3.6.1.18 Stanford University
Focus / Concentrations: Theoretical, Computational, Sociolinguistics
Department / College: Department of Linguistics
Home to many a German grad student, Stanford’s linguistics program is housed in what appears to be an ancient Spanish mission but is actually a turn-of-the-century experiment in bad taste. Questionable architecture aside, Stanford is a very well-rounded department, though at the moment there are only a couple phonologists due to some recent retirements. In particular, there are some major sociolinguistics professors, and a big computational program fostered by its Silicon Valley location. Until the economic downturn, lots of Stanford grads ended up in industry positions doing things like natural language processing. Stanford has an advantage over the other prominent California linguistics programs in that it is a private institution and not a UC school. This means, basically, that they can offer you more money and it will probably be easier to get money for research, travel, etc. As of now, Stanford guarantees five years of funding plus two summers of money for all of its students. One disadvantage of attending this school, as opposed to Berkeley, is that it’s in a relatively boring area (though only half an hour from SF). If you enjoy the wackiness of Cambridge, you’d probably rather be in Berkeley than Palo Alto.
The thought of applying to Stanford is daunting. The people who attend Stanford are smart. If you don’t feel like an intellectual fraud at some point while applying to Stanford, you might not be thinking hard-enough. Half-joking aside, Stanford has a top three program by any ranking. Fortunately, my interests coincide with what a number of researchers are doing at Stanford. The correspondence I had with those professors was extremely helpful. The more I read about Stanford, the easier it was to apply. The most difficult part of the application is the personal statement. You are limited to two pages. This requires that you write very densely and creatively. I personally wrote 25 revisions and had multiple graduate-level people read my personal statement before I uploaded it and clicked submit.
applelinguist
January 8, 2010 at 3:03 pm
[...] Stanford University [...]
3.6.1 Theoretical Linguistics Programs « Applelinguist … the apple that started it all
January 8, 2010 at 3:05 pm