School category for Cosmology/Astro-HEP

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gap1729
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Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2020 4:15 am

School category for Cosmology/Astro-HEP

Post by gap1729 » Mon Nov 09, 2020 4:47 am

I am an Indian male student applying to US grad schools. I need a few suggestions for my school selection.
- My Undergrad-MS university is well known in the US and I have 9+ CGPA (But GPA dipped slightly below 9 in last 2 semesters. However overall is still above 9)
- TOEFL is 27+ in each subsection

I have good research experience with 2 publications (one is published, other is an arXiv pre-print under review). So I have 2 excellent LORs and 3rd one is good but not like the first two. I am focussing on Theoretical Early universe Cosmology, Astro-HEP with a little bit of Theoretical Physics.

My list is ->

Super reach:
Caltech
Johns Hopkins (even though rank is low their Astro dept is amazing)
Stanford

Reach:
University of Pennsylvania
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Reach/Match:
Carnegie Mellon University
University of California Irvine

Match/Safe (?):
University of California Davis
Arizona State University

Can UC Davis, ASU be considered safe schools? Their depts are very good and I would gladly go there if I am given the opportunity. However, I am considering them as Safe/Match because of their low Ranking.

How is rest of the list? Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT : Removed the last paragraph which was unnecessary. In case there is any confusion - I'm asking this so as to decide if I should add 1/2 unis in the "safe" category that are ranked slightly below those mentioned above.



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