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Hey Guys! My situation is a bit unusual. I completed my bachelor's in electrical engineering, where I focused on physics projects and had a bad GPA (7.3/10). My bachelor's thesis was in cosmology and I had a couple of projects more. I applied but didn't get in (ten rejects), presumably because my grades were abysmal. I took a year off and enrolled in a good master's program. Going to apply again for Fall 2018. Here's my profile: Scores and Grades Grad GPA: More than 3.6 (assuming higher grades have higher than linear scores / converting from a 9 point to 4 point scale). Topped class in Math Phys I and II, Relativity, Classical Mechanics. GRE: V: 164, Q: 170, W: 4.5 PGRE: 960/990 (in 2015) ToEFL: 115/120 Projects / Internships CERN (2014: 2 months): Summer internship. Working on testing the muon detectors of the CMS. Bachelor's Thesis (2015: 6 months): N-body simulations and assessing the impact of massive neutrinos on large-scale structure. Worked on the GADGET-2 code. At a reputed institution in India. Modifying GADGET-2 (2016 - Independent: 3 months): Added support for a variety of dark energy models in GADGET-2, and added support for massive neutrinos and dark energy in the initial conditions generation code N-GenIC. Constraining The Halo Mass Function (2017: 3 months): Working through a prestigious national fellowship on using GADGET-2 simulations to explain the dependence of the halo mass function on the power spectrum. Also working on understanding and migrating halo mass function and power spectrum generation codes using N-body simulations. Master's Thesis : Not finalised but will be something around QFT / inflation. Other Work Wrote and presented an introduction to classical field theory. TA in signals and systems (undergraduate). Recommenders Two professors from my university (master's) who are well-known (not in the field), and with whom I have had good amount of contact inside and outside the classroom. Topped both of their courses and I have regular discussions with them. My advisor at my summer internship, who is pretty well-known in cosmology circles. I have made it a point to interact with him as much as possible. A professor / mentor of mine from my undergraduate university, who works in cosmology and first taught me / gave me projects. My bachelor's thesis advisor. ========================================================================================================================== I am mainly interested in dark energy, inflation and structure formation, combining theory with simulations. I recognise simulations are an important tool in cosmology, and I want to use them to verify / nullify theoretical predictions. I basically want to apply to schools that have a broad cosmology group, with space for both theory and computation. Which schools should I pick, given that my profile isn't anything stellar? I'd prefer physics programs over astro programs. Currently, based on preliminary searching, I came up with: Dartmouth Johns Hopkins Syracuse UWashington UPenn ASU (they have a good theory group) ========================================================================================================================== Also, I have doubts about how much my good grad GPA will offset my bad undergrad scores. I want to use it to present in my statement that the low grades were a result of disillusionment with the engineering subject, and my good graduate scores prove that I am academically capable. Any help will be gladly appreciated. Thanks a ton, guys!

