Catria

I would expect the median to also fall within that range (~80-85%). Except that I now rue the day that I first had that crazy idea that I would have what it takes to succeed... now I know I don't (if only psychologically) and I hate myself so much by now, so much so that I even think teaching some kids with learning disabilities would beat my current predicament (I actually thought of that as a backup plan if I gave up on physics as an undergrad since I knew the subject matter would probably play a major role in why I would have been unhappy with it back then)... and Jackson will only make it worse next semester, if I somehow stay beyond this semester. Also the only thing I could possibly have fooled the adcoms about is the very issue I am complaining about: mental health concerns... One last thing: is it advisable to be sent back to undergrad-level stat-mech due to the issues I'm having, and the concerns I have regarding the second half of the course?

And this stat-mech midterm has brought me back to square 1... but, with a 79% (and the average being in the ~80-85% range) perhaps it would be best to withdraw from that particular course rather than the entire program, however. Still I feel I am out of place in a PhD once again...

Being an average student (or somewhat above average at best) in PhD classes really means very little when everyone used to be high-achieving as undergrads. Virtually everyone in my entering year at my current program was a top-20% undergraduate, and about half the people I know were top-10%. (It does feel, in terms of peers, almost as if I was at some top-20 school outside the top-10, which all seem to induce some significant "funnel effects") The dumb people I know that can still finish grad school are, on the other hand, rather hard-working... to various extents of course. I understand that you don't need to be a genius to earn a PhD, however. I'm almost sure that it will get better once the coursework is over... then again, most students, if they came to a PhD program for the right reasons, will likely feel that way as well.

Except that grades in coursework, along with written comps scores, will (partially) determine what advisors you may have access to for research... research may feel so distant to me now, but if I stayed, I will have to live through at least two years (and that's assuming no retakes of coursework whatsoever, which probably will happen, if only that one course) of that sort of nightmares. If I drop out, however, my understanding would be that I should never attempt to earn a PhD ever again, because I know the issues will resurface at one point until the end of the coursework. Plus the primary things other people in the program would compare to me by now would be my transparency in the face of hardship and, to a lesser extent, how I seem to start homework before everyone else does. Classmates, senior students seem so opaque about that stuff... and my professors have been of little help thus far beyond the specifics of the assignments themselves, including their underlying material. They said that they weren't good resources for non-academic troubles caused by assignments.

It's actually a chain of things, which will have the aforementionned consequences if left unchecked. If I do poorly on problem sets, I lose motivation fast enough to throw me off-balance, especially if tests cover the same material as said problem sets.

Except that I am concerned about this particular course, the one whose assignment due today will probably decide whether I'll stay or not, making me unable to meet the minimum required GPA...

I am writing about possibly dropping out of a physics PhD program (at the University of Minnesota) after one semester. (A little early in the program, I know) At the beginning, I was overconfident about my own ability to finish the program, I thought I was the same as everyone else in my class, I thought that, since past students at my level of ability could graduate from that very department, I could do so as well. As much as I would like to think that it isn't an indictment of any lack of ability on my part (until proven otherwise), I am candid in saying that the issue I am about to describe could have happened anywhere else (e.g. Notre Dame) and that the triggers would happen again. It may well be that people within a range of personalities (how wide however, I don't know) may be more suitable for a PhD program than I was, but I had a nervous breakdown when I got last week's assignments back: 16/25 and 21/30 in classical physics and statistical mechanics respectively, and the worst part was that both assignments were on material that were undergraduate-level to me. I told myself that the only solace will come when the coursework will be over, that is, about two years from now. Perhaps 16/25s or 21/30s would feel less painful if the rest of the class struggled to similar extents and/or these assignments were about new material (however, a 8.5/10 in advanced quantum mechanics, in comparison, is heaven, and I actually got that grade), but underperforming in an assignment covering undergraduate material would make me feel that my place in that graduate program was proof of past ability at best. I often hear about impostor syndrome, but as much as I would take credit for my past successes, I feel that my skill may have vanished since I last had any significant measure of success (being a finalist in a student scientific poster contest) in my field. But I know better than to blame my TA duties for this. I usually feel better about poor positional performance if my absolute performance was satisfactory, or about poor absolute performance if my positional performance was satisfactory. But someone has to be at the bottom of the class for a given assignment and it happened to be me for that particular classical physics assignment. Nervous breakdowns of that type will happen again, and I think my emotional instability in the face of homework assignments will finally prove to be the one item that renders me unable to complete the program. For this reason, I do not feel I am cut out for a PhD program, despite past research experience telling me that research would probably make me feel better than coursework, thanks to the coursework bottleneck. P.S.: I feel as if the assignment due tomorrow will ultimately decide whether I will stay in the program or drop out...

