Linguistics applicants 2022

Yeah, not a lot of us here, are there?

Interesting that you've two interviews, while I ended up with one. Are all four(?) of your future interviewers linguists? As an applicant to St Edmund's, I'm to be interviewed by the admissions director (a zoologist) and the director of studies for linguistics there.

My other choices were UCL and the Universities of Edinburgh and Lancaster, as those seem to have good linguistics programmes as well. I'm guessing you have a similar roster? I would've liked to apply to Oxford as well, but don't tell my interviewers I said that.

i also applied to edinburgh lancaster and ucl, and i'm a reapplicant since oxf*rd didn't want me last year!

i quite weirdly enjoyed the assessment, especially the essay question, but i was a bit short on time and had a host of technical issues (email wasn't working, got logged off the zoom call during the exam etc...)

my interests are mostly around historical linguistics, bilingualism (i'm a french english bilingual) phonetics and sociolinguistics but i do find all areas of linguistics interesting! what about you guys?

hello! thanks so much for creating this thread! i have an interview with king's thursday (both linguists have intrests in biligualism which is me ) good luck to you all! how did the admissions assessment go for you?

Haha I love the censoring. I agree, I panicked a little bit because I thought it would be exactly the same as the specimens but after I had a proper read it was fine because it wasn’t that different tbh. Aw shoot, that’s really annoying! But nonetheless I’m glad you’re positive about it

I’m not sure which areas I’d definitely specify in because I feel like my opinions of them will change throughout the course. At the minute I’m quite fond of phonology but I’m open to any part of linguistics. We’ll see what I’ll say in a year or so😂

Hehe I’m half French! I wish I could speak it more than I can. I didn’t speak it as much as Polish and English as a child and I mostly was just passively absorbing it through immersion. I did GCSE though but I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I enjoy German :/
I’ve my first interview today and I’ve mixed feelings about it but I reckon I shouldn’t worry too much. It’s just a bit scary that it’s finally happening.

I love that we've all applied to similar unis. I’d have applied to Lancaster but I needed a safe so I decided not to.

Bonne Chance

wow! four languages! i also do german at school! (and english cause i go to school in france)
good luck/viel glück/bonne chance for your interview! hope it goes/went well!
what do you mean about lancaster not being a "safe"?? (what is a "safe"?)

Danke
Es war zu schlecht, je veux pleurer. I needed a uni with lower grades just in case and Lancaster would have been the same as my other ones :/

oh no! why?
but do bear in mind that what's done is done and whatever will be will be (as doris day would put it), and that anyway it is very hard to judge your interview performance. please don't cry!
also yeah i have acheived grades so i don't really have the issue of safe lower grades.
and i have no doubt that even if cambridge doesn't work out (which you can only know on jan 25) you will thrive wherever you land! though i'm sure that you didn't doo as badly as you might think you have done- interviews are supposed to be hard!

Thank you, that’s really helpful. The undergrads on the tech call are my new favourite people and I’ll speak to them tomorrow before the next interview. The challenge I had to do was one I’ve done before but every time I get explained it, it’s always different so I’m really confused in what I have to do so they basically did two questions and gave up. I’m gonna try to not cry, I’m hoping tomorrow will be better.

Ah yeh, my dad was telling me how he finds it weird that we apply without having done exams.

Thank you so much

and consider your second interview as a chance to show them more/better what you're worth if you feel like you didn't do this is your first. i'm actually quite jealous that you have two for that very reason, i only have one, so one chance to prove muself, one opportunity to mess up hahaha

Thank you, that’s really helpful. The undergrads on the tech call are my new favourite people and I’ll speak to them tomorrow before the next interview. The challenge I had to do was one I’ve done before but every time I get explained it, it’s always different so I’m really confused in what I have to do so they basically did two questions and gave up. I’m gonna try to not cry, I’m hoping tomorrow will be better.

Ah yeh, my dad was telling me how he finds it weird that we apply without having done exams.

Thank you so much

I think we probably had the same people on the tech call, but they were so nice! It made me feel a lot more relaxed. I also found the first task really difficult (if it was the same thing) but try not to worry, I'm sure you did better than you think

St Edmund’s, that’s mature students isn’t it? Are you going for undergrad or postgrad?

Yes, I'm in my mid twenties, and applying for undergrad. Decided to change my course in life and pursue what I really love, so here we are.

I've just had my interview today and found it rather enjoyable. Perhaps I got lucky and wasn't hit with the tricky question that you and lilyminerva had. In two cases I had the wrong answer at first, but the interview prompted me to rethink my answer, and I was all like 'haha, just kidding, what I really meant to say was...'

I have however seen a graph floating around these forums showing that applicants' subjective impressions of how their interview went have essentially zero correlation with their actual odds of getting in. So, perhaps we're all making too much of it. Anyway, best of luck to you all!

god i have my interview tomorrow 😭😭😭i’ll try to enjoy it but i’m nervous as fck😭😭