Ok. Please do look at this revised version, if you do notice this: Again, this is without the 1-2 paragraphs pertinent to each school. <SOP> It was reading Dr. Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in A Nutshell as a middle schooler that got me enamoured of physics first. That time flowed differently for different observers was a miraculous discovery for me, and I decided I wanted to learn more. I took to high-school physics, scoring a 99.4 percentile in the IIT-JEE in 2011, but under parental pressure took an Electronics degree at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. Determined to pursue physics despite my major, I started studying relativity under Dr. Tapomoy Guha Sarkar. The mathematical structure of hyperbolic rotations as Lorentz transformations fascinated me, and I began learning general relativity on my own over the summer, enjoying consulting multiple sources. Seeing how curvature related to mass-energy physically and mathematically was one of the most cherishable moments of my learning life. I neglected my major courses in my quest to study physics, but I enjoyed learning control systems and signal theory, giving lectures on the latter as a teaching assistant. With usual avenues closed to me, I self-studied functional mechanics and electrodynamics, and decided to undertake study projects to rectify my lack of a formal degree, covering basic quantum mechanics and beginning differential geometry under Dr. R.R. Mishra. I also took up a reading course in cosmology, covering Barbara Ryden’s Introduction To Cosmology. I interned at the CMS Muon Labs at CERN, testing resistive plate chambers, where I attended lectures on the Standard Model by Dr. Yuval Grossman, which deepened my resolve to take up physics as a career. I attended the Autumn School on Cosmology held at my university in 2013, with graduate level lectures on inflation, dark energy and structure formation, all fields that had the deepest outstanding questions. Learning how dark matter formed gravitational potential wells which were canvases for baryonic matter to form galaxies made me want to study large-scale structure, so I took up a project on understanding and plotting the Hu-Eisenstein power spectrum. I continued this with my undergraduate thesis under Dr. Tirthankar Roy Choudhury at NCRA-TIFR, running N-body simulations on GADGET-2 to assess the impact of massive neutrinos on the power spectrum and mass function by modifying the initial conditions to include small-scale suppression. Later, the scale dependent HI bias in the post-reionization epoch was also modeled by modifying the halo power spectrum. I am working on running simulations to assess the impact of massive neutrinos on the same. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I faced self-doubt with regard to building a career in physics, but I progressively enjoyed learning, and became sure that a career in physics, to further learn and contribute, is the thing I would like to do. I took pleasure in self-pedagogy and research, and genuinely grew to love the subject after my earlier innocent fascination. I had discussions with Dr. Tirthankar Roy Choudhury on dark energy as a tachyonic field, and through my introduction to quantum fields at CERN and inflation at the IUCAA-NCRA graduate school, I also became interested in the early universe and the nature of dark matter and dark energy, in which I would want to pursue work, apart from structure formation. I am also interested in using simulations to better understand large-scale structure and test cosmological models. With cosmology entering an exciting phase with the success of the 21cm signal as a novel probe, simulations becoming an important part of cosmology, and astrophysics becoming an often used laboratory for fundamental physics research, I believe my assortment of knowledge in electrical engineering, physics theory and simulations gives me a unique skill-set and perspective as a prospective researcher. </SOP>

Thank you for that critique, fuzzylogician. I guess I must switch from a chronological to a thematic way of putting forth my ideas, focusing more on my motivations, and less on details.

Thank you TakeruK for that honest and detailed review. Now that you have highlighted it, I notice too, that the "purpose" part is woefully short compared to the narration of my story to continue studying physics in the face of disaffection with my rather arduous major. I do need to condense more to accommodate those points, and I should be more selective in the elaboration of my experience. Got it! Thanks!

