Physics GRE Discussion Forums

anyone else not heard yet from them? i was looking at gradcafe and it seems like maybe a 50/50 at this point... i emailed their grad coordinator and she said that their final decisions should be made by the end of this week.

not really sure if i want to go there though... not that great for astro theory...

What type of astro-theory?

nothing more specific than that. am i wrong? i'm just relying on rankings and professor opinions... haha, my professor emailed me saying, "i would rank - given your interests - both berkeley and ucsb above cornell. unless you want to do particle physics phenomenology, don't go to cornell."

I don't think that you're necessarily wrong to think that Berkeley and UCSB are "better" than Cornell in this field. However, i would note that there are dozens and dozens of subfields in theoretical astrophysics and each school has its own strengths. Cornell has a good program in general, but they also have several professors who are very highly respected in their fields (of course, the same is true for both Berkeley and UCSB). Rankings and reputation for astro departments are based on everything from observational facilities to amount of grant funding, so its not always easy to determine who has the best theory program based on these rankings. Oftentimes the best litmus test for assessing the Ph.D. program that is right for you is to determine what field you might be interested in and see what research is ongoing at in that field at each school (and in particular, what faculty is carrying out that research).

Overall I was more curious than anything.

yep, good advice