Recent content by eri

While you'll be a bit behind physics majors from larger schools, that's not uncommon. Most grad schools expect some students might need to spend a semester or more 'catching up' with classes their school didn't offer but you might need. It won't hold you back if you're otherwise a solid...

In all likelihood, the courses won't (all) transfer to count as a physics masters and you'd end up taking the masters level physics anyway to pass the qualifying exams.

My university has about 5,000 students, as of yet still no physics major, and offered no research space or start up money. When they hired me, they got over 200 qualified applicants for the position. It's not easy to get a job at any university. My grad school wasn't an R1, but got over 600...

When you are first hired as a full-time professor (tenure-track), you would be an Assistant Professor. After 5-6 years and earning tenure, you'd be promoted to Associate Professor, and 5-6 years after that you can be promoted to Full Professor. If you are hired to teach and not do research...

Yes. Your application is extremely similar to mine was 15 years ago, but I also had a publication in ApJL. I got rejected from every school ranked 50 or higher than I applied to (12 I think in all). It was my PGRE score that held me back according to them. Add a few more lower ranked safety...

Most of those are reach schools for you. Don't bother with those that will reject you; many didn't ever even bother telling me I was rejected from them (happily took my application fee, however). You need more schools that might be safeties, and even that isn't a guarantee anymore.

This website https://openstax.org/subjects has a number of free, peer-reviewed textbooks. For the AP physics C exam, you'd want University Physics (mostly Volume 1). You can find a lot of videos online explaining various concepts.

You'd be starting over on a new bachelors degree. Most schools will not accept classes for credit you took more than 10 years ago. Your best bet would be a local state university. If you don't want to study anything except physics, don't bother looking at schools in the US. That's a more...

Have you tried talking to the teacher? Are they even willing to let you into the course if you can pass a practice exam or something? It's very unlikely you'd be able to teach it to yourself in such a small amount of time, and you absolutely need to know that material before starting AP...

You can't go straight from nothing to a course in QFT, or even QM. You've got several years worth of math and physics to learn first, or it won't make any sense. And no, it's extremely unlikely you'll be able to come up with anything original after an intro class in a subject, and very...

I feel like I should point out that not EVERY professor will train grad students. Most of my friends and I from grad school ended up at small state schools and liberal arts colleges, where we don't have graduate programs in physics (or sometimes even a physics major). There are far more...

I really wouldn't consider that a research project. You didn't do any original work, you just had an idea and then read more about it and found out it wouldn't work. You didn't do anything original that you mentioned here (made no measurements, did no unique math, wrote no code). You don't...

I took the quals about 10 years ago, and a 50% passing rate was pretty common for both schools I attended (failed twice at one school - to be fair I really didn't spend more than 50 hours studying for either, was planning to transfer out at some point), passing the first time at the new school...

You could get a website, host the paper there, and put a link on your resume or cover letter to the analysis as a sample of your work for future employers to view. I'm not an engineer, but that's not something that would be considered publishable in physics (especially not at that length).

Double major in physics and astronomy, at U Washington if you can. They have excellent programs, and students of theirs have gone very far in the field. A friend of mine who did her undergrad there is now a prof at a great school.