Physics GRE Discussion Forums

I believe the verbal maxes out at 99% once you get to 730 or so... beyond that you still get 99%...

kindof like the physics GRE, everyone who scores past the 990 cutoff still gets 97%

@ shouravv

<deleted>


@ Karatiechop

Thanks!

Yeah Im just worried. My scores arent that good. Im just waiting for a reply from somewhere. Its hard to study for those ets test when you have job your doing research and your trying to get straight A's.

Karatechop, why are you only applying to three universities, all in the South? Do you hate the "Yanks" that much? Your research experience and grades are good enough to get into some more well-known schools. After all, GRE scores are only one factor.

----

@ Karatechop250

Besides your P GRE score, your stats look very good. I wouldn't worry too much since that doesn't appear to be required at the schools you've applied to (intentional on your part?)

I didnt have the money. The dilema is im completely independent from my family and at this point they really have no money to give right now. My farther just had a heart transplant. Plus the fact that they were poor to begin with. Its a difficult situation. And I was originally going to apply to ten but before christmas break my car blew up and I had to get a new one, which really hurt my fianances.

Hey all. My verbal score was a statistical mechanical anomaly, like all the air molecules ending up on one side of the room. I must have guessed on half those questions...can someone calculate the odds of guessing an 800?

@ Karatechop250
No worries man, you're totally gonna get into all three of those schools. Stresseth not! You've got a crazy good research track record.

After we all have more acceptances than we can handle, we should update our profiles with the offers we turned down, so that waitlisted people can get a little hope. And of course, eventually, we can update it to list the school we choose to attend!

So I'm looking over the profiles and all you 990 superstars out there need to hurry up and get accepted to Harvard, Princeton, Caltech, etc, so that I can get accepted into your backups.

Could you please tell me my profile:

GRE-verbal : 590/800 (82%)
GRE-quant : 800/800 (92%)
GRE-Physics : 620 (40%) It sucks !!!!

Undergrad degree : BE (major: Electronics & Communication Engg) from a famous school in India
Graduate Degree: MS in Applied Physics (GPA ~ 3.7; for physics courses ~ 3.9) from a good university in US.
I have taken almost all the required graduate courses for theoretical physics

Applying for : PhD in Theoretical particle physics/Theoretical high energy physics for fall 2008 in
Upenn
UVA
UGA
NYU
Syracuse
UCDavis.

2 conference proceedings and 1 journal papers.
2 years research experiences

<deleted to avoid criticism>

Then please finish the damn degree at your current school and leave the US as soon as possible.

I don't recall you being so angry, quizivex. Were you bitten by a zombie???

yeah i also felt the same

There's us Americans being xenophobic again, NOT.

I'm not angry, but there's just no excuse for that nonsense. No matter how bad someone's english is or how unfamiliar they are with the forum, it makes no sense to post the same profile on 5 threads. It's inconsiderate to the rest of us.

This is the funniest thing I have read in the Profiles thread:

Minor(s): (we don't have minors in my country)

I don't even care if it is true or not.

In America, you can always find a party.
In Soviet Russia, Party finds you!

we don't have minors in my country

I imagine a country where everyone is drunk, voting, and having sex that would otherwise be considered statutory rape.

twistor wrote:

we don't have minors in my country

I imagine a country where everyone is drunk, voting, and having sex that would otherwise be considered statutory rape.

all at the same time

Let's all try to guess which country this is.

haha hpharty

In America, you watch TV.

In Soviet Russia, TV watches you!


In America, to find party you need beer and blue jeans.

In Soviet Russia, you have beer and blue jeans, party finds you!

Wooo! Looks Ill be saying would you like fries with that. Apparently I wasnt good enought to get in anywhere. The only school that offered me anyhting is Mississippi and in order to be accepted I have to promise to work on LIGO. God I hate programming. Already rejected from Wake Forest they did have three times as many applicants as last year and originally it was a maybe. Same thing from Alabama accepted but they dont know if ill get funding or not. ....... Would you like an apple pie with that?

Karatechop250,

Promise to work on LIGO?? You mean the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory?

karatechop, when you say that you have to promise to work on LIGO, is that your funding information? It doesn't seem like they should be able to control which area of physics you study. Maybe you can just play the game for a year and then find an RA in a different group?

Yes Ligo = Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. And doom thats what Im currently planning on doing if I dont get accepted into University of Alabama. I did get an email from them at like 11 pm last night saying I had a good chance and that the final decisions should be made by the end of the week. It wasnt from the committe it was from a professor of the Astronomy research group trying to persuade me to work for them.

Ok my profile is back up. Thank you so much to all of you who posted yours. Keep them coming! That thread will be great for future classes.

Just wanted to extend a reminder to update your admission decisions to those of you who may have forgotten.

Also, a few of you took your profiles down or didn't post a complete one. Hopefully you'll put it back soon!

Is anyone going to admit who they are, what school they are from , or who they worked for once they decide which school to go to next year? I think I'll own up to it. What difference does it make really?

