- #1
Hesychast
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WARNING: Long spiel ahead full of boring personal details. Skip to (***) for the question I have.
With the beginning of the Fall term, I'll be in the fourth year of a five year undergraduate program in Engineering Physics in the Engineering school and Philosophy and Mathematics in liberal arts. Actually, I'm not entirely sure about the Mathematics major -- I might choose to take grad courses in physics instead -- but the point is that I have two years remaining.
I'm getting nervous because, with two years remaining, I don't have any publications. Some of my friends do, and -- with all modesty -- I consider myself more academically talented than them, but with a 3x major I pack as many credits as I can into the normal academic terms, leaving no time for research. However, I devoted the previous two summers to research; after freshman year, I worked in a Semicon lab in the Physics dept, and after sophomore year I did a physics REU at a state research university like the one I attend. Very soon I will be starting a materials REU at an Ivy League. I didn't expect that I'd get anything as a freshman, but I was a bit disappointed that my first REU didn't result in a co-authorship.
I asked a Physics prof about this, and she pointed out that the ten weeks afforded by REU programs is hardly enough time to get very much done. Fair enough; perhaps I should have chosen to stay at the SC lab. I have registered for a year long research course in which I will meet departmental requirements by completing a design/research project. I really hope to parlay this into a publication, and I'm biting my nails about getting into a QCD research group to do computational work, which I would prefer to the lab work I hitherto have done. I love mathematics and theory, but I'm a bit of a klutz and I don't have the dexterity (or patience, but I'm working on that) to be really, really good at experimentation. However, it seems like most of the UG research opportunities involve experimental work.
(***) All of this leads to this question: What if I don't have any publications by the Fall of fifth year, when I plan on taking the GREs and applying to grad school? Is a publication record a virtual requirement for top ten or fifteen grad schools -- I think I want to do CM or maybe QCD -- or is mere research experience all that is necessary, which I'll have quite a bit of? My GPA is nearly perfect, and I'll study like a madman for the Physics GRE, but my lack of publications has me looking at law school. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a researcher if I can't get anything.
With the beginning of the Fall term, I'll be in the fourth year of a five year undergraduate program in Engineering Physics in the Engineering school and Philosophy and Mathematics in liberal arts. Actually, I'm not entirely sure about the Mathematics major -- I might choose to take grad courses in physics instead -- but the point is that I have two years remaining.
I'm getting nervous because, with two years remaining, I don't have any publications. Some of my friends do, and -- with all modesty -- I consider myself more academically talented than them, but with a 3x major I pack as many credits as I can into the normal academic terms, leaving no time for research. However, I devoted the previous two summers to research; after freshman year, I worked in a Semicon lab in the Physics dept, and after sophomore year I did a physics REU at a state research university like the one I attend. Very soon I will be starting a materials REU at an Ivy League. I didn't expect that I'd get anything as a freshman, but I was a bit disappointed that my first REU didn't result in a co-authorship.
I asked a Physics prof about this, and she pointed out that the ten weeks afforded by REU programs is hardly enough time to get very much done. Fair enough; perhaps I should have chosen to stay at the SC lab. I have registered for a year long research course in which I will meet departmental requirements by completing a design/research project. I really hope to parlay this into a publication, and I'm biting my nails about getting into a QCD research group to do computational work, which I would prefer to the lab work I hitherto have done. I love mathematics and theory, but I'm a bit of a klutz and I don't have the dexterity (or patience, but I'm working on that) to be really, really good at experimentation. However, it seems like most of the UG research opportunities involve experimental work.
(***) All of this leads to this question: What if I don't have any publications by the Fall of fifth year, when I plan on taking the GREs and applying to grad school? Is a publication record a virtual requirement for top ten or fifteen grad schools -- I think I want to do CM or maybe QCD -- or is mere research experience all that is necessary, which I'll have quite a bit of? My GPA is nearly perfect, and I'll study like a madman for the Physics GRE, but my lack of publications has me looking at law school. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a researcher if I can't get anything.
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