Physics Grad School: How Big a Deal Is Proceedings Paper?

[scorinaldi]

hey physics grad school gurus,

i am an undergraduate senior applying to physics graduate school for next fall.

working with one of my advisors we published a proceedings paper for the 2007 SPIE noise and fluctations conference this year. ( http://spie.org/x6628.xml )

how different is this from publishing a paper in a physics journal? are proceedings papers the same as papers accepted in physics journals? or are they less of a big deal in the eyes of graduate physics admissions boards? do they matter at all?

thanks for your input!

 

[J77]

SPIE's not bad.

It's not a journal publication, in that you usually know the reviewers (your colleagues), but you can put it down as published proceedings.

e2a: for me it's more about presenting current, unfinished work.

Also, I've had reviewers for journals tell me my stuff's not new because it's already appeared in my SPIE articles -- of course, they have to be argued down. These days, I like to fill the SPIE pages with large pictures