Is my schoolist ok?

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Pietroza123
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:50 am

Is my schoolist ok?

Post by Pietroza123 » Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:43 am

Hello, I am currently an undergraduate student. I plan to finish my degree this semester, doing a 1 year master in the same university that I did my undergraduate studies and then go to the USA for a PHD, so the information that I am writing here is my probable situation at this December.

Undergrad Institution: Top Latin America school - good physics reputation
GPA: 9.1/10
Length of Degree: 3.5
Position in Class: 4
Type of Student: International white male

TOEFL: 106 (30R, 28L, 23S, 25W)

GRE: I will take it this year if schools do not waive it, I think my score will be between 900-950.

Research Experience:

- 3 years of studying neural networks using statistical mechanics methods. One poster and (probably) one first-author paper.

Awards/Honors/Recognitions:
2.5 years of undergraduate scholarship for research and year of masters scholarship.

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Does 1 year of privately tutoring a high school student count? Besides that, 1 semester of tutoring in an intro course.

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Did 6 graduate courses, I scored A in all of them (here we score 0-10 in undergraduate courses and F-A in graduate courses). I also did 5 graduate courses in maths in the summer, scored A in all of them. Participated in some workshops.

Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: My advisor will write a strong letter of recommendation, however I only dd research with him and have not spoke much with other professors, so the other 2 letters won't be great.
I want to do research in complex systems or biophysics, and this are the main universities I would like to get into:

1) Chicago.
2) Maryland college park.
3) Michigan (ann-arbor).
4) UCSB.
5) Wahington.
6) Illinois at Urbana-Campaign.
7) Pennsylvania.
8 ) Pennsylvania state.
9) Cornell
10) Ohio State.

Do I have chance to enter one of these schools? By the way, does the research interests matter? I know that are much more people interested in HEP or CMT than in biophysics, so this is a bonus to my application?

Additionally, what safety schools would you recommend to me, given my interests?
Last edited by Pietroza123 on Wed Sep 22, 2021 1:31 pm, edited 3 times in total.

geekusprimus
Posts: 143
Joined: Sat Jun 08, 2019 1:10 pm

Re: Is my schoolist ok?

Post by geekusprimus » Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:55 pm

Your GPA looks pretty good, and your three years of research look pretty good. Those are all really good schools, but, assuming the GRE goes well, I think you've got pretty good odds for a lot of them, particularly the public institutions. Your chances as an international student will probably be a little tougher, but I'd be genuinely shocked if you couldn't get into at least one of those places.



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