mrmish

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They're often used for funding consideration, from what I've read up in my own programs.
 
As for tips, also from what I've read, don't whine about your past, but do indicate any particular hardships you overcame (and likely continue to overcome as a minority in the U.S.). For some people, it's overcoming racism or other forms of discrimination; for some people it's overcoming having no money to buy food, and so working two jobs; for some people, it's persevering and achieving college success despite growing up in a community, family, or other environment which did not support you or even actively discouraged you. Other hardships might be having or being a single parent, parents divorcing (although this seems silly to me - isn't it something like 50% of our generation's parents got divorces?), close family members or friends passing away at a critical age in your development, kicking cancer's a** .... really, it's your life, so you know what unique (or non-unique) crud you've had to pull yourself through to get where you are now.
 
Things I've read to generally stay away from are mental health issues; demeaning your undergraduate institution, its resources, or its faculty (even if they were/are crappy); anything that hints at your immaturity or instability; aggrandizing your plans/impact on the world. 
 
This is all from reading these forums here, and from reading the links found through these forums
 
Good luck, youngcharlie!

I don't think either method is appropriate for reporting a GPA to a United States (or Canadian) graduate program.
There are two possible appropriate ways, from my application cycle (my school in Canada also awards grades out of 100 but it's never relative to another student, always an absolute scale, so it's possible for everyone to score 100%).
The most common way when I asked the US grad schools is to not convert your grade into a GPA. Instead, you just provide your transcripts. Your transcripts should include a description of how grades are awarded (mine has it on the back or the last page) and if not, I would recommend providing a copy of this information from your school's official source. The graduate school will choose their own way to interpret your international grades based on their own internal systems as well as past experience with students from your country/school. 
The other way is to look up some resources that explain the conversion and try to apply that. However, I would only do this is you are explicitly required to do so. This means you should only do this if the application says something like "If you are an international student, please convert your grade to a 4.0 GPA scale". Do not do this if the application simply provides a box for you to enter your GPA. If it just asks for a GPA (but does not ask you to convert), what you should do is contact the school and ask them for instructions. In almost every case, they will either tell you to enter your GPA in your own school's system (so I often entered x/100) or to just leave the field blank and they will compute their own GPA for you.

Haha don't go on assuming that I have a perfect application. I would say I have very good GPA and test scores, but I don't have a strong research profile. Although I have interned for active research groups in AMO last couple of summers, and one of them should get me a good LOR, I don't have any publications and it's unlikely that I'll have anything by Dec. Looking back, I was probably a bit too laid-back on research. 
You seem to be way more focused with your research. So by the same token, I am glad we're applying for different subfields! 
Anyway, I'd suggest not to get worked up about all the little details. Past a certain point, I think what really matters is the compatibility of your application with the current needs of the department. So the decisions will be to a large extent unpredictable. The only thing I wish for is to end up in a place where I'm surrounded by people I'd find interesting and with an environment to keep me motivated. 6 years is a hell of a long time.
Again, I wish our applications the very best. Cheers! 

Thank you! I was happy to be done with it...
I see! I'm going to get on all of them after the October pGRE and make sure that, if they haven't already taken the General (or don't have a good enough score), they get to work. Your remark about competing against applicants, not standards, is very true and very important to remember – I'll remind them of this, because it's easy to say "oh yeah, I'm safe, cool" when in reality every little bit matters. While I am skeptical of the validity of the "median GRE" range reported for Physics programs at different schools on Magoosh – I remember looking at the methodology and having doubts – the fact that Physics applicants score very highly on the GRE is undisputed. I'm not sure if we have the highest average composite, but it's something like 3rd highest V and Q score and the disciplines ahead in both categories are nowhere to be found in the other. 
Wow! A 990; that's tremendous, congratulations! Are you a domestic applicant? I would guess that you are, given that you mentioned that you did take the SAT, and if so that's almost a ticket in anywhere! I'm hoping for something 900+, and my practice exams (together with my feeling on the September exam itself) lead me to believe that this is feasible, but I would be very surprised if I was anywhere near 990 – probably 940 or 950 is more realistic, but I would still be happy even with these. 
Do you have a good feeling about the rest of your profile? If your test scores are any indication, I would wager that it's pretty solid. Personally, I'm both excited and very nervous for the pGRE because it's the last variable in my application – I am very strong everywhere else, including letters, research, SOP, etc. and test scores were the last thing that could go wrong, so I felt some extra pressure to deliver. 
I'm trying for HEP-th/cosmology. I'm in HEP-ex right now (SUSY research) because my university's HEP-th group is quite small. I want to study BSM physics, inflationary cosmology (and alternative cosmologies), and a bit of pheno to make myself more marketable for post-docs in case the field doesn't evolve in the way I'm expecting it to. I'm also open to something like LQG, string theory, or QFT research but I don't know enough about work in these fields at this point to say whether I'm interested – simply curious. 
 