I'll post my undergraduate institution, but really if you've been paying attention to my posts I've revealed enough personal information already to track me down. I'll also post where I end up matriculating.

I might even post (explicitly) who I worked with, though I doubt many people care.

What I won't do is post my full name, at least not directly: I don't want to make myself Google-able on here.

I might. A few people here -- who I've never met -- already know who I am. I've certainly posted enough information for anyone to track me down several different ways (I think I've even posted my undergraduate institution in some thread).

I don't mind posting that. Anyone with half a google brain can find me by my username anyways.

Nice one, grae313 -- everyone who hasn't just Googled you. Not that I wouldn't figure out who you are eventually at open houses anyways.

See, this is why I chose a pseudonym on here that I don't use anywhere else. "zxcv" are four adjacent keys on my keyboard.

@ zxcv
Thanks for ur post about davis in ur blog. Do u have any idea how many international applicants they are planning to offer this year and when is the deadline before which they'll send all their decisions......I'm an international applicant waiting for davis and still didn't hear anything from them.....I even don have any idea howmany international applicants they are having this year.....

multigoal - Usually Davis has only about 20% of their class as international students, because the UC system makes it really expensive to fund you guys, so that already makes it about twice as hard to get in as most places in the US. Since they are aiming for 15-20 students this year, that means they are only looking for about 3-4 international students. And since also, apparently, international students are far more likely to accept offers, I would guess they would only admit around 5 of you, since there are only 10 students total who will be accepted in the next wave. So it will be tight, especially because it sounds like they have far more international applicants than that.

I did get the sense that the next wave would probably be their last, and you'll know if you get in or get on the waiting list at that point. Unfortunately I don't know when that will be, though it will probably be within the next few weeks. When people start hearing from Davis again on here it's your cue to write the department to find out your status if you haven't heard. Right now not having heard back is not bad news since no international students have gotten in yet.

nvanmeter wrote: UIUC - Physics - Condensed Matter Theory - Accepted, e-mail, 2/11, 11-month fellowship ($23K) + one semester part-time TA ($4.1K), Declined offer
Cornell - Physics - Condensed Matter Theory - Accepted, mail, 2/7, 9-month fellowship ($24K) + TA ($5.4K per semester), Declined offer

Hah. Anyone actually interested in condensed matter theory would not have turned down those two offers.

@quantumcat2002

You are a silly individual. I am sorry to see that you also got Columbia-owned yesterday.

@secander

Holy *** dude! You're 19! How do your enormous balls even fit into your pants?!

That is crazy, you will be a grad student who can't legally drink. Although because clearly men of your genius are rare, I think you'll find they don't card much at grad student functions.

Are you turing 20 or have you just turned 19?

@donkey

well the truth is i don't know what the hell i want to actually do within theory...i really hate the idea of specialization, but i wrote condensed matter theory on my application b/c i feel like it has more job prospects than the other big theory field (particles/strings); so if i don't really care, might as well go with what makes more money. so yeah, the supposition "actually interested in condensed matter theory" is what contains the error. plus ithaca is too cold and urbana is too boring.

I would think Ithaca would be boring too in addition to being cold.

ibbgs wrote:I would think Ithaca would be boring too in addition to being cold.

well, snow blizzards are considered cold to pretty much everyone you ask, but gorgeous landscapes and nature, and a quaint, liberal town are only considered boring to some people you ask

@nvanmeter

Yeah, perhaps I should have said "...would not have turned down those two offers, yet." It just seems somewhat foolish since they are arguably the best two schools in that area. I have actually visited both of them within the last week and a half and have been extremely impressed by both (although it doesn't take much to impress me because I come from a physics program with a relatively limited scope). Believe me, there is a reason why UIUC is number one in condensed matter. Their little 'condensed matter theory center' is a literal who's-who in the field. I mean, you've got Leggett, Baym, Goldbart all within about 20 feet of one another. Even if you don't work for someone quite as famous as those guys, all of their faculty are top notch and it must be stimulating to be around them.

I've also decided that if I'm really serious about getting a Ph.D. and doing good physics for the rest of my life, grad school location and local weather should be rather insignificant factors. I want to go somewhere where the science is best. My top three choices right now are Illinois, Cornell, and Maryland (the latter because they're offering me a full-blown, extremely well-paying 5-year research assistantship to work with world-class people at world-class facilities, e.g., NIST). The two California schools to which I've been accepted, Santa Barbara and Berkeley, have about a combined 5% chance of me going there, while their locations are far and away the best. But, I've now spent time in Urbana, Ithaca, and the D.C. area, and while not completely ideal locations, I know that I could live in any one of them and be happy doing so. By the way, for my outdoor interests and such, my current undergrad location is absolutely perfect, so my happiness will be going down some in that regard. Also, I'm not completely set on condensed matter theory either. I like it when a little AMO and such is thrown into the mix .

