Edinburgh MSc Speech & Language Processing

Hi everyone,

I’m considering applying for this masters for September entry this year. I’ve had it on my mind for a few months, and really can’t decide if I should focus on studying for my undergrad finals right now and wait to apply next year, or apply now so I can start asap.

My questions: how long did it take you to write your personal statement? What did it contain? I would really appreciate any guidance! Were you interviewed?

And do you think this course will be much harder coming from a linguistics background rather than STEM? I haven’t done any programming beyond tinkering in my spare time.

thank you - any help is really appreciated

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Comments

idkwhatever1337 • 6 points • 2021-03-17

Hey so I’m currently on the course. My background was in philosophy, but I had taught myself coding and done some nlp internships and had an nlp job during my undergrad. For personal statement I wrote about my self-teaching/industry experiences and some relevant philosophy stuff. I also had an interview, but that was more of a friendly chat with Prof King. I think with linguistics background you’ll have some advantages (like phonetics for speech processing etc), but you will be coding all the time so better to prepare for that. If you have any other questions feel free to dm me :)

Affectionate_Mood921 • 1 points • 2021-03-18

Ah congrats! Thank you so much for commenting - will message you now

[deleted] • 1 points • 2022-11-02

Sure just message me :)

idkwhatever1337 • 1 points • 2022-11-14

Sure just message me :)

Key-Frame-3093 • 2 points • 2021-05-12

Hey I just got an offer of this program. I submitted my application at the end of Jan, and was interviewed a few days ago. My background is in Linguistics, but I followed the instructions on speechzone website to get prepared (That’s a pretty good website to help you prepare for applying). I wrote about some relevant phonetics and phonology stuff, some statistical projects I did, and my internship experiences. During the interview, I had a nice talk with Dr Korin. I think wait to apply next year is a better idea cause the competition will be higher if apply later.

SnapCrackleAndPops • 2 points • 2021-05-16

hey have pmed u

xaNam_music • 1 points • 2021-06-19

I’ve messaged you too. If you could help that’ll be great. Thanks

Nimitz14 • 1 points • 2021-03-17

There’s been some posts on this in the past.

I applied and was rejected without interview, however I applied late (end of May) and had mediocre rec letters. They say it’s very important to them that you prepare by reading and doing the exercises of the speech & language processing book. You’re a bit late to apply now.

In an info session Simon King said it would be the “hardest year of your life”. I know two graduates personally and they said with a programming background it’s not hard. I think they get a lot of linguistics people and for them it’s a bit more work, but I think they (you) are the target audience of the course.

Affectionate_Mood921 • 1 points • 2021-03-17

Super useful to know, thank you! I know I have missed the first two application deadlines, but there’s still two to go, so I would hope to apply for the earlier one. Or maybe next year…

VoiceTech • 1 points • 2021-03-19

FYI there’s also a Voice Tech MSc at the University of Groningen.

Unlike the Edinburgh masters this one:

• is only one year
• has no NLP/NLU — only speech synthesis and recognition
• Is very interdisciplinary, students from Linguistics, CS, AI, digital humanities, etc.

Check it out here

https://www.rug.nl/masters/voice-technology/

There are two online webinars next week, if you want to lean more!

• March 23rd: https://www.rug.nl/cf/campus-fryslan/cf-masters/events/online-master-week-voice-technology

• March 24th: https://www.rug.nl/cf/campus-fryslan/cf-masters/events/online-master-week-voice-technology

Affectionate_Mood921 • 1 points • 2021-03-19

Thanks for commenting, this course sounds interesting but it’s not exactly what I’m looking for. Plus, post-Brexit it will actually be more expensive for me than Edinburgh! By the way - the Edinburgh masters is only 12 months too.

VoiceTech • 1 points • 2021-03-19

Ah, fair enough! I forget that you’d be paying that “international fee” in the UK. Bummer. Ugh.

heyitsbubby • 1 points • 2021-03-28

I’m a fourth year linguistics undergrad student at Edinburgh rn. Not planning on going for the SLP program this coming September, but I did take speech processing in the fall as well as Simon King’s speech technology seminar. Had a similar level of coding background to you and found the small linux things in the course doable, and I have a couple linguistics friends doing the program right now who got up to speed with the more programming-intensive courses fairly quickly. I’ll also say that Simon is very helpful and earnestly cares about your academic success, so coming from a linguistics background is totally fine.

West_Refrigerator_39 • 1 points • 2021-04-02

Hey, I’m literally in the same exact position! My finals are in May and by the time I’ll be done, all masters application windows would have closed. Did you end up applying for Edinburgh? I study Italian and Linguistics and I’m thinking about applying for the same course and uni.