- #1
WarPhalange
Help me pick a grad school. :)
So it's time to start applying. My professor/mentor suggested I go through the Big Book of Grad Schools and pick out all the schools I like, then go on US News and World Report to see their rankings, and weed out the bad ones.
That's super. But I'm still not 100%. I have a list, but I'm not sure if there's anything I missed or if there are any schools I should avoid.
My interest is in experimentalism, hopefully something applied, and the only fields I want to avoid are astrophysics and particle physics. Everything else is pretty interesting. So that's why I was told to pick large departments. Here's my list, with their rankings to the left:
1 - Stanford
3 - Berkeley
7 - Cornell
11 - Yale
11 - Columbia University, the applied physics department
13 - University of Maryland, College Park
29 - Duke University
36 - Purdue
45 - Texas A&M
48 - Arizona State, Tempe
48 - Iowa State, Ames
48 - U. of Massachusetts, Amherst
48 - U. of Pitsburgh, Pennsylvania
76 - Louisiana Statae, Baton Rouge
88 - U of Buffalo, SUNY
So okay, some schools are top tier, some are 3rd tier, and a few are 2nd tier apparently. My "qualifications" are a 2.98 physics GPA which will be bumped to a 3.0 after this quarter (out of 4.0), 1 really good letter of recommendation, and I'm in the process of deciding who writes my other two, which will be "ok" to "good", but not "great". My general GRE was good, I'm not worried about it, and I'll take my physics GRE tomorrow morning. From practice I expect at least a 70th percentile score. I've been practicing all summer and fall for that.
Any suggestions? :)
So it's time to start applying. My professor/mentor suggested I go through the Big Book of Grad Schools and pick out all the schools I like, then go on US News and World Report to see their rankings, and weed out the bad ones.
That's super. But I'm still not 100%. I have a list, but I'm not sure if there's anything I missed or if there are any schools I should avoid.
My interest is in experimentalism, hopefully something applied, and the only fields I want to avoid are astrophysics and particle physics. Everything else is pretty interesting. So that's why I was told to pick large departments. Here's my list, with their rankings to the left:
1 - Stanford
3 - Berkeley
7 - Cornell
11 - Yale
11 - Columbia University, the applied physics department
13 - University of Maryland, College Park
29 - Duke University
36 - Purdue
45 - Texas A&M
48 - Arizona State, Tempe
48 - Iowa State, Ames
48 - U. of Massachusetts, Amherst
48 - U. of Pitsburgh, Pennsylvania
76 - Louisiana Statae, Baton Rouge
88 - U of Buffalo, SUNY
So okay, some schools are top tier, some are 3rd tier, and a few are 2nd tier apparently. My "qualifications" are a 2.98 physics GPA which will be bumped to a 3.0 after this quarter (out of 4.0), 1 really good letter of recommendation, and I'm in the process of deciding who writes my other two, which will be "ok" to "good", but not "great". My general GRE was good, I'm not worried about it, and I'll take my physics GRE tomorrow morning. From practice I expect at least a 70th percentile score. I've been practicing all summer and fall for that.
Any suggestions? :)