My Chances of getting into a PhD

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yzhu750
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:12 pm

My Chances of getting into a PhD

Post by yzhu750 » Fri Feb 03, 2023 11:25 pm

I am an international student but with 2.5 years background in engineer outside of US, and then transferred to a state University with usnews undergrad university ranking around 60, physics ranking around 25 and got my BS in physics with honors. I applied last yr but nothing got into. I'm now doing a MS with thesis in the same school, because I've done 4 grad courses in my undergrad, I can complete my MS in 1 year. I plan to pursue a phd in connecting string theory with experiments, especially string phenomenology and string cosmology with machine learning. Because very less physicists on this small track, I also considered some schools with both string theory and phenomenology. Here is my background and schools I just applied, thank you for anyone telling me my chances of getting into a PhD or possibility of homeless.

My backgrounds:
1. undergrad GPA 3.872/4, major GPA 3.976/4, I did grad Quantum, grad particle physics with QFT background, grad group theory application in physics in my undergrad. In the past fall, I've excelled in QFT and Vertex Operator Algebra, and I'm doing GR now.
2. 1-month intro level astrophysics research (because I supposed string cosmology and quantum gravity are in astrophysics). a 6-8 months undergrad high energy experiment project, but the interface board of the device of that project was broken before I started working on, and we finally picked up datasets from FNAL, but due to covid, we finally only got two datasets and data are also not enough to do more analysis, so not so much outcomes in this.
3. From last summer until now, I am doing a machine learning for collider and phenomenology project, and my advisor plan to get an arxiv preprint early this semester.
4. I asked my letter 1 from my current advisor, one from his collaborator at LBNL. And one from the professor of my grad group theory, also a famous string theorist. My current advisor told me I will not be homeless, he would say I focused a lot on this project and worked hard, also plan to do a paper. And he recommended me apply nearly all good schools. His collaborator is a sweet one, and I also presented some outcomes of this project to him, so it's fine. And for the last one, that course is an online course, and I only communicated several small string theory and group theory ideas through emails, and also no HW, but I did a term paper in non-abelian gauge theory and QFT & Standard Model and got A, that professor said he can say I did good in group theory, attended the class, several communicated with him in some small ideas, and did a term paper.
5. PGRE 930 (86 percentile)

Here are the schools I applied for:
1. MIT
2. Harvard
3. Stanford (Rejected)
4. UChicago (Rejected, I also applied last yr)
5. UC Berkeley (I also applied last yr)
6. UPenn
7. Wisconsin-Madison (Rejected, I also applied last yr)
8. Stony-Brook (Last yr applied, got into master)
9. Rutgers (Last yr applied, got into master)
10. Brown
11. NYU
12. Northeastern
13. Virginia Tech

I indeed don't want to become homeless again. I'll be grateful for any advices or telling me my chances of getting into a PhD or possibility of homeless. Thanks!

aniketkedare
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Feb 21, 2023 12:33 am

Re: My Chances of getting into a PhD

Post by aniketkedare » Fri Mar 10, 2023 12:39 pm

I think you will get into Grad School. Just be positive



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