SymmetryOfImperfection

Don't worry about it. Your GPA is fine, but grad admissions are a dice roll for top 20 schools.

I see... thank you for telling me this. I had always thought that spectroscopy/NMR/microscopy are simply techniques that you use for whatever field you're in, whether it be chemical biology, organic synthesis or materials science, and you COULD focus on the instrument design itself, but you had other choices in p-chem. What do you think about this paper? It's a semiconductor processing paper and was classified under "physical chemistry" at UCLA. http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-8984/24/16/164214 What would it fall under at your school?

I was actually correcting for the other countries.. in US, 80% is a B-, anything below 80 is C, on a normal scale. 90=A, 80=B, 70=C, below is D/F but D/F both count as fail. This is assuming that a standard straight scale is used. In East Asian countries, usually 80 is "excellent" （优），70 is "good" （良）which is equal to B, and 60's is just "pass" （合格）which is C. what is the point of taking it after you complete your MS? Those schools are not considered tier 1 or tier 2 schools. That's fine though, because you can move up to a tier 1/2 school for PHD, but you still must complete the PGRE at some point, preferably during your MS studies.

There aren't many schools with terminal MS in physics that are also really good though. I can think of UW and UCI off the top of my head as tier 1 and tier 2 schools with terminal physics masters, and only UCI funds its terminal MS students. Seriously, this is almost impossible without PGRE and non-exceptional grades. a 70 is about a 3.0 GPA which is borderline failing for a MS.

you must take the physics GRE to be admitted to PHD programs in physics. There's almost no exception. It doesn't really help, but it can brutally hurt, yet it is required. However, if you insist, look for schools ranked below 70.

thats very interesting. I think schools classify stuff differently. at my alma mater, the physical chemistry division is basically a hodgepodge of "non-synthetic applied chemistry" and so has faculty from chemistry, physics and chemE/matSci. there's 4 professors crossed with physics and 5 crossed with chemical engineering/materials science out of 27 associated faculty. Its mostly a highly interdisciplinary division, not many professors (I think maybe 1) does "traditional" p-chem stuff like reaction mechanisms anymore. No money. Its either bio- something or nanomaterials.

thanks, I really didn't even know the admin staff did this, seriously. At my undergrad, I just sort of got stuff automatically sent to me on an impersonal listserv that everyone who registered in the department was set to. Thanks for telling me this. However, I prefer to be formal with my professors. It just doesn't feel right to me to address someone whose more accomplished and most of all, my boss, by the first name. My gut instinct tells me that it is always best to err on the side of formality, rather than risk offending them. Like Fez said, some professors really care about the formality. My undergrad research supervisor was very formal. Some teachers in the department are much more casual, but my supervisor made it clear, without even saying, just by the way he carried himself, that there will be strict respect for "the system" in his lab. If the professor made it clear that he/she preferred an informal atmosphere, that's fine with me, but until that's for sure, best to be cautious. I think this differs by discipline. Maybe in software, there's a more casual atmosphere, but in physical sciences and the engineering disciplines related to the physical sciences, and with older professors, they want the hierarchy.

damn, doesn't feel like it. Looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics and it seemed physics was less employable, also heard stories about how people in physics were being unemployed. What type of materials do you work on and what characterization do you do? XRD? Electron microscopy? Scanning probe microscopy? Electrical measurements? Calorimetry? Optical spectroscopy? Or is your direction more in traditional chemistry and mostly use HPLC, NMR, stuff like that? I hadn't thought of bioorganic being part of nanomaterials. Thought that was mostly in physical chemistry from the schools I've looked at. At least, that's where it was placed in my alma mater.

Characterization, mostly magnetic properties of ceramic thin films but don't want to stay in this area. It just seems like physics is both harder to get in and harder to get employment for. Not sure if I want to stay with characterization but what else is there in chemistry other than synthesis and characterization? What would you place yourself as? It might help me in searching for programs to check out and even articles to read.

Anyone here doing physical chemistry, especially in the field of nanomaterials and devices? I am wondering about the funding and employment situation in this field. I am thinking of making the switch to back to physical chemistry if the employment situation is better. Job websites don't really help since at the PHD level there's just not too many jobs overall so its hard to talk statistics, especially when chemistry can span from very qualitative and intuition based to strongly physical and engineering yet employers will often say "chemistry" for jobs in both say, bio and nanotech which are totally unrelated.

Thanks for the help everyone. Eigen: I can't find a "coordinator of graduate affairs", only an "administrative coordinator", would that be the person that sends out notifications? OregonGal: I sent him one email in the past 2 months, this is the sole issue I've asked him in the past 2 months. I've heard somewhere that starting emails with "Dr." is not preferred, and instead should use the most distinguished title, "Professor". Is that true? In addition, I've also heard conflicting things about the greetings. I usually write "Dear Dr. ...." or "Dear Mr ....." since that is a professional way to speak to someone that's your supervisor, and using "Hi ...." seems to be too informal and putting yourself at their level. However, a website recommended using "Hi" and says "Dear" is TOO formal. I know this sounds paranoid but I heard some people are huge on the formalities and it couldn't hurt, right? Charlie: What questions are appropriate of the graduate advisor?

