Ivy League Grad Schools

[GoldenCaramel]

@collegemom3717

You are doing all the right things (except your headline, which implies that you want one of 8 specific schools, when your post says you are looking more broadly at prestigious schools that are strong in your subject!).

Harvard pops up a ton for Linguistics & Yale/Princeton have apparently great Computational Linguistics — the purpose was to reach for the highest and at the worst, fall amongst the lower-greatness. The location of the Ivies is part of my allure, but it’s not the sole area that I need to be. Stanford, here in California is also very high in that department while only being a drive up north for a few hours. Same with Berkeley. Then of course, I have UCLA near me, so I would have no problem going there if I got in, but I want the experience of the old historic universities that have a totally different atmosphere than here in California.

@collegemom3717

If you are looking at a Master’s program, look at the program and faculty expertise to see the ones that are exciting to you, then look at where program grads tend to go- sector / industry / etc. It’s not a deal breaker, but it can help you target your application list, as well as tailor your app to the strengths of the program.

If you are looking at a PhD program, fit will matter even more: you will want to know the research focal areas well enough to have some rough ideas as to who you might want as your supervisor. Collegekid2 id’ed a couple of potential supervisors at each uni she applied to. She felt it helped shape her Research Statement, as she was able to link her experience to things that they were doing. For my PhD apps I pulled up the list of department research interests at the unis I was interested in, highlighted all the ones that I thought sounded interesting, and looked up the profs associated with each. At one uni, all but 2 were the same prof, so I went ahead and made an appointment- pre-application- to meet that prof. Talked about current research in the dept. Ended up being the only program I applied to- the fit was that good -and that prof became my supervisor.

Since I have not finished my B.A. yet, I don’t want to give myself tunnel vision. I mostly wanted some loose form of “checklist” if you will, about how to standout. I didn’t know how to look competitive going from high school to college, just knew I wanted to pass all my honors/AP classes and had a lot of extracurriculars that were joyful but not Major-related. I didn’t realize any of the strategies people had to get into top schools. I thought you were obviously the smartest kid and went & the rest of us “smarter than average” kids went wherever we could. Not sure why I thought that. So now I want to know I did everything I could to feel my grad application has a chance rather than just settling for whatever happens