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Graduate Program


Masaya Yoshida, Director of Graduate Studies

Rob Voigt, Admissions Officer


The Ph.D. program in Linguistics at Northwestern emphasizes the integration of theory with advanced experimental and computational methods. The program has state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, and all admitted students are fully funded. The active involvement of 19 affiliated faculty in other departments and schools provides a wide range of interdisciplinary opportunities, including courses, colloquia, and research involvement. After completing the first-year core curriculum, students have ample opportunity to pursue their individual interests through course electives and projects. The hallmark of the program is integrative research, crossing levels of the language system as well as traditional disciplinary boundaries. Alumni of the program are primarily employed as faculty members or researchers in universities, or as language systems experts in high-tech corporations.

The successes of our Ph.D. program were recently recognized by The National Research Council's ranking of research-doctorate programs.

The graduate program also offers an M.A. degree. This degree is primarily pursued as an honors option for B.A. students, or by Ph.D. students who decide to make a career change after entering the program.