Hey guys, I’m a high school senior who was admitted into Northeastern University for the combined Computer Science/Linguistics major. I was wondering if anyone here familiar with the field of Computational Linguistics had any advice on what undergrad major I should pursue with the end goal being going to grad school for Computational Linguistics. What kind of experience do grad schools look for in their applicants in this field? Specifically, I’m interested in working in Natural Language processing, Machine Learning, and artificial intelligence, and have a passion for Linguistics. Thanks in advance!
I mean, I feel like the major you’ve already been admitted for - computer science + linguistics - is the best possible major that you can select for a PhD program that sits at the intersection between computer science and linguistics.
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Computer science would probably get you the furthest. Take some electives in linguistics and natural language processing. When you get to school, ask the advice of computer science professors doing NLP.
Grad schools look for people who have excelled in their coursework and done research in this field.
^Meh, I don’t know if I agree with that. In computational linguistics, the “computational” part is a tool to carry out the work of linguistics. Stanford’s linguistics PhD has this to say:
and UW’s:
Of course, different departments will have different requirements and expectations, but I would think a student pursuing a PhD in computational linguistics would need at the very least the equivalent of a robust minor in linguistics, and it’s probably better if you have the major/double major.
(Now, if you want to get a PhD in a computer science department and do research on computational linguistics, then majoring in CS and taking a few electives would probably allow you to gain admission, although you’d be a stronger student and researcher if you had more of a foundation. I’m talking about PhD programs in computational linguistics that are housed in linguistics departments.)
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^^Funny I was talking about NLP in a computer science department.
OP had interest in NLP, machine learning and AI but a passion for linguistics.
Check out this old but fun site: Choose your career in linguistics.
That’s really encouraging to see that Stanford and UW both value the “linguistics” side of CompLing, which is kind of what I had in mind. Mainly because, while I find CS (and machine learning, AI, and other related fields) very interesting, I’m not the greatest at coding.
Other sources have told me that I’d be well of with the CS/Ling combined major too, so I think I’ll stick with that haha. I’d just heard somewhere online that a combined major looks worse than a double major for grad school admissions so I was worried, but hopefully it won’t matter too much.
When you “hear” information from places, consider the source - especially if you find it online. Who is saying that a combined major looks worse? Is it someone in a position to admit graduate students into a PhD program like the one you want? What does “worse” mean? “Worse” doesn’t mean “bad”; a double major may delve more deeply into the individual fields than a combined major, but that doesn’t mean the combined major is a bad idea - and furthermore, every combined major is different.
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