Two majors aren't worth it! You'll spend all your time fulfilling requirements, and too little of it taking classes that actually interest you and give you a better picture of materials science. A lot of professors I've talked to seem to recognize this as well. Take several advanced...
Don't worry about burdening professors - they write letters like this all the time. But do ask them ASAP, because often it takes them quite a bit of time to get around to writing the letter. You'll have to ask 2 different profs.
I did an REU after my sophomore year, and I agree that you...
One thing you might want to try is the "search inside" feature on Amazon. For example:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471488852/?tag=pfamazon01-20
You can only look at a certain number of pages per session, but it should be enough for you to get your homework assignments out of the 9th...
UPenn has a very good condensed matter program, but isn't quite as impossible to get into as the other big name schools listed above. Philadelphia has a pathetic mass transit system, but it's a great walking city, and it has a new car sharing program that is pretty cheap and convenient for...
You definitely want to check out Materials Science programs. You'll have to look at each school's program individually - the focus of materials science used to be metallurgy, and some programs still focus on that, but many materials science programs have shifted their focus toward...
I'm applying to grad school in the fall (a mix of materials science and applied physics programs), and I took the general GRE a month or so ago. I got an 800 for the quantitative but a 550 on the verbal (and a 5.5 on the writing, for what that's worth). I'm otherwise well-qualified (3.8-ish...