graduate school admissions

With any luck I'll be completing my bachelor of science in physics this December. It will have been 6 years from start to finish, with several academic gaps, low research experience, and an abysmal GPA (from a combination of chronic illness, poor high school preparation, and overambitious course...

Hi All! A question that has been on my mind lately is how can a person be the best physicist that they can possibly be. Obviously 'best' is open to interpretation, so let's just say "How can a person make the largest impact on some field in physics that they are capable of". If we had to pick...

Hey everyone, I'm an American senior Physics major and I've been looking at New Zealand (and possibly Australia) for grad school. I wanted to ask if anyone could describe the system over there and answer a couple questions. First, is a bachelors good enough to start the PhD without doing a...

General Tips on What to focus on, what to avoid? :woot: 3 Specific questions: Should I keep it in ONE page? I have been helping on a grant which has been approved by NIH, how much details of the project should I include in the resume: the detailed goal of the grant, grant number, etc? Should I...

In graduate school for physics, the competition in certain fields(for example High Energy Theory) is very intense. Does anyone know how the situation is in fields of mathematics. So, which areas of mathematics are the most difficult to get into for grad school ? I would be particularly...

I received acceptances from the University of Minnesota, Duluth (not Twin Cities) and the University of Waterloo for their physics M.Sc. programs. I am interested in string theory - not exactly sure about the subfield. At Duluth, there is only one professor working in string cosmology who I...

Let's say that I was given unacceptable conditions for returning from medical leave; basically I had to self-fund at least the following year of a physics PhD. Knowing that doing so would result in a financial disaster, I am definitely withdrawing from the program, with the understanding that...

I am an international student and I was admitted to UT Arlington with 100% tuition scholarship for fall 2016. The reasons why I couldn't make it to a better university are lack of guidance and lack of funds. But now, I will have all the guidance in the world since I'm going to an American...

What is the most important factors that determine if a candidate can be admitted into top theoretical physics PHD program? Since undergraduate students are most likely not able to produce significant research paper, will universities put more emphasis on GRE and GPA?

I obtained my M. Sc. in mathematics from a decent European university about a year ago (when I was 27 Due to various reasons of personal nature I didn't really commit to my studies, my marks were the equivalent of a 3.0 GPA, or something like that, and it took me quite a while to finish. I...

Hi, I'm an undergraduate physics student in Turin (Northern Italy), currently in the first year of my bachelor degree. Before enrolling here in Turin, I thought a lot about going to sudy abroad because I would like to get a job somewhere in Europe or even outside it. But then, for several...

I'm applying to graduate schools for biochemistry, biophysics, or microbiology. Last time I applied to seven schools and got rejected from all of them. I don't know for sure why I was rejected but I think it's partly because I applied to to many big name schools where they receive a lot of...

Dear Physics Forum advisers, I am a rising college junior (five-years tract) with a major in mathematics and an aspiring mathematician in the fields of theoretical computing and cryptography. I apologize for this sudden interruption but I wrote this email to seek your advice on the impact of...

Stanford's Physics profile on GradSchoolShopper.com lists their incoming class's GRE scores as: "The average GRE scores for admitted students in 2014–15 were: Verbal-171, Quantitative–176; Analytical–4.42; Physics Subject–928." How do we interpret these general GRE scores? Everywhere I look...

I am supposed to graduate next year but I just realized I have left Electricity and Magnetism off of my schedule. I'm afraid to add it because I feel like I am already taking enough and I am wondering if instead it is common or likely to just take the undergrad elective in graduate school. I...

Hi, I am an Electrical Engineer but I want to become a Physicist and do research to develop theoretical models of elementary partials. I have applied in several universities in US for MS and PhD programs but they have rejected me, I believe because of my non physics background. Can someone...

Hello, I've applied for our university's medical physics program before its first deadline, Feb 1st. Since I've finished the application, I have been relaxing and waiting for the results. Today I found that I was supposed to fill out a secondary "supplemental" application, which asked exactly...

Hello, I've recently applied for 2 Medical Physics graduate schools (MS). Shortly thereafter I realized a few minor problems with my application. I've noticed 2 one-letter typos in my essay, both were caused by changing the noun from singular to plural and not removing the -s after the verbs...

Hello, I will be getting a bachelor's degree in Radiation Health Physics in near future, and my ultimate goal is to study PhD in medical physics. However, I think it would be unlikely that I will get admitted right after undergraduate graduation, due to my mediocre GPA and limited experiences...

Hello everyone, I am trying to write a personal statement for graduate school, and I am not sure what to say. I started off by saying that I would like to eventually become a professor in order to give students research opportunities that I wasn't given as an undergraduate student (because I...

Hi everyone. I recently finished a first draft for a statement of purpose for CalTech (I know, I know - I figured it would be the first one I draft - I have others I will be modelling off of this one soon enough), and I have a few (well, maybe more than a few) concerns about how I wrote it and...

I am applying for graduate school for applied math or engineering science. I am in a normal big ten school. I am in BS math and BA chemistry. I have a rather high gpa 3.9. Till now, I have taken 9 high level math courses, only one get A-, others are A, and 5 high level chemistry courses, only...

I appeared in Physics GRE exam but did very poor: got only a 600. My other admission requirements are moderate. Should I send my poor Physics GRE score or not? Please give me advices. Thanks.

I'm a physics and likely math major, heading into the second half of the first semester of my sophomore year in college. I started college taking all sophomore classes having placed out of all freshmen courses. I did poorly my first year and this year, thus far I have started off similarly, only...