I wasn't suggesting you should definitely attend either Illinois or Cornell. You will obviously end up at an amazing institution. To me it just seems premature, from the perspective of doing good science at least, to reject those offers so soon without visiting or even giving them a chance. That's all.

i definitely understand what you're saying. but i do have to narrow down from 8 to 1 somehow and those two schools don't appeal to me as much as the others - neither in location, nor in physics. for one thing, i'm trying to stay away from computational physics at all costs and cornell and illinois seem to derive some of their condensed matter theory strength from the computational side. if i do condensed matter, i want to do strongly correlated electrons and high-tc superconductivity, and (at least according to my professor) that's not really illinois/cornell's strength. but most of all, i'll probably end up changing my mind on what field to go into by the end of the first year, so i'd rather go to a more all-around school (and yes, a more prestigious one). i mean i really only applied to those 2 b/c i wasn't sure i'd get into the others and figured that if i can't get into the schools i want to go to, i might as well try for the "top" schools in my subfield that might be easier to get into. but then i did get into my favorites...

but i must disagree about the location issue. to me, it's as important of a factor as the quality of the science, at least among already good schools. 6 years isn't all that long i guess, but it's a very special 6 years...probably the last one that i'll be single and partying....

nvanmeter, how did you decide you were interested in strongly correlated electrons and high-tc superconductivity? I feel like I have so little idea of what in particular I want to study. BTW, apparently theory PhDs are usually shorter, more like 5 years at most places.

@nvanmeter,

Yeah, I completely understand your position too. I think a lot of people probably would have done the same thing. I'm curious though as to which of your schools you think are strong in that area of condensed matter. I, for one, am not that interested in high-Tc and strongly correlated electrons. The one school I kind of wish I had applied is Harvard. I know I have cited Demler's work a number of times in my current research. And there are a couple other people there that look good as well. MIT's research in my area didn't interest me at all (I think MIT physics may have the poorest website anywhere on the interweb). I also have firsthand information that Stanford admits on the order of 1 or 0 cond mat theory people a year. I'm not considering UCSB because I didn't get the kind of fellowship offer you got. Plus, I have a good friend going there now with my exact interests who is essentially advising me not to go there. By the way, Cornell and Illinois are by no means top-heavy on the computational side, although they do have first-rate people doing it. I also want to stay away from a hard-core numerical group. As for location, I think most of my happiness will be derived from doing good physics and going to good bars and drinking good IPA (BTW, my first line in this discussion with you was drafted after 'a couple' IPAs ), the latter two of which I think can be done in pretty much any college town. Well, time to continue writing this darn thesis...

Hey everyone! Now that admission results are finally in, don't forget to update them in your profile. Also, I encourage those of you who haven't yet posted a profile to do so. Thanks for the most recent post, kah!

Many users who "reserved" a spot in the thread or posted a partial profile haven't yet completed it. So I just wanted to remind those of you to update it:
twistor, gluon, RG, VT, agonizomai, ender, jammin, LumineferousAether, i_phys, Shouravv, AppPhy, inverse Erfc, dur13, Christopher 3.14

I recall some people remarked that the "Results" tab of the new forum layout isn't very helpful as it gives the wrong impression that only the GPA and GRE matter in admissions. I agree. I really think that no spreadsheet, database or other computerized attempt to organize profile/admission would be much simpler, more helpful and complete as the current profile thread, which has the flexibility to allow users to include ALL relevant personal information that may influence the HOLISTIC evaluation of applicants.

As for me, I just got the Harvard rejection. <deleted for inaccuracy>

I never thought I'd get accepted there anyway, but I just realized yesterday, after overhearing a prof's conversation about quantum computing, that in my Harvard app I listed a research interest that doesn't exist, lol!!! Experimental quantum computing. Apparently the field is all theory so far. I wonder if that influenced the decision, lol!

Edit: My above comment about QC is incorrect, lol.

YAHOO, RG is back!!! Twistor is back!!! Grae313 is back, oh by the way, I was planning to make a happy birthday thread for grae on the 13th (assuming that's where 313 comes from) and even had it programmed in my phone, but I never used my phone that day, so I forgot, oh well Let's seize this forum back from the hypersensitive overoffended cult that has invaded.

I don't know if there is much research that could be called experimental quantum computing per se, but there is plenty of experimental research that is relevant to quantum computing happening in fields like AMO and condensed matter.

And some of that work is done at Harvard. Check out Lene Haue's website, for example.

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0112176

Textbook experimental quantum computing.

quizivex wrote:As for me, I just got the Harvard rejection. Isn't it a violation of the universal 3/15 agreement that they sent out letters on the 17th?

What does the agreement say about 3/15? I thought the only date on there was 4/15 as the last day for us to notify schools of our decisions. Does it really say grad schools have to notify by 3/15? Because a quick look at gradcafe will show lots of decisions after 3/15...

quizivex wrote:Grae313 is back, oh by the way, I was planning to make a happy birthday thread for grae on the 13th (assuming that's where 313 comes from)

Actually, my birthday is in July, but thanks anyways