At that point, I would most fondly remember the educational level most responsible for my career when everything is said and done and, if I get to postdoc stage, postdoc, otherwise, PhD. But these traditions are not only built on undergraduate alumni donations but also on postdoc contributions (from grant overhead, research) However, development cases, which are often lumped together with legacies, do not perfectly overlap. And development cases (i.e. children of big donors; at Stanford the minimum threshold to qualify is $500k or so, but I'm not sure whether it's $500k one-time or $500k over the lifetime of the parent) can enjoy an even bigger advantage than legacies (or even enjoy an advantage where legacies do not).

One could argue that a postdoc has contributed more to the university than an undergraduate...

The trick is that I am attending one of those few public schools that do. Minnesota gives some weight to legacy, but doesn't care about whether the applicant can claim legacy status through a relative having done undergrad, grad or postdoc. UVA also does, but not sure about Michigan or W&M. However, many desirable postdocs are found at those schools that do care about legacy status.

The only school I know for a fact where undergraduate applicants cannot claim legacy status for relatives having done postdocs there is UChicago. Legacy means that the applicant has relatives that graduated from that particular school. Usually the strongest weight is given to parents or siblings that attended the school as undergraduates, then graduate degrees, postdocs (if applicable), in-laws, cousins, aunts/uncles, grandparents. Many people that earn graduate degrees earn graduate degrees at different schools than their respective undergrads, and most institutions with graduate schools that allow undergraduate applicants to claim legacy status, will allow undergraduate applicants to claim legacy status for undergraduate and graduate degrees earned by relatives. If you graduated from university A for undergrad, university B for grad school and did a postdoc at university C where relatives of postdocs can claim legacy status, then your children can apply to A, B and C under legacy status for undergrad (if legacy status can be claimed at all three of course).

I knew that legacy status usually was claimed by scions of undergraduate alumni and, when the college has a graduate school, graduate alumni, though. However, I heard that, for the purposes of determining legacy status, some colleges consider a postdoc as having attended the college and, for other colleges, a postdoc is considered as being an employee of the college.

Suppose that you do a postdoc at a university where legacy is a factor for undergraduate admissions, but did not attend that university for undergrad or grad school. Can your children claim legacy status when applying at that university for undergrad?

There is only one good practical reason why some people may aim for 4.0 in a PhD program while still in the coursework stage: it is because they are externally funded and said external funding is renewed contingent on grade requirements for which the compliance requirements (I've seen 3.0, 3.3 or 3.5 as compliance requirements) are too low. I think some Chinese and Indian grants operate in that sort of fashion; in practice the recipients of these grants will have to be at 4.0 or close to it to keep the grants. (In masters programs, it could be that the student's employer will only refund As for graduate coursework) Of course, people in direct-PhD fields may also use a PhD as a medium to obtain a masters for free or to otherwise plan ahead for future needs where PhD grades are a factor (say, they think it's likely that their post-graduation job will lead them to get, say, a MBA, a MPP or some other such thing). What does sandbagging rotations even mean? Do you mean neglecting rotations instead? It's normally rather easy to meet compliance requirements in hard sciences, I'll grant you this much. But my supervisor claimed that the reason why PhD grades matter to make decisions to take on students at schools without rotations (Minnesota is a rotation-less school for physics, and UCSB in the mid-1980s was without rotations either) was because the professors outside of the admissions committee or the quals committee would mostly know any given student through graduate coursework. By my supervisor's claims, they say that, all else being withheld (or equal), the professor would be more likely to take on a student at 4.0 than a student barely meeting compliance requirements. Just that, in my supervisor's eyes, better have grades that are too high than too low. Of course, if there were rotations, then the rotations will obviously be weighted more.

