geekusprimus

Grad schools are almost certainly going to be more competitive next year because of the huge hit the economy is taking from the coronavirus. More people are going to apply while less funding will be available. You might have some solid contacts at your preferred schools, but go ahead and cast a wider net; the world is going to be a very different place when the 2021 admissions cycle begins. If you absolutely know without a doubt that you have to go to grad school or don't want to go into the real world yet, make sure that at least one or two of those schools is someplace you wouldn't mind attending, even if they're a little less prestigious overall.

At least in physics, grad schools usually care more about your grades in your upper-level coursework than your freshman year. I would guess it's similar for statistics, since they probably care a lot more about whether or not you can construct a statistically rigorous sampling algorithm than whether or not you can prove a Gaussian integrates to the square root of pi. In other words, taking some upper-level coursework should be sufficient. If your school doesn't already require it, multivariable calculus would be a pretty good way to prove that you learned calc II well enough.

In addition to more people applying, there's going to be a lot less money going around for the university, too. Grants will be more competitive, scholarships more scarce, and fully-funded graduate student positions will take a serious hit. Consequently, a lot of STEM programs that basically only expect funded students to attend are going to get a lot harder.

I don't know a lot about most of these places, but I do know a little bit about the U, having done my undergrad a few miles to the south. Salt Lake City is sort of the Austin or Portland of Utah. It still has a pretty sizable religious population, but it's lower than just about anywhere in the state (except Park City, maybe). Housing is most likely going to be very expensive; until coronapocalypse hit, Utah was going through a massive tech boom that has created some pretty heavy housing shortages, particularly in Salt Lake. It's sort of in transition from being a small/mid-sized city into a major metropolitan hub, so it feels a lot bigger and a lot more crowded than it actually is. As for the quality of the institution, most of my interactions with the U have been their computer science department (excellent) and their physics department (less than excellent). It's my understanding that the math program is very good, although I don't really know. The US News rankings say that they're really good in things like number theory and algebra, although a quick glance at their department research page suggests to me that most of their faculty are probably actually pretty applied.

If you have a good reason for not attending this year and think you might be coming back, you can sometimes request an admission deferral. The most common reason I've seen people defer their admission is to take a gap year for an internship or volunteer work, but that by no means implies they won't consider other circumstances.

To add a little more based on what's been said: First, congratulations on getting accepted to four fantastic programs. Secondly, abusive advisors are a real problem in science PhD programs that people don't talk enough about. If the advisor at Harvard is bad with grad students, run far, far away and don't look back. Getting two extra publications with a famous scientist isn't worth the toll on your mental health, especially when you're choosing between advisors at four world-class universities. You're looking for a scientist who will mentor you and help you become an excellent scientist yourself, not just someone whose shoulder you can look over for five years.

I don't know a lot, but my advisor told me some stories. Basically schools stopped hiring new faculty, research budgets got slashed, and grad student admissions plummeted. He had a student around that time who, despite being told that he needed to widen his net, refused to apply to schools outside of California. Naturally, he didn't get a single offer that year.

Rensselaer is probably the most prestigious overall, but it seems to have a pretty small program outside of condensed matter. I would talk with the professor doing particle theory (since his interests look to be the closest to yours) to see if he's planning on taking new students before you make any decisions. UConn has a lot more professors doing gravity or mathematical physics research, it appears, which is great if you don't have a firm idea what you're interested in or who you'd like to work with. Tennessee also only appears at a first glance to have a couple professors working in fields similar to your interests, but they also have ties to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which would be amazing if you don't mind leaning toward the computational side of theoretical physics.

How much the GRE matters depends on your program. However, a 142 verbal score is going to throw up some red flags to an admissions committee suggesting that your English needs some improvement, especially if it's accompanied by low TOEFL scores. If you're not applying for a liberal arts or humanities program, you don't need an outstanding verbal score, but something above 155 would put you in roughly the top 25% of test-takers and make you much more competitive. Something in the 160s would put you roughly in the top 10%. I would study up a bit on vocabulary, practice with some native English speakers as best as you can, and retake it to boost your verbal score.

Two things happened for colleges in the United States last week: 2. Many schools in the US had spring break. Many office staff were probably out of town or working reduced hours. 1. Coronapocalypse happened. Institutions started canceling classes and moving them online left and right. Offices are probably being bombarded with questions left and right from students wanting to know if they'll still graduate, what's happening to their jobs, and if what institution resources will still be available. I was planning on attending some open houses for the schools I got into, and it took a couple days after the hysteria began for them to get around to sending out a general announcement that they were canceled. I would wait another day or two before calling their office.

I guess I don't really know, but I don't think most schools will start rescinding admissions unless the financial crisis caused by the virus is worse than 2008. Most schools maintain a waitlist just in case the yield is lower than they expect. I suspect they just won't make as many offers off the waitlist.

Hi, everyone, I recently got accepted to both Penn State and Georgia Tech for a PhD in physics. I have yet to visit the schools, so I'm certainly not basing my decision on what anyone here says alone. My interests are in numerical relativity. Now, Penn State is probably a stronger school overall for gravitation, but the faculty member there doing numerical relativity, David Radice, is brand new and just barely finished a postdoc (read: probably hasn't earned tenure yet). Georgia Tech, on the other hand, has a large gravity group with some very prominent faculty in numerical relativity. Their rankings in physics overall are pretty comparable according to the US News (#25 vs #28), and they're both offering me pretty generous stipends. What do any of you know about these schools and their physics departments?