Admissions Can I Overcome a Bad Undergrad GPA and Get into a US PhD Program in Physics?

[emcmqm]

Hi All,

I had really bad GPA when I did my undergraduate degree in Mathematics India, except for one Physics course that I did and did very well at. I won't bore anyone with the details, but it was basically because I just felt unmotivated.

Now I am older by 10 years, somewhat wiser and work full time as a software engineer but want to go back to studying Physics.

I did some graduate Mathematics courses (Differential Topology, Complex Analsyis and some more that are related to Physics) at the CSU through their open university system. All in all around 28 credits in graduate Mathematics courses with a 3.2 GPA. Then I enrolled in the MS Physics program at SJSU(they wouldn't admit me earlier because of my low grades and had asked me to do some related courses at either CSU before I applied), and have now maintained
a GPA of 3.7 in the core graduate Physics courses( Classical Mech, Quantum Mech, Jackson) and the electives while working full time as a Software Engineer.

Would any graduate school overlook my undergrad grades that are extremely poor and consider me for the PhD program?

Thanks,
Anurag

 

[mgb_phys]

I don't know about India but in the UK I wouldn't care too much about bad degree performance 10years ago if you have recent 'relevant' experience.
Individual institutions/supervisors/funding bodies might have their own rules and perhaps require a recent Masters.
Is your 10years of software relevant to the research areas you are considering?

 

[emcmqm]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I live in the US now. Sorry didn't specify that. So my question is about US universities.

My software engineering experience is completely unrelated. But I am doing the MS right now and will be done in an year or so. I am thinking of taking up research projects with the Profs here at SJSU(San Jose State University) too. I don't have an undergrad degree or coursework in Physics though. That was another reason that SJSU asked me to do first two courses through their open university system too. I did the graduate level courses they have instead of the undergraduate courses they advised me to do though and my GPA is based on those courses.(They will let 2 open university courses count towards your MS).