Grad School Advice
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 7:54 pm
Hi Everyone,
I'm new to this forum and decided to ask people for help with grad school. I'm a graduating physics senior from a top-10, small, liberal arts college in US. And I really want to go to grad school. The thing is I have a low gpa of about 3.2 by the time I graduate, but my major GPA is over 3.4. It's because of a mix of personal issues and a bunch of other classes that I was exploring as part of liberal arts education. However, I did well in standard undergrad physics curriculum, I got A- in quantum mechanics, A- in thermodynamics, A in electrodynamics, A in general relativity. Basically, I didn't put much emphasis on gpa early in my undergrad career because I thought it's better to take challenging classes and get B than take easy A classes. And now I've been reading admission posts here and a lot of people have gpa well-above 3.5, which concerns me. Do people like me still have a shot at grad school? I've substantial amount of research experience, I did two summer researches at my school, and possibly a paper in the future. So, I guess my question is what are my chances for grad school if could pull off a good PGRE score (like above 900), good research experience and well-written LORs and SOP? What are some good schools to look at that I can possibly get into? I would like to go into quantum optics/information/computing. Any help/suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks!
I'm new to this forum and decided to ask people for help with grad school. I'm a graduating physics senior from a top-10, small, liberal arts college in US. And I really want to go to grad school. The thing is I have a low gpa of about 3.2 by the time I graduate, but my major GPA is over 3.4. It's because of a mix of personal issues and a bunch of other classes that I was exploring as part of liberal arts education. However, I did well in standard undergrad physics curriculum, I got A- in quantum mechanics, A- in thermodynamics, A in electrodynamics, A in general relativity. Basically, I didn't put much emphasis on gpa early in my undergrad career because I thought it's better to take challenging classes and get B than take easy A classes. And now I've been reading admission posts here and a lot of people have gpa well-above 3.5, which concerns me. Do people like me still have a shot at grad school? I've substantial amount of research experience, I did two summer researches at my school, and possibly a paper in the future. So, I guess my question is what are my chances for grad school if could pull off a good PGRE score (like above 900), good research experience and well-written LORs and SOP? What are some good schools to look at that I can possibly get into? I would like to go into quantum optics/information/computing. Any help/suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks!