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rockclimber1
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- 0
Ok, so I am in a pickle. I attended a University which will remain anonymous right out of high school. I double majored in Biology and Electrical Engineering and let's just say that I was not prepared to be in college nor should I have been double majoring in anything. I did not take school seriously, because I was immature and decided other things were more important, i.e. working 50 hours a week as a construction worker to make money and going out and partying with coworkers 5 days a week. Well, I paid for it, I did receive my degree in biology however I FAILED miserably in the EE. I spent 8 years chasing two degrees and only ended up with one, I have EIGHT or NINE semesters in a row where I received nothing but D's, F's, W's and the occasional C. I ended up graduating with EXACTLY a 2.0 GPA and the only reason I was able to pull that off is because I had established a good enough buffer with the biology grades to stay in school. Had I only been pursuing a EE degree its safe to say that I would have been put on academic probation and then kicked out of the university. So, after this atrocious attempt at college I decided it was time for me to do something I always wanted to do which was travel. So that's exactly what I did, I left on my own for the next 5 years just really became a nomad and bounced around doing odd jobs here and there. It was fun and it was an experience but during that time I guess you could say I grew up and had a Eureka moment. I wish I could say that I was like many of you guys on this forum who are motivated and knew what you wanted early on but I can't. It took me quite a bit longer to figure that out but I finally decided to go back to school and do things right the second time around. I will be graduating this next semester with a BS in physics with a 3.97 GPA and 1 summer of internship experience along with 1 year of research experience with faculty in the materials area from a completely different university. Honestly, I was lucky enough to get into this university as a second degree seeking student given my prior academic record but I did so I won't complain. I was a member of SPS for 3 years, and I have good letters of recommendation from the faculty. I am sorry about this long post and really giving you my life story here but I need people to be honest with me when I ask, what are my chances now of getting into a grad school to pursue physics given my SHOTTY academic career prior to this? I have done some "shopping around" for grad schools and it seems apparent that they all want every academic transcript from every institution you have attended. I was thinking about playing the statistics game and just applying to as many universities as possible and hope that I get a bite from a couple of them however, I don't want to spend $800.00 to $1000.00 on applications given that the cost for application is on average $80.00. From what I understand, the UC system will allow you to apply for all 9 schools at once for undergrad but I have found nothing comparable to this for the grad system. Has anyone else had any luck finding something like this? And I was curious whether grad schools compute an OVERALL GPA from all universities attended? Because if that is the case then I am still SCREWED. Any advice or opinions is much appreciated and don't worry about being harsh, I can accept it. I would rather place my eggs in another basket i.e. pursuing potential jobs in government or industry that look surprisingly promising if the grad school scenario is futile. Thanks for your guys input.