Good universities for linguistics?

beyphy
Tue, 16 Jul 2013 21:36:08 +0000

The best department in linguistics is MIT, namely because of its association with Chomsky. I should note that at MIT the linguistics and philosophy department have merged into a single department. After MIT, i’d say it’s difficult to say what the top programs are.

Here are some of the universities where professors at top departments completed their dissertations (I’ll only be including universities that have alumni represented at one or more of these universities:)

at MIT (most faculty don’t list their CV so these are the few i could find):

[MIT Department of Linguistics: People: Faculty: Noam Chomsky/url

[url=Adam Albright]Adam Albright/url

http://web.mit.edu/fintel/cv.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/chomsky/) (UMass-Amherst)

At USC:

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1016450]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1010318]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1003147]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1003570]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1003309]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1003678]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1003854]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1038343]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1008282]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

[url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/ling/ling_faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1003591]ling faculty display > Department of Linguistics > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/url

at UCLA (since these are all listed on one page, i won’t note individual professors):

UCLA: 3 current faculty, 2 emiretus faculty

Umass-Amherst: 1 current faculty

MIT: 6 current faculty

Penn: 1 emiretus faculty

Yale: 1 emiretus faculty (there’s also one on USC’s faculty but i don’t feel like looking it up again.)

Honorable mentions: Rutgers: 2 current faculty (I only saw Rutgers faculty on UCLA’s webpage, and it’s probably an extension of their phil. program. But i wouldn’t be surprised to see this faculty teaching at other universities as well.)

[url=Faculty - Department of Linguistics - UCLA]Faculty[/url]

As you can see OP, the numbers seem to indicate that its MIT, UCLA, Penn, U-Mass Amherst, then perhaps Yale and Rutgers, of the three institutions i surveyed.

An important point that i want to make is that a fair chunk of these people did their undergraduate work at Ivies, or small private colleges. That doesn’t mean you can’t get into top programs from the other schools (I know a girl who got into UCLA’s linguistics program for UCLA undergrad) but it might be best to go to a university that will give you the best of both worlds. These schools would probably include MIT, Yale, Penn, and maybe Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, and USC; UCLA, UMass-Amherst, and Rutgers would also be excellent options too however.