<p>I'm planning on double majoring in linguistics and Russian, but I have a few questions first.</p>
<p>1) How difficult would this be? Is it doable in 4 years?
2) Does linguistics incorporate much science? If so, how?
3) Which schools are recognized for their linguistics departments?</p>
<p>And if anyone is/was a linguistics major, I'd appreciate some advice or recap on your experience. Thank you.</p>
<p>1) Yes, it is certainly doable in 4 years as long as you are motivated and make fairly good use of your time.</p>
<p>2) It depends upon which subfield of linguistics you’re talking about. Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics is more scientific, opposed to sociolinguistics, which is anthropological. If you’re just going to study general linguistics then it won’t be too heavy on science. It’s much like general psychology incorporates various science disciplines but is light in science compared to biological psychology.</p>
<p>3) Oh, there’s a lot. Pretty much all of the top colleges have great linguistics and foreign language departments. For undergrad it won’t really matter too much.</p>
<p>I’m more interested in theoretical linguistics than applied. So syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics, historical, etymology, the structure of languages, etc.</p>
<p>1) I think it is definitely doable in 4 years.
2) What do you mean by “science?” Many linguists consider linguistics itself a science. I am a linguistics major with a focus on theoretical and all of my classes have been self contained. I wasn’t required to take any psychology/biology courses if that’s what you’re asking.
3) As for good schools in linguistics, I would look at course catalogs of schools that you’re already interested in. Look at the courses that are offered and if it sounds like the program you would want to attend. Most of the schools that people would list are the big schools with amazing linguistics graduate programs like UMass Amherst or UC Santa Cruz however I don’t think that having a good graduate school program makes the undergrad any better than a smaller program elsewhere. Hell, my school doesn’t even have a linguistics department (we are a subprogram contained in the English department) but the courses offered are much more interesting and focused than a lot of other programs/departments that I’ve looked at.</p>
<p>I’m a linguistics major (at Barnard, so I created the major myself since Columbia dissolved their linguistics department). I originally wanted to double major in Russian and Linguistics (clearly we should be friends, haha) but decided to just major in Linguistics because I wanted to graduate a year early. So:
<p>Please pm me if you have any questions whatsoever. I’d love to discuss linguistics with you!</p>
<p>edit: I personally would NOT go to MIT for linguistics though. It is heavily focused on the technical/mathematic aspects of linguistics, and Chomsky (from what I’ve heard) isn’t all that great as a professor. Although this could be that my linguistics program focuses on the complete opposite things versus what the MIT program focuses on.</p>
<p>1) Most definitely doable, especially if you get rid gen eds (via APs, IBs, etc.; or go to a school that doesn’t have any!). Even if you don’t, just plan ahead as others have said.</p>
<p>2) As the other posters have said, there’s not too much science involved. I took a syntax class this past semester and it was taught by a computational linguist. He said that it was more math than anything. I feel like the theoretical stuff is more math-like than science, especially in how the class is structured (problem sets and such).</p>
<p>3) In no particular order, MIT (theoretical), UPenn (socio-), Georgetown (socio-), UChicago (…theoretical?), UCLA, Ohio State, UMass Amherst, etc. But I think it’s just that the larger schools come off as having better department just because they are, in fact, just larger. I think once you just get into a really good school, the undergrad program will be equally as good. For example, Brown’s department is small–it’s even combined with the Cog Sci department right now (but I hear they’re splitting the two up again), but that just means I don’t necessarily get to choose a certain track. If I’m interested in a particular field within linguistics, I’ll just choose my electives accordingly–the department’s not big enough to offer separate tracks. However, in exchange, I get to know the profs and TAs a lot better and thus get more out of them who are by no means less than the profs at the aforementioned schools for the most part (I would guess).</p>
<p>While MIT has a great grad program in linguistics, I’ve heard their undergrad program is awful.</p>
<p>What exactly can you do with a degree in theoretical linguistics? Or historical linguistics (for myself)</p>
<p>The ideas of these interest me but I’m not sure how many job opportunities would be available.</p>
<p>3) Who cares about linguistics department strength, you’re not going to grad school. All you should care about is general prestige of the uni as a whole as well as its sub college. Linguistics and Russian double major isn’t going to get you in anywhere if it is from noob state tech. Humanities aren’t engineering or business, concentrate on overall prestige of the university.</p>
<p>1) Very doable in 4 years, probably won’t be too hard. </p>
<p>2) Don’t know.</p>
<p>1) yes, if you plan to stick with your decisions and plan ahead. 
2) don’t think there’s much science involved
3) I’m at Berkeley… I didn’t do Linguistics, but sometimes I wish I had 
Can’t say much else.</p>