My supervisor claimed that PhD grades were used by professors to make decisions regarding who to take on as a RA... he claimed that he could get Wilczek for a supervisor only because he had a 4.0 while at UCSB. (That was long before Wilczek moved to MIT) Then again, my supervisor obtained his PhD from a different era (mid-1980s) where research experience opportunities for undergrads weren't as abundant as today, so what he has to say may not apply today.

But could the two-step process have caused a shrinking of the applicant pool?

I wonder whether the collapse in the applicant pool has actually materialized beyond Rutgers...

In graduate psychology courses, maybe A is the standard grade but I do not think it holds true across all fields or all departments within a field.

For me I paid about ~$100 for travel from and to a testing center for the subject GRE since I took it in April in an attempt to save some stress. The nearby testing center only offered subject GRE in September... Sometimes it is better to pay so that you can spread stress over time; I paid about $250 for this decision ($100 for travel, ~$150 in score reports). Luckily I was in a funded masters at the time.

Sorry if I bring up an old thread... There is one overlooked aspect in this whole discussion of PhD grades: if one hit the job market in some capacity for a few years after graduation, and hits a wall in a career that can't be overcome with a PhD but can be overcome with a professional school degree. Or wants to switch fields. How do professional schools (other than law school, which do not care about graduate grades in any shape or form) view PhD grades? Professional schools ask for all university transcripts, undergrad and grad.

Keep in mind that I am a Quebec resident (no need for a F-1 visa but need to take TOEFL). https://consanguinephysics.wordpress.com/the-master-list-of-costs-incurred/ Applied to 12 schools for physics... all amounts are in $US unless otherwise specified. Physics GRE: $150 General GRE: $185 TOEFL: $240 GRE score reports: 12 @ $27 apiece = $324 TOEFL score reports: 12 @ $19 apiece = $228 Transcript translations: $CAN200 Hardcopy transcripts: 5 @ $CAN11 (the fifth one will be sent to Minnesota in due time but not yet) Application fees: $760 Washington University in St. Louis: $45 Notre Dame: $75 Dartmouth: $50 Minnesota: $95 Michigan: $90 Princeton: $90 UPenn: $80 Tufts: $75 UChicago: $55 Columbia: $105 SEVIS fee: $200 F-1 Visa fee (if applicable): $160 Spent almost $2,000...

What gives that claim any pretention to accuracy would be mathematics and engineering. Biological and biomedical sciences provide a baseline of domestic graduate students due to PhD programs in biology and biomedical sciences being sometimes (don't know how often though) applied to concurrently with med school applications. US physics PhD programs are well on their way of reducing their dependence on international students since the domestic pool of physics undergraduates has been on the upswing, but it will still be two years until one can conclusively claim that the internationals' contributions to physics PhD programs has shrunk. Because the undergrads that entered college for physics in the LHC era, which provided a significant boost to physics undergraduate programs nationwide, will be undertaking their PhD application season this year and next year (depending on when they entered college)

Let's not forget outsourcing of non-academic jobs. Unless supply is reduced (I would do so gradually though), the demand for PhD graduates in what non-academic jobs remain will be increasingly elitist (i.e. prestige will play an ever-increasing role in hiring) or otherwise prestige-driven. But how exactly prestige would then relate to non-academic employability is highly job-dependent and field-dependent, so I suspect that in-field prestige would matter on some level, perhaps more than the university-wide prestige. Except when one talks about business/strategic consulting or investment/international banking, in which case university-wide prestige will trump in-field prestige more often than not. So, yes, adequate career guidance is necessary (and often inadequate career guidance leads to placement disasters from a program's standpoint) but one needs to watch out for outsourcing.