Accepting mid tear PhD or gap year and re-apply

Post Reply
fedeambro
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:26 pm

Accepting mid tear PhD or gap year and re-apply

Post by fedeambro » Sat May 07, 2022 5:53 am

Hi all,

I start by saying that my field is HEP-TH (which I know is very competitive).

I have been offered a PhD position in a mid/high tear research institute in Europe. I am a top2 UK institute graduate and I have always dreamt to do my PhD in the US at one of the big universities. Unfortunately, even though my profile was quite competitive, I have been rejected by all the grad schools in the US.

I am in two minds between accepting the position I have or taking a gap year and re-apply next year. The truth is that I am not sure at all that next year will be better than this one. The only new thing I can add to my CV is that this summer I'll be a CERN summer student and that I will have completed my master's.

I am afraid that I would be wasting one year of my life not accepting the reality of my situation. Still, it's hard to give up on my dreams. On the other hand, I don't know if accepting the place in such an "average" place with an "average" supervisor would mean jeopardising all my efforts to reach the level I am at right now. To be fair I kind of like the environment there: the PoIs seem nice and they are really trying their best to convince me to go there. Yet, I really believe that I would have deserved better than this. Especially in my current institution I didn't get the position just because I did not perform in my interview as I was having a very rough week (the one in which I received all the US rejections) and I was not the best version of myself.

Any advice would be really helpful. :)

BugTown
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Apr 15, 2022 10:19 am

Re: Accepting mid tear PhD or gap year and re-apply

Post by BugTown » Sat May 07, 2022 9:42 am

You haven't shared your whole application stats. But yeah, by big name you surely mean Harvard, Mit and the like. That is incredibly difficult, and even more so for HEP and even more so for international students.



Post Reply