Best of luck in the application process! I'm slightly relieved that you're applying to AMO instead of HEP-th or gravity because it means I won't have to compete with you for a spot... because I have good reason to believe that I would lose that fight! 

I saw your scores above and congratulations to you too! 
Although my SAT scores weren't that high all those years back, I think that prep definitely helped me here. I wouldn't advise anyone to start from scratch and prepare for GRE in one week's time. 
I sure hope your friends take it more seriously than that. As I understand 160+ is a safe place to be, however we're not up against any standards in the decision process, we're up against other applicants. Considering between 1-2% students get a perfect score on GRE (based on percentile) and ~700k appear each year, approx. 10k students get perfect or near perfect scores. From statistics of median GRE scores of those accepted in top schools (such as the one on Magoosh) Physics seems to be a subject with one of the highest. So my wild guess is anywhere between 5% to 15% of these 10k students apply to the top 20 universities for Physics/ Applied Phy. 
I took my PGRE earlier as I didn't want to keep all the tests for my last year. I am happy that I got a 990. But again I wish the scaling was a little steeper. I might have gotten more than 94 percentile. I wish you the best for your PGRE scores!
But in the end, these test scores are only a part of the application. I hope the rest of my application also holds up well.
Yes, I am applying to AMO with a focus on experimental Quantum optics/ QIP/ LOQC photonics etc. It actually crosses over to Applied physics in many universities. How 'bout you? 

Congratulations on some stellar scores! 
Do you feel like your GRE was a reflection of existing ability (e.g. high SAT score, AP scores, etc.) or did your prep significantly improve your scores? Any advice for someone planning to take ≤2 weeks to study for the exam and feeling burnt out from (or potentially still studying for) their Physics GRE?
I already wrote both of my GREs, but I'm trying to convince friends of mine to take it seriously and do well (a lot of them have the "as long as I get above a 160Q my scores don't matter" attitude). Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of meaningful advice to give them.
Also, since I'm assuming you probably wrote your pGRE in September, best of luck with scores coming out in a week! Do you know what subfield you're applying to yet? 

Hi all, I took the GRE 10 days ago and I prepared for about a week. All my practice tests wouldn't be representative because I took the first powerprep before I started preparing, Manhattan test midway through preparations and the second powerprep just before test date. So here're my 2nd PP score and actual score:
2nd Powerprep (taken 36 hours before test): Q-168 / V- 161 
Actual GRE: Q- 170 / V- 167 / AWA- 5.0
Needless to say, I am quite happy with my test scores. I also would like to share some tips I think would be helpful to those preparing to take the GRE in near future. I don't see online GRE tutors usually discuss these points so I thought I'd share them:
* Do not aim for 170. A lot of people I know have screwed up by aiming for a perfect score. By doing so you become unforgiving to any possible mistakes which you detect while taking the test. And you freak out, making even more mistakes. It just snowballs. So aim for something like 165 or less, and give your best. Missed a couple of questions? Who cares? Even the top schools won't kill you just because of your GRE, once you have anywhere above 90 percentile.
* A lot of test preps are out there and you need to go through their strategies. But don't stick to just one prep strategy. From my experience I can say that not a single strategy set out there fits me perfectly. So I just followed several and came up with my own. Go through at least three different prep strategies and take the optimal (for you) methods from each until you feel confident with your performance.
* Stressed during the test? Good. Now use it to your advantage. But don't let it cripple you. Understand that your body's stress response makes your brain more alert thus making your judgements sharper and more fluid. I had never scored 170 in Q in my practice tests. But I was able to do this on the test day because I was more alert than ever and could see past the little traps and tricks GRE laid out for me in a few questions. So basically have some goddamn confidence in your body that's all!
* If you're not used to writing literary stuff then the AWA can seem like a nightmare, especially after looking at the GRE sample essays. Now I didn't get a 5.5 or 6, but it works just fine for me because I am applying for a Physics PhD. So if you can do with a 4.5 or 5, then (1) stick to the 5-paragraph standard writing templates most tutors offer, (2) keep varying your sentence structure to make up for lack of stellar vocabulary, i.e. assert, anticipate, negate, etc. Keep the flow interesting. 
Hope this helps some of you folks out there. Cheers!