>If you remove the space after the dot and put the following into your browser, you will get a pretty entertaining film about two linguistics academics engaged in documenting and preserving endangered languages on several continents:</p>
<p>Note that these guys (one of whom is a professor at Swarthmore, the other a PhD from Chicago) don’t call themselves Linguistic Anthropologists. They (and others like them) would call themselves Morphologists/Phonologists. But someone who is attracted by the idea of Linguistic Anthropology might find something like this as or more interesting. (They get compared to Indiana Jones a lot, something that embarasses them.) Another example is at the University of Toronto, where the founder and Chair of the Aboriginal Studies Program is a Linguistics professor. If you limit yourself to a particular label like Linguistic Anthropology or Ethnolinguistics, you can miss a lot of interesting stuff.</p>
<p>Gotta run all this stuff by the daughter. She knows what interests her better than I do. And she’s just now learning about these fields, along with me. </p>
<p>I’m just glad we’re actually talking about something “real” at this point. Before now, it’s just been “I don’t know…” ;)</p>