Chiron

I would first like to thank you very much for your reply. Just like TakeruK's advice, yours was also very helpful. In fact, just like TakeruK you mentioned that our LOR's should, if possible, explain that what happened at our current school will not happen again. It makes since that, if possible, it could say that our interests are better supported elsewhere. However, I'm not sure why you said that applying to 20 schools seems like a bad idea. Do you mean that there is a problem with applying to so many, or that you are worried we are not being careful enough about our selections? If that is the case, I can tell you that we are trying to be careful, and balance the quality of the groups there with the ranking (taking it to be a rough indicator of how likely we are to get in). We would very much like to get into a higher ranked school. However, we worry that our profiles are not strong enough. Physics Phd is a very competitive field, and those schools tend to be very difficult to get into. Also, as I replied to TakeruK's post, I'm worried that getting into schools in the same area may be very difficult. It would be good as a fallback, but I don't know that it's anything we can definitively rely on. That said, it's certainly something to think about and we'll see if there are additional schools which fall into that criteria. Please let us know of any other thoughts or questions which you have. Thanks.

We hadn't thought too much about what was said in the LOR's by the professors. We know that they will clearly be very positive and encouraging, but we had not thought of them as one form of helping to convince the schools we apply to that this will not happen again. That is a very good idea, and we do have the sort of relationship where we can speak to them about this (although of course we can't tell them what to write). I'm sure they'll be willing to help with this in some way and we really appreciate this idea. Thanks. Also, you have a very good point about smaller schools often having fewer spots available for incoming schools. We were aware of this, but hadn't thought about it too much. In that case do you have any recommendations for schools which we can add to this list (even if it means removing others) which are a good balance of likely available spots with difficulty in getting in. We provided the US News ranking of the schools we were considering, which serves as a rough guideline to how difficult they are to get in. Do you, or anyone else, have a sweet spot range you were thinking about? In terms of applying to many schools in the same area, this may be difficult as it's often difficult to find similar ranked schools in the same area which all have good research opportunities. (If we are wrong about this please provide some thoughts on schools which you believe may be suitable). These schools would also need to be schools which, with the stats we provided above, you believe we stand some sort of a chance of being accepted to. Anyway, your post was very very helpful and thought provoking. You gave us a lot of very helpful feedback, and helped us to see some more which we can do to increase the strength of our profiles. If you think of anything else, even if it's just questions or anything which passes through your mind, please let us know. Thanks.

Hello, my wife and myself both just graduated with Masters degrees from a relatively low-ranked PhD program and we are looking to apply to a PhD program with better opportunities. Both of us have been here for about 5 years and we would, if at all possible, like to be accepted to the same school. My undergrad is in Physics from a relatively high-ranked school in the US (which I completed with a GPA of 3.7/4) My wife's undergrad is in Physics from a relatively high-ranked school in India (which is equivalent to about >3.5/4 after conversion) I have two Masters degrees. The first is in Physics (which I completed with a GPA of 3.7/4) My second Masters Degree is in Science Education (which I completed with an overall GPA of 3.9/4) My wife's Masters degree is in Physics (which she completed with a GPA of 3.6/4) She was also pursuing a PhD in Physics following this, for which she completed all of the course-work (overall GPA is 3.8/4) Other information which may be helpful is that we both passed the Physics Qualifying exam at our school at the PhD level. We believe that this is likely a positive for our application. Also, my wife has completed her PhD candidacy exam, which happened about 1.5 years go. In addition, both of us have research experience and computer programming skills at both the undergrad and grad level. As an undergrad I worked on a theoretical REU project and also worked on an experimental project. Both were strongly related to optics. As a graduate student I have worked closely on two projects, both of which are in Physics Education. As an undergrad my wife worked on both theoretical and experimental AMO projects. At the graduate level she has also worked on both experimental and theoretical projects AMO. Having said all this the research opportunities at our current graduate school are very limited. We do not have papers and we have taken the decision to move elsewhere. It is actually because of these limited opportunities that I originally chose to see if Physics Education was a good fit. It was not, and as the opportunities at this school were not a good fit for either of us, and it became apparent that the opportunities necessary were not going to become available in the future, we have made the decision to move, even after all this time. This time lapse of about 5 years is something which we believe may count against us. We are certainly going to explain it as well as we can in our SOP's (and do it in such a way it makes it clear it will not happen again) but just to be sure we are looking at applying to about 20 schools. We have come up with a very tentative list and would like any advice which you can provide about good choices (i.e, to say if we are over-reaching or under-reaching, other schools to consider, etc...) We are going to be taking the September PGRE next Saturday, followed soon after by the General GRE. Thus, we won't be able to upload our exact scores for a while. However, as things stand right now we expect that for both of us the scores for the PGRE should end up 800+. Thus, please take that number into account for any advice. We would very much appreciate any advice regarding the list of schools which you can provide. We're really in a very difficult situation, and any advice which may help us to get out of it would be very much appreciated. Heres our list so far. We are applying to a lot of lower ranked school because honestly, as I said previously, we are in a very difficult situation and need to get in. Trying again next year is not an option. Our research interests lie mainly with experimental AMO for me, and theoretical AMO for my wife. However, as our situation is somewhat desperate we feel we can be a little flexible. Also, in order to increase our chances of getting multiple acceptances, we plan on applying to a wide range of schools. Thus, you may see a few unranked universities in our list, which we feel is okay as there will be about 20 in total. 1) University of Nebraska - Lincoln (Ranked 70 on US News) 2) Washington State University (Ranked 77 on US News) 3) Georgetown University (Ranked 77 on US News) 4) Oregon State University (Ranked 77 on US News) 5) Colorado School of Mines (Ranked 77 on US News) 6) University of Central Florida (Ranked 85 on US News) 7) University of Texas - Dallas (Ranked 95 on US News) 8 ) Lehigh University (Ranked 95 on US News) 9) University of Maryland - Baltimore (Ranked 103 on US News) 10) Temple University (Ranked 103 on US News) 11) University of New Hampshire (Ranked 103 on US News) 12) University of Houston (Ranked 103 on US News) 13) West Virginia University (Ranked 111 on US News) 14) Wake Forest University (Ranked 123 on US News) 15) George Mason University (Ranked 131 on US News) 16) Old Dominion University (Ranked 142 on US News) 17) Portland State University (Unranked on US News)