<p>I would like to become a linguistics major. What are the best college for that? And what should I do to help strengthen my application for that?</p>
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<p>Not many students are exposed to linguistics courses until they get to college. The best foundation in HS would be pretty much the same college-preparatory foundation expected for any other liberal arts major. Try to include 4 full years of language study. Some sub-fields of linguistics (the scientific study of language) can be fairly math intensive. Especially if you might be interested in computational linguistics, include 4 full years of mathematics with the most advanced courses you can take. </p>
<p>Linguistics is a broad, interdisciplinary field that has been informed by anthropology, traditional philology, biology, mathematics, symbolic logic and other branches of philosophy, etc. I wouldn’t necessarily rule out small liberal arts colleges, but they usually will not be able to cover such a variety of fields as well as research universities can. Nor can LACs offer very many courses in a wide variety of foreign languages beyond the standard high-density languages (i.e. French, German, Spanish … maybe Russian, Italian, Chinese). So if you think you want to dig into the study of low density languages, pidgins and creoles, historical languages/dialects, or anything else fairly uncommon, better stick to a research university.</p>
<p>Different programs have different strengths (historical linguistics, computational linguistics, semantics, etc.) but the research universities with the strongest overall programs probably include:</p>
<p>MIT, Harvard, UPenn, Stanford, Chicago (Ivies and other very selective private universities)
UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, UMass, Maryland, Ohio State (large state universities)</p>
<p>LACs that seem to have strong linguistics departments include Swarthmore, Pomona and Reed.</p>
<p>This isn’t an exhaustive list. Most of the private schools I’m mentioning are very selective. If you’re interested in another school, check its course catalog. Make sure courses are offered in all the major linguistics sub-fields (phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical/diachronic linguistics) or any other areas that interest you. Make sure there are faculty members covering each of these areas (not one professor covering several distinct sub-fields). </p>
<p><a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: Linguistics”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124741/</a>
<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2012/linguistics”>http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2012/linguistics</a>
(These are graduate program rankings, which won’t necessarily apply perfectly to undergraduate programs. However, you at least can be confident that the high-ranking programs will cover the field well with courses and faculty.)</p>
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<p>I looked at your other post and your GPA is roughly 3.58. That’s quite respectable. Stop beating yourself up. </p>
<p>I’ve looked into linguistics programs since that was one of the majors my D considered. It’s really hard to find linguistics majors at LACs where your classes are taught by real scholars of linguistics. When my D looked pretty much Swarthmore was the only LAC to have more than 2 tenure-track linguistics, and only Pomona had even 2. </p>
<p>In addition to the schools mentioned by tk21769, less selective schools with decent linguistics include:
Brandeis, Rochester, and UC Santa Cruz, UPitt, McGill and UToronto. </p>
<p>Of these Rochester and Brandeis have more of a liberal arts college feel, whereas the others are really big public universities. </p>
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<p>I like very much @tk21769’s response, as I often do, but I wouldn’t be too worried about your strength in math right now. If you are strong in math you might be drawn to computational linguistics, but if you’re not you’re not likely to care about computational linguistics. Familiarity with more than one non-English language would be a good thing to have, perhaps even some facility with learning languages.</p>
<p>Do be aware of the number of faculty in each department and of faculty who are cross-dressing in English or literature and linguistics–that is, faculty who are working in both fields and not solely in linguistics. </p>
<p>We could be helpful with more schools if we knew the size you desired, region, aid expectations, etc.</p>
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<p>Thank you for all the answers! I really appreciate them!
I’m thinking east coast though I’m ok with west coast colleges. As for size, nothing too small or too large but I’d rather attend a larger university rather than a smaller one. Any sort of scholarship opportunities are appreciated. I’m trying for National Merit for the PSAT but I know that certain schools don’t accept it.</p>
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<p>I second Reed if you are interested in a liberal arts college. They also excel in sending students to grad school. </p>
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<p>As someone who works with linguists, I’d suggest you look at larger rather than smaller departments. There are a number of fields in linguistics–phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, and then all the “linguistics” (social, historical, pyscho, etc.)–and these are hard to cover well with a two- or three-professor program. You may also desire to do field work in an exotic language, education in which is more likely in general at larger schools. Indeed, it is small departments like Reed’s and Bryn Mawr’s that are targeted by college administrators for inclusion into English depts if not outright elimination. Georgetown has a good mid-sized department. Ohio State might be large, but check out its department. So, too, UCLA. UMASS and UPitt (43K/yr) might be the best programs you could get into with your SAT. Do check out your state flagship, as well, for good prices.</p>
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<p>Just to clarify, no one at Reed wants to absorb the ling department into another (why English?) or eliminate it. In fact, the administration is looking to expand it.</p>
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