Catria

UPD: I won't be able to carry out this cheap real estate plan personally, since I have been rejected... perhaps some other OOS, or international even, PhD admit at Michigan will carry out this plan after all.

Do you mean ED as you would in an undergraduate or legal context (i.e. that you're obligated to attend if admitted under ED)? Or you mean that decisions are made early in the cycle?

2 is definitely a tiny number for PhD applications. For undergrad, however, if one made the proper choices, and depending on country, major and credentials, 2 could be just fine

Now that I know that the down payment is higher for international borrowers than for domestic borrowers I can confidently say, if I'm rejected at Michigan, there would be no point for me to even consider taking out a mortgage in graduate school, since I would attend a school in a city where the down payment required would be too high for a mortgage to be worthwhile, since even a $40-50k house in the Twin Cities area would require a down payment that is too large for me to scrape together by defense time.

Pulling a similar plan off at Minnesota would likely mean that the value of the house would then be in the $40-60k range...

Please feel free to move this to "The Bank" if it is appropriate. Suppose for a moment that I was to attend Michigan. I would save some money while in school, and, with it, make a down payment for a house in Detroit (most likely a house in the $10-20k range). This plan will result in me taking out a mortgage. And, after graduation, I would get to rent out the house, or use it as a retirement home for my parents. Other variations on this plan would exist at other schools, depending on the real estate landscape nearby (I think the most I would be able to afford on a stipend would be in the $50-60k range), although plans of that kind WILL result in much longer commutes, if successful. My question is: can one take out a mortgage while under a student visa?

On Wolverine Access (Michigan), I now see the buttons "Accept/Decline financial aid, Financial planning calculators, My scholarship profile", buttons that I did not see before. Is that something that happens with everyone today or it happens to people that are about to receive an acceptance letter?

I truly hope Minnesota isn't going to be my only acceptance, but I feel horrible with respect to Princeton, UChicago, Michigan and WUSTL... although I admittedly do not expect much from Princeton or UChicago.

public office

Draft animals

Do WUSTL's physics department have more than one round? And how spread out can a round be? I emailed the administrative office, suspecting that the first round may not be over in just 3 days...

Suppose that a given department has sent out a first round of offers in, say, late January, but one has not been admitted in that first round. No waitlist, no rejection at that point. How long after the first round of offers should you wait before contacting a department to inquire about the status of your application then?

Speaking of alternatives to academic work that can be obtained with an English PhD, are there alternatives that are sensitive to prestige (either school-wide or in-field) as far as hiring is concerned (other than for maybe high school teaching)? I would be tempted to say that, even in some of these alternative jobs, Ivy League PhDs will get the upper hand over non-elite degree holders but is that actually the case?

Would any of this account for the collapses we observed in graduate applicant pools in humanities disciplines like English?

Usually photonics can draw from physics, in which case it can be AMO or condensed matter, and EE as well.

One would guess that such a reputation wasn't earned in a day...

Information for one program is better than no information at all... Although Daily Nous is a website dedicated to philosophy, since philosophy is an area that is at least somewhat relevant to classics, I think it is relevant for our purposes to post the link to some external source that, under the cover of anonymity, reported a drop in applications for the very cycle we're applying for. http://dailynous.com/2014/12/03/drop-in-graduate-applications/

Did anyone observe a collapse in the classics applicant pool? I know the rest of humanities experienced a decrease in applicant numbers this year...

In fact, there is an external website that acts much like TGC but is dedicated to physics only. Hence why the subforum is dead. One of the mods is also active on that particular website too. I would probably say that, since you come to physics from another field, the Physics GRE will count more in your case than for run-of-the-mill physics majors. For the record, are you unsatisfied with chemical physics graduate programs? Said chemical physics graduate programs are much like chemistry or physics PhD programs, as far as admissions processes are concerned. There exists terminal masters programs in both chemistry and physics but the ones that are funded are often offered at depts where the PhD is not offered. Looks like you can do well in theoretical condensed matter research...

Even though many a pre-med tried their hands at research (and, of course, clinical volunteering), if only because med school adcoms seem to look at research experience favorably (the pre-meds I know can go to great lengths to accomplish their ultimate objective) research really is the only thing that can realistically cause pre-meds to consider a PhD in a biomedical science as a backup plan to med school. Then again, if some MSc programs in the biomedical sciences are used by premeds in an attempt to bolster their dossiers for med school, are they funded? Do they come with a thesis? Or are they otherwise used to reinforce the dossiers of PhD hopefuls? One last thing: why not use the MCAT (or any other test specifically designed for healthcare professions, such as the PCAT or the DAT) as an admissions test for PhD programs in biomedical sciences? If I were the head of a department offering a PhD in a biomedical science, I would probably allow the use of such test scores on an experimental basis. That is, if tests designed for aspiring healthcare professionals truly were no better than the GRE at detecting biomedical scientific talent, then their use would be discontinued, but that wouldn't mean much then. In the event, however, that, say, the MCAT was proven to be a better predictor than the GRE is, in the context of biomedical graduate programs, then the GRE would no longer be required.