Programs Timeline for undergraduate physics majors?

[Lanza52]

My university has a pretty poor budget and the undergraduates are at the end of the priority list, so our advising staff is... one guy who doesn't have enough time to do the work he had before becoming undergrad adviser.

So, I'm rather in the dark as to when I should be taking what standardized tests, how much research I should have done prior to grad school, when should I be applying for grad school, etc.

Does anybody have a good ... self-advising, I suppose, information source that I could use to figure it all out on my own? Or, if you feel like explaining it all for me, please feel free.

 

[jtbell]

Have you seen this yet? It's linked from a sticky (a.k.a. "Important") post at the top of this forum.

ZapperZ's "So You Want to Be a Physicist"