Graduate School Odds: Increase Your Chances for Admissions to Top Schools

[Marthius]

I am now a senior and SUNY buffalo and a physics major, and my question is this. What are my chances of getting into a school such as Chicago or Colombia, maybe NYU or one of the UC schools. My scores are as follows
GPA: 3.3
GRE Verbal: 620
GRE Quant: 780
GRE essay: don't have yet
GRE Physics: haven't taken yet

Have done research with two professors at the university in solid state physics

Worked for schools computer help desk for 2 years.

An ideas as to what range of schools i should be looking at would be appreciated. Also dose anyone know if working on a masters degree first would help?

Thank you in advance for your help

 

[diazona]

Something like U. Chicago may be a stretch. I applied there last year, with a GPA of 3.7 at a "tier-1" undergrad program, and didn't get in. But a lot probably depends on how comfortable you are with your research experience. If you're well acquainted with some research topic (within solid state physics, I guess) and you'll be able to get a quick start working with a professor in that area at some graduate school, it should help your chances of admission there. Also, your GRE physics score is going to be reasonably important. To have a decent chance of admission at a top school like Chicago, I'd guess that you'd probably need to get a score of around, say, 930. (Maybe you can find more accurate info from the grad school itself) But of course remember that that's only one factor among several.