 Quote by 6eecs
I was wondering, however, what it REALLY takes to get accepted into a top institution for theoretical physics OR experimental physics. Reference to specific statistics will be helpful (as in, what kind of average GPA did Harvard theoretical physics grad students have?...).
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Do a UROP and getting good faculty recommendations. As far as people from MIT go, I didn't notice a huge correlation between GPA and prestige of graduate institution, but there seemed to be a very strong correlation between UROP's and grad school admission. One thing that seriously hurt me when it came down to graduate school admissions (but seriously helped me when it came down to "real life') was the fact that I did my undergraduate research in educational technology.
One other thing, it's probably better if you don't obsess too much about getting into a big name graduate school. If you do decent work, you'll get in somewhere, and from a "how did my life turn out" one of the better things that happened to be was that I spent some extra time studying thing that didn't have anything to do with physics. On the one hand, I didn't get into my first choice of graduate schools, but on the other hand, I was a lot better prepared for the "real world."
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If someone can illuminate how difficult acceptance to grad school really is, that would be helpful.
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If you get decent grades, you'll get in somewhere, and as long as you get in somewhere, you'll still be in the game.
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