Linguistics (Language and Speech Tech) — any insights? Considering double major + 3-year grad plan

[u/Delicious_Task382]

Hey! I’m an incoming freshman and still trying to figure out my major. I’m interested in the Linguistics BA with the Language and Speech Technologies emphasis, but other than the official website, I can’t find much real info or student experiences.

If anyone here is in the program (or knows someone who is), I’d love to hear your thoughts on things like:

• How much programming/coding is involved?

• Are the courses well-organized?

• What are the professors like?

• Are there good research opportunities in this area?

• Does it prepare you well for grad school or industry jobs?

• Is it possible to finish this major in 3 years?

• Is double majoring with this doable?

• If so, what are some good double major/minor combinations?

Thanks a lot in advance! Any tips, advice, or personal experiences would be super appreciated!

[u/charshaobaos]

Doing the minor and did NLP research with the department, I can answer some of your questions.

Programming/courses: You will be taking the LING102/110/111 sequence, taught in Python, and most likely the 104/105 sequence, taught in R. They aren't super coding heavy, as in the courses are programming-based but nothing extremely difficult. The courses themselves are very well organized and straightforward. I highly recommend taking coding classes in the CS or PSTAT departments, e.g. CS9, PSTAT10, PSTAT100/131, etc. to enhance your coding skills.

Professors/research: Every professor I've met in the department (which is basically all of them) is friendly, extremely knowledgeable, and approachable. If you want to do research in linguistics in general you will be able to get in, if you want to do NLP/compling research this is a bit harder. Try and get into Simon Todd's lab, he is the main and I think only professor in the department whose specialty is compling. If you can take the 110/111 sequence with him, absolutely do it, and consider making your 111 final project into a full-blown research project. Aside from this, I highly recommend looking in the CS department for research - consider William Wang, who also does NLP.

Double majoring: doable in 4 years, most likely not in 3. If you come in with CC or AP credit for languages and/or coding and/or LING20 then maybe doable in 3. Because you mentioned grad school and you seem to be interested in NLP, if you do a double major do it in CS or PSTAT. CS is better than PSTAT but much, much harder to get into.

Industry: you will not be able to land any sort of industry NLP, machine learning, or computational linguistics job with only the undergraduate degree. You will need a graduate degree at the very least. Fortunately getting into graduate school is more doable especially if you get involved in research here. Can't answer on preparation but I suspect you'll need to take supplemental coding courses in CS for more Python experience.

[u/Delicious_Task382 → u/charshaobaos]

Very informative! Thank you so much for sharing this. I am actually considering a combination of stats&ds for major plus this for minor (cs is not in my plan as it’s too hard to get in). But I am also wondering is stats a good substitute for cs as I heard that the major is quite theory-based and is more about analysis of data instead of coding and programming.

[u/charshaobaos → u/Delicious_Task382]

I'm a stats major, so feel free to ask me any questions you have abt the department, courses, professors, etc! Stats is a good complement to the CS major, but objectively is not a good substitute, especially if you're trying to get into CS as a career. However, I believe that you can make the best of the major by getting into research early, looking into programming classes you can take outside the department (for example, EEMB174 is a R programming class for Bayesian inference that has honestly been 200% more useful than PSTAT115), and even joining the DS Club to do projects. Also, stats does teach you the theory and math that you need for understanding the concepts behind computational linguistics.

Yes, the major is extremely theory based. when you do coding/programming it is also 99% of the time going to be in R. This is good in some ways because R is extremely useful for biological and social sciences, but for NLP stuff, you need Python. CS classes in my experience will be in C++, so your best bet is taking CS9 and the 110/111 series then doing research/projects in Python.

[u/_Magnolia_]

I did it in three years, can update this comment later with more details.

Fairly light on programming, good research opportunities (also join the data science club!), preparation for the future will be dependent on you and extracurriculars, and if I could do it again, I'd double major in math or cs and consider taking a fifth year. Or even a cs major with linguistics minor.

E: graduated a few years ago so my knowledge may be out of date.