Professional Experience and Graduate School

[Thomas Pace]

Hello,

I have a question about the benefit of professional experience in getting into graduate school in physics. I have a BS in physics from a reasonable school and I had the good fortune of being hired after I graduated by a company that is doing research and development on emissions sensors as a research engineer. The work I am doing is a now cross between material science and process engineering primarily. I will have my name on one or more patents by the time I would like to apply to graduate school and a good recommendation from my employer. So, I am curious if this will help offset my mediocre GPA and lack of undergraduate research experience in applying to a physics graduate program. I am planning on taking the physics GRE in October and hope to get a good score and I am trying to determine which schools I could hope to get into.

Thank you to everyone for all of your advice and help.

 

[fizziks]

Yes. Professional experience in research will definitely help. With that and a high score on your physics GRE, your GPA may be overlooked by some graduate schools. Undergrad experience shouldn't be able to top over research and development experience in the real field. Make sure you look into research programs that is related to your current work. Maybe somewhere in the area of semiconductors or whatnot.