Switching from Electrical Engineering to Physics, applying to Grad School for Fall 2016. Please bear in mind this is the rough skeleton, and for each application I will add a final paragraph explaining my particular interests in that department and my intent. <SOP> My first dalliance with physics was through The Universe In A Nutshell by Dr. Stephen Hawking, which showed me the depth and importance of the questions that plagued cosmology. Coupled with a near-religious awe of nature akin to Einstein’s belief, this began my quest to pursue learning and research in fundamental physics. I performed well at senior level physics courses, scoring 99.4 percentile in the IIT-JEE. Post that, however, my dreams lay in tatters, having taken an Electronics degree at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani under parental pressure for a more ”secure” path. Disaffected with the existing system and coursework and determined to keep on track towards learning, I began covering Dr. Leonard Susskind’s online lectures and lecture notes. In my fourth semester, I found help in Dr. Tapomoy Guha Sarkar, with whom I had discussed my idea of Einstein’s energy relation being equivalent to the representation of mass as a split-complex number. I started a study project on special relativity under him, covering material from Introduction to Electrodynamics by D.J. Griffiths. In the break that followed, I self-taught general relativity from Dr. Susskind’s online lectures and A First Course In General Relativity by Bernard Schutz. Learning how curvature was mathematically represented and connected to the presence of mass-energy has been the most gratifying moment of learning in my life. I had already covered vector calculus, linear algebra and differential equations as part of undergraduate coursework. In my fifth semester, I continued with another study project with Dr. Tapomoy Guha Sarkar, covering Introduction To Cosmology by Barbara Ryden, including background cosmology and the basics of structure formation. A school on cosmology was organized at my university, with graduate level lecture series on inflation, dark energy and structure formation. Dr. Tirthankar Roy Choudhury’s lectures taught me how dark matter formed gravitational potential wells, sort of canvases for baryonic matter to form galaxies, and I knew I wanted to work on large-scale structure. I opted for a study project in Quantum Mechanics under Dr. R.R. Mishra, covering Advanced Quantum Mechanics by J.J. Sakurai in parts. Although it was terse for a novice as I was, it gave me a base to visualise quantum mechanics mathematically. Alongside, I also worked on a project to plot the Hu-Eisenstein fit of the matter power spectrum under Dr. Guha Sarkar, which involved understanding the power spectrum in its functional form, and writing C code to plot it. In the summer of 2014, I worked as an intern under Dr. Archana Sharma and Dr. Stefano Colafranceschi of the CMS Muon Labs at CERN, on testing and analysing resistive plate chambers for the muon-detector RE4 layer of the CMS. I attended Standard Model lectures by Dr. Yuval Grossman, participating actively. I also did a side-project on circular accelerators and particle mechanics in the LHC. I also did a study project on the basics of differential geometry under Dr. R.R. Mishra, covering Bernard Schutz’s Geometrical Methods of Mathematical Physics. In 2015, I began my undergraduate thesis with Dr. Tirthankar Roy Choudhury at NCRA-TIFR. I studied halo mass functions and the spherical collapse model, generating plots for cosmologies with different neutrino masses. I then modified the initial conditions code NGen-IC to include small-scale suppression of structure due to massive neutrinos and ran sets of simulations on the N-body simulation code GADGET-2 [1]. I then studied the halo model and the non-linear power spectrum from Cooray and Sheth’s review [2]. I also attended graduate school lectures on cosmology by Dr. Tarun Souradeep at IUCAA. As an extension of this work, I used the prescription of Bagla et. al. [3] to fill up dark matter halos with HI, and thus compute the non-linear HI power spectrum in the post-reionization epoch by suitably modifying the 1-halo and 2-halo terms, using a modified NFW profile. I thus computed the bias of HI in Fourier space, as given in [4], with varying neutrino masses. Work is in progress to fill up halos to compute the power spectrum from N-body simulation snapshots. I did electrodynamics as a part of my major courses, and studied classical mechanics functionally. Through my study projects, I also studied quantum mechanics, relativity and cosmology. In my thesis, I learnt N-body simulations, the halo model, and spherical collapse. I have ignored the grades of my major in my quest to self-study physics, but I have a firm understanding of control systems and signal theory, having used them in a project to model the gun control for the T-72 Main Battle Tanks of the Indian Army. I am also well-versed with C programming and the MATLAB environment. Not being from a physics background and without much guidance, orthodox avenues were closed for me, and I have striven hard to continue learning the subject through projects and self-pedagogy.Through facing the frustrations and ardour of research, as well as my experiences with study projects and at CERN, my belief that I want to pursue a career as a researcher was firmed up. The undergraduate thesis was my first proper foray into research, and I enjoyed being at a problem that was new and unlike classroom challenges, where my work was to uncover previously unknown science, and a solution was not guaranteed. The allure of astrophysics is its combination of various branches of physics with simulations and engineering to answer the deepest questions. With it entering an exciting phase with the success of the 21cm signal as a novel probe, simulations becoming an important part of cosmology, and astrophysics becoming an often used laboratory for fundamental physics research, I believe my assortment of knowledge in electrical engineering, physics theory and simulations gives me a unique skill-set and perspective as a prospective researcher. Moreover, I believe I have the self-motivation, grit, perseverance and desire to learn to be a successful re- searcher, for these are the same qualities that have brought me to this point from a seemingly hopeless situation in 2011, coupled with my endless romance for the subject and the ineffable want to contribute to the sum of human knowledge. </SOP>

I'm an electrical engineering major from India. I wanted to get into physics, and was lucky enough to find a cosmology professor at college, and since then I have done all my projects and research in physics. Academic project: Special Relativity Self-taught GR as a continuation of the above Academic project: Cosmology up to structure formation Attended a lecture school on advanced cosmology Project: Plotting the matter power spectrum using the Hu-Eisenstein fit functions Academic project: Basics of QM (Sakurai Ch 1,2) Internship at CERN (CMS, attended lectures) Academic project: Basics of Differential Geometry (Schutz) Project: Neutrino mass constraints through the Lyman-alpha power spectrum (truncated / on hold) Undergrad thesis: Effect of massive neutrinos on power spectrum. Did N-body simulations on GADGET-2. Also worked on the HI power spectrum in case of neutrinos (work stuck). I currently have decent recommendation letters from my professor at my institute, my thesis advisor (at a different place) who is internationally recognised, and the head of my lab at CERN. GRE: 334 (V:164,Q:170). PGRE: Done reasonably well. Expect above 900. Issues: Unrelated major, consciously chose to ignore it, final GPA 7.28. Looking for good mid-level graduate programs in cosmology where I have a chance of getting through. Any help or advice is appreciated. Cheers.