Hi,
I am from India. My age is going to be 30+ when i will have my degree in ECE.
I left studies in the second year of my physics honors and started working for money, that i thought would add meaning to my insignificant life. But as time passed by, i began to understand that my love in physics and math was much stronger than i thought. I kept finding myself buying secondhand texts for self study. After 9 long years i got myself into a govt tech college and to my surprise and hyper amusement, i am doing good in studies (internships are not much of a norm in India except for those in the ivy leagues like iitians.
Now , my next aim is to get a PhD and do more than my best to get a position in academia that involves lots of theoretical work in experimental particle physics.
My concerns are as follows:
1) average marks in 10th and 12th (without private coaching and with abysmally low attendance in class. I had to take special permission from heads of the institutions for sitting in the board exams).
2) the big gap between 12th and UG studies (India is not well-known for out-of-the-box trend breaking thinkers. So it is hardly surprising that i rarely find people who admire my work in turning my childhood fantasy of becoming a physicist into a real aim! Also the jobs i took up during these years do not add anything to my applications.)
3) I am not in IIT Kharagpur,JU or BESU (the top three tech colleges in our state of West Bengal).
4) I don`t see any chance of me getting to do any real work or internships during my B Tech years.
5) Junior Research Fellowships have an age limit of 28 years!
On the other hand, few good news might be as follows
1) my GPA will be 9 point something (given i keep on doing the way i did in my first 2 years).
2) I may have good to excellent score in GRE Physics and GATE !
Now what I request is replies from people who can show me rays of hope and give some guidance on what to do?
Thanks in advance,
kd
