physviti

Tell us what schools and we might be able to help you out better. In my experience, the US News Rankings seem much more reasonable. There are a few schools in the NRC rankings that have very questionable placements. But of course, a school like Berkeley is world renowned and has very good faculty. I don't think I would care much about rankings in this regard. Your list of schools is very good and singling out three of them, based on ranking, would be unwise. A better method is too select the schools with the most interesting labs and the best environment (city, housing, recreation, cost of living, crime etc...) for you to work in. Collegeprowler.com might help you with the latter.

So let me get this straight. You want to do applied physics? If so, there are a number of programs. How about these: http://www.aep.cornell.edu/ http://www.stanford.edu/dept/app-physics/research.html#condensed http://www.eng.yale.edu/aphy/ http://www.eas.caltech.edu/ If not, then what do you mean?

Yes, the university of arizona is another very good applied math department (definitely top ten) to look at. Like you said, it is very large with a diverse faculty. And best of all, they don't require the math GRE. The theoretical and applied mechanics program at Cornell or their plain old applied math department might also be good options for you. I guess the frequency of switching depends on the university. A private school would be more conducive to this. For example, Ed Witten switched departments three times at Princeton before landing in physics. Cornell, as a matter of fact, is very open to this and somewhat encourages it. At a public school, due to funding issues movement will be harder.

Have you thought about computational/mathematical biology and neuroscience? Mathematical neuroscience is a really cool field that uses a variety of ideas from math and physics, including spin operators, information theory, dynamical systems and chaos, statistics etc... It might be up your alley. It sounds like a large applied math department like University of Maryland, Texas, Minnesota would be your best bet. Those programs will have a a lot of different research areas available to you and you can see what you like. Also, keep in mind that switching grad departments is not something unheard and probably happens quite frequently. BTW, a PhD is a lot of work for something you are not passionate about. You must have some passion in life about something, no matter how obscure or crazy it seems. What is it? You may be able to turn it into a science problem

I don't know if Cornell's applied math department is held in a much higher regard than UW's. Here are the 2007 rankings: http://www.university-list.net/us/rank/univ-1005.htm As you can see, the applied math rankings are very different from the pure math rankings. Harvard isn't even top 20 (and this might still be a bit generous) and UMinn is top 5. If you are interested in mathematical neuroscience, I would definitely choose UW (http://www.amath.washington.edu/~etsb/). If you are not, then Cornell has a couple of very good math bio guys that would be fun to work with (think Strogatz).

I am specifically interested in neural engineering. Schools I'd like to study at include: Stanford, Berkley, JHU, Duke, Caltech, Gtech etc... Undergrad Institution: Small but decent liberal arts college Majors: Math and Physics (both completed) GPA 3.86 (Only one B past my freshman year) Top of my math class (won the department award) GRE Q 750 (I will fix this) V 600 w 4.0 Took several graduate classes in math and physics. Won a physics scholarship one year. Two summers of research in computational physics with one paper coauthored. Gave a talk at a regional conference. I plan on taking neuroscience and biology courses next year. What are my chances? If my chances are bad in neural engineering, I might just apply to computational neuroscience programs instead (I believe they are easier to get into).

I've been compiling a list of universities (in the U.S.) doing research in BCI, so I can make sure I have all the requirements when I apply next year. So far I have: Johns Hopkins Stanford Berkley U Washington Duke U Florida MIT Brown Am I missing any schools? And which schools on my list are probably the best. I'm guessing Duke and John Hopkins. Thanks