Prospective PhD Students

If you are considering Prof. Chang as a supervisor for a PhD at CityU, please read this page.

Every year, Prof. Chang receives (and replies to) over 80 inquiries about PhD supervision, but is only able to accept 1-2 students. Most inquiries will receive a “no” because of poor fit with the lab, the department, and/or the university. Reading and following the information on this page will save everyone time and increase the chances that you are able to find a good match for your proposed PhD work.

First, familiarize yourself with the structure of CityU’s PhD program and admission requirements. Check that you fulfill all of the admission requirements. You will see that PhD students take relatively few courses during their program, meaning that they are assumed to come in with a solid background in their subfield(s). Consequently, if you did not complete or are not close to completing a degree (e.g., BA Hons, MA, MPhil) in linguistics or a closely related discipline such as cognitive science, your application is unlikely to be competitive; in that case, you should instead focus your efforts on first completing a predoctoral degree in linguistics, such as a master’s.

Second, carefully consider whether your interests and proposed research direction(s) are actually a good fit for the lab’s work. To this end, you may want to read some of the recent publications that have come out of the lab. Think about how the research you propose to do in your dissertation project relates to the lab’s work at more than a superficial level. For example, are there specific research questions that the lab has engaged with recently that you would also like to address in your dissertation project?

Finally, if you believe your proposed work is a match with the lab, contact Prof. Chang (by email) well in advance of the application deadline (= 1 December) with a CV and a draft of your research proposal (around 3 pages single-spaced, prepared with standard formatting and no use of generative AI). He will get back to you (generally within a week) with feedback as to whether you might be a good fit for the lab’s work. (If you are not able to start discussing supervision with Prof. Chang before 1 November, it is probably too late to apply in the current application cycle and you should aim instead to apply in the following year’s cycle.)

If you mean to inquire about Prof. Chang co-supervising your PhD with a professor at your home institution or joining your dissertation committee as an external member, please discuss this first with your supervisor (committee chair) at your home institution before contacting Prof. Chang.