I am afraid that I'm asking too many questions from the graduate advisor or asking trivial questions. For example, I haven't received any email notifications for a graduate orientation when other students from my school at other departments received email notifications, and I haven't found any announcements on the department website regarding this. I contacted the school, and they told me to contact the department, since each department handles orientation differently. When I emailed the graduate advisor, he sounded a bit annoyed in his reply. Am I being annoying by asking trivial questions? What questions should I ask the graduate advisor, and which should I not?

She sounds like she herself is interested in the prestige for its own sake. Also you should distinguish between overseas and native Asians, since the former show significant self selection.

Go for the elite bank job.

Is this country China or South Korea? Or even in East Asia? Just from the sounds of it... In this situation, there's one thing you can do: Go to the head of the department in secret and privately, unofficially talk about what can you do. This is quite a serious situation, so you must have all the evidence on your side, because even with all the evidence on your side, the chance of success is still half at best. Do you have written evidence that other professors, and senior professors, have agreed to let you distribute your thesis?

I'd say just go for one degree. Pure math is useless for 90% of physics. Here's whats useful (that I've been forced to use) in decreasing order of relevence: High school math. Basic calculus. Multivariable calculus. Integral transforms. Applied Linear Algebra. DiffEq (mostly ODEs and knowing how to separate variables on PDEs). Basic complex variables. Basic group theory (as applied to molecular spectroscopy). Linear Algebra and DiffEq are lower division classes that are "services" to other fields like sciences and engineering, so they're taught with few proofs and focused on arithmetic. However, upper division pure math classes are heavily proof based and mathematical logic proofs really don't come up in physics. The theoretical linear algebra, analysis, abstract algebra, number theory, proofs, logic and upper level geometry in a math degree is generally not very useful in physics. Maybe in some esoteric field of particle theory done with paper and pencil, but right now even theoretical physics is heavily focused on numerical solutions and not so much on analytical solutions.

lol wtf UCLA, UCSD "not very good schools" are you joking... I'd love to go to this low ranked school if I could take your spot! for the top schools, there is absolutely nothing you could do to increase your probability of being accepted that you can control. I am serious. It is a complete gamble. Now, there is a way to improve your probability: get your parents to donate 5 million dollars to the school. Then your probability of being accepted is much higher. But I don't think you have 5 million dollars lying around.

I think you should definitely go for it, you live just once and they pay you which might not be guaranteed at a "real job". My suggestion is this: review your general physics and general chemistry by reading and doing a few practice problems to freshen up your mind, take both general and Chem GREs, and maybe read some literature in a field you are interested in. If you're interested in p-chem and chemical engineering as related to the environment, might want to look up things like say, latest advances in photovoltaics or latest advances in modeling pollutant diffusion. If you go into ChemE, you might have to take undergrad classes on fluid mechanics, transport processes, and refresh your memory on chemical kinetics. If you go straight into Chem (Pchem) you could just not take any classes but they'll start you off on grad level quantum and thermo.

Civil->Physics might be hard since the only class you have in common with physics is probably mechanics. I went Chem->Physics and already took half the BS Physics curriculum in the physics department (just missing upper level EM and mechanics), and its still challenging... so you might want to first practice yourself, and take the PGRE.

Boyfriend being able to cook =) Over here most the other races just eat restaraunt.

phew. just got my grades back. A in quantum mechanics and getting a shiny diploma in the mail a few weeks later. Thank you!

thank you, but i'm sure a very low reputed school may have a negative effect. After all, its hard to expect graduates of Wyoming State and MIT to be treated the same. I'm wondering when the rankings start having either positive or negative effects. For example, Wyoming State and MIT is a huge difference, but what about say, UC Riverside vs. Penn State?

I noticed that physics actually has some of the highest rejection rates. Why is that? For examples, Chemistry at Caltech has a huge pile of admissions: http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=Chemistry&t=a&o=i&pp=250 While Physics at Caltech has a huge pile of rejections: http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=Physics&t=a&o=i&pp=250

Also think about this: California, especially UCs, are hard to get into for non-California residents as funded grad students and very hard as foreign students, as you saw in the "advice" page. Conversely, they're easier to get into as a foreign undergrad and paid MS level grad students! Think about that very hard.

I am in experimental condensed matter - nanofabrication. This was for my undergrad research. My group(before I came) previously did a few conference posters on thermal stability of polymer nanostructures, unfortunately, I wasn't able to publish or do a conference before graduating. I am starting Fall 2012 in a MS program, still doing experimental condensed matter. In my experience, the field seems to be well funded since I know that a project I did was privately sponsored, and others came from non-NSF grants. However, I did do a 8 month biochemistry project before for my first research, that I quit, so I got a tiny glimpse into NIH. Fortunately, this stint in biochemistry made me get out of life sciences. Anyhow, it turns out that NIH funds anything that relates in some way to health. Projects you'd think had zero relation to healthcare made it, like distribution of amyloid fibers vs. certain gene expression. The problem with "fit" is that it turns out that the schools that actually have alot of people doing theoretical particle physics are Princeton, Harvard, Caltech and other top tier elite schools that have a 5% acceptance rate. You might have little sympathy, since you got into Caltech, but really, most people aren't as smart as you, nor as hard working, yet is it wrong to deny us a chance to pursue our dreams? Well, I'm just being realistic, and saying, that if you want to do theoretical particle physics, but can't go to a top tier elite school, then here's something that might help. Also, it isn't really dishonest, since lots of the same theoretical techniques used in particle physics are also used in the theory of solids, and you are technically "applying the theory of solids to interdisciplinary fields".