A bit of encouragement

[liljoey]

To anyone who may be worried about their applications:

I've been accepted to UW Madison and Florida State for high energy theory, and my gpa is only a 3.1 and my PGRE was only 620. There's hope!

Don't let this silly board with all it's incessant analysis of what good scores are, how to write a good essay, and all the other mind-boggling, confidence-crushing statistics get you down. You'll be fine!

[PhysicsPdx]

Thank you for the encouragement!

[Helio]

Congrats to you.... against all odds it seems

[bosem]

@liljoey
Thank you... I am just praying that, I get in somewhere. Thanks for giving me some hope!

[cato88]

Double dare you to post to physicsforum

[pqortic]

I hope it happens to me either. if so I will encourage you better than ever.

[tokamak]

@liljoey

you don't have a couple of first author physical rev. letter publications, do you??.....

[quizivex]

It was nice of liljoey to give some encouragement, but I think this post may answer your question.

I'm really passionate about pursuing a Ph.D. in particle physics/cosmology phenomenology. I come from an Ivy league school, have some good research experience (including a particle physics pheno internship this summer), I think my recommendations will be pretty good, I've taken a very rigorous set of courses, and I've taken/am taking some classes in particle physics (texts: Griffiths Particle book, Georgi's Lie Algebras). I'm also a girl.

Here's the problem: I have pretty bad problems with text anxiety (and anxiety in general), which have really hurt my GPA and made me bomb my Phys GRE (GPA 3.1, PGRE only 620 - eek!). I've never talked to anyone about my anxiety issues, though, preferring to work through them myself, so I don't think I can discuss these as an extenuating circumstance on my application without seeming whiny and like I'm making excuses. (Am I wrong here? Is there a way to do it so that it won't hurt my application?)