What to do after being rejected by all Grad schools

[hurricaneal]

I was just rejected by my last hope school, Colorado Boulder.

As an international student, I have to apply to something in order to stay in the U.S. after my I20 expiration.

My first choice is to apply to an OPT extension and re-apply to grad school next year.

The other choice is to find some master programs in physics. Does anyone know some such programs?

Here are my grades,

GPA 3.89, from a US top 40 school, no high reputation in physics

GRE V156/Q170/W4.0

PGRE 990

 

Thank you very much

I really want to continue doing physics...

[GeoDUDE!]

That's kinda crazy that you were rejected with stats like that! Did you only apply to places like MIT ?

Perhaps you should ask one of oyur letter writers for some ideas. I'm sure they will help. 

[hurricaneal]

Just now, GeoDUDE! said:

That's kinda crazy that you were rejected with stats like that! Did you only apply to places like MIT ?

Perhaps you should ask one of oyur letter writers for some ideas. I'm sure they will help. 

They seem quite surprised about that... and they don't know any master programs.

They will help me with my OPT extension, but I am not sure whether a gap year would be helpful.

 

I apply to in all 13 grad schools. MIT, Harvard, Cornell and Chicago are the top-level-ish. I thought U Colorado, U Arizona and UC Irvine are safe schools, but NO. Maybe there are too many people applying CME or CMT.

[cwr]

20 hours ago, hurricaneal said:

I apply to in all 13 grad schools. MIT, Harvard, Cornell and Chicago are the top-level-ish. I thought U Colorado, U Arizona and UC Irvine are safe schools, but NO. Maybe there are too many people applying CME or CMT.

Were you applying as "CME or CMT"? If you were applying as CMT, then probably the competition is very steep, but I still would expect somewhere (e.g. UCI, Arizona) to say yes. Doubly true if you were applying as CME; I think there would have needed to be a huge typographical error if you applied as CME and didn't get into one of those places, assuming you have any research experience at all.

However, if you said "CME or CMT", schools may have looked at this as a red flag. This is one thing I learned from talking to people beforehand. I was unsure of HEP-th vs. HEP-ex leading up to application season, but I heard – from very reliable sources (i.e. adcom members at top programs) – that schools will sometimes view an application saying "HEP-ex or HEP-th" as a person who is too unsure of their interests and likely result in a rejection, so I had to sort out very quickly experiment vs. theory. I would imagine the same sort of thing applies for CME vs. CMT, where they might look at this negatively. (Disclaimer: I'm an applicant just like you, so I don't claim to have any expertise; I'm simply repeating what I've heard from people involved in these processes, so take whatever I've said here with a grain of salt.)

Best of luck sorting your visa situation. If you end up being able to remain in the US for a year, I recommend trying to get more research experience and nail down whether you want to do CME vs. CMT, because having a strong, declared interest in an area can only help your application. 

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

I'm going to echo the earlier post... how the hell did you not get into at least one of those schools? 

 

Ah, well... you may just have to scope out http://www.gradschoolshopper.com/gradschool/browseby.jsp?q=1&cid=3

It's a list of universities sorted by admissions deadline. Some of them such as IUPUI (Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis), University of Texas - San Antonio, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, U Illinois Chicago, U Central Florida, etc. are actually pretty good schools that don't have their deadline until March or later. 

[historicallinguist]

On February 20, 2016 at 8:05 PM, hurricaneal said:

I was just rejected by my last hope school, Colorado Boulder.

As an international student, I have to apply to something in order to stay in the U.S. after my I20 expiration.

My first choice is to apply to an OPT extension and re-apply to grad school next year.

The other choice is to find some master programs in physics. Does anyone know some such programs?

Here are my grades,

GPA 3.89, from a US top 40 school, no high reputation in physics

GRE V156/Q170/W4.0

PGRE 990

 

Thank you very much

I really want to continue doing physics...

How about schools with rolling enrollment? If you can pay for it either with your own fund or with a student loan, I think you could try to apply to schools with rolling enrollment. 

You do not have to finish the master degree in the school with rolling enrollment. You can start to apply to some other funded programs when you are in the unfunded program. As soon as you get some offers from some funded program, you could quit the unfunded program and then transfer to the funded program, without first finishing the degree in the unfunded program. 

Edited March 22, 2016 by historicallinguist

[hurricaneal]

On 2/20/2016 at 11:31 AM, cwr said:

Were you applying as "CME or CMT"? If you were applying as CMT, then probably the competition is very steep, but I still would expect somewhere (e.g. UCI, Arizona) to say yes. Doubly true if you were applying as CME; I think there would have needed to be a huge typographical error if you applied as CME and didn't get into one of those places, assuming you have any research experience at all.

However, if you said "CME or CMT", schools may have looked at this as a red flag. This is one thing I learned from talking to people beforehand. I was unsure of HEP-th vs. HEP-ex leading up to application season, but I heard – from very reliable sources (i.e. adcom members at top programs) – that schools will sometimes view an application saying "HEP-ex or HEP-th" as a person who is too unsure of their interests and likely result in a rejection, so I had to sort out very quickly experiment vs. theory. I would imagine the same sort of thing applies for CME vs. CMT, where they might look at this negatively. (Disclaimer: I'm an applicant just like you, so I don't claim to have any expertise; I'm simply repeating what I've heard from people involved in these processes, so take whatever I've said here with a grain of salt.)

Best of luck sorting your visa situation. If you end up being able to remain in the US for a year, I recommend trying to get more research experience and nail down whether you want to do CME vs. CMT, because having a strong, declared interest in an area can only help your application. 

Finally, some schools said they are willing to take me as a MS student. Do you know whether that will help when I apply to a PhD at exactly the same place after that?

Thanks

[hurricaneal]

On 2/22/2016 at 7:52 PM, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

I'm going to echo the earlier post... how the hell did you not get into at least one of those schools? 

 

Ah, well... you may just have to scope out http://www.gradschoolshopper.com/gradschool/browseby.jsp?q=1&cid=3

It's a list of universities sorted by admissions deadline. Some of them such as IUPUI (Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis), University of Texas - San Antonio, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, U Illinois Chicago, U Central Florida, etc. are actually pretty good schools that don't have their deadline until March or later. 

Finally, some schools said they are willing to take me as a MS student. Do you know whether that will help when I apply to a PhD at exactly the same place after that?

Thank

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

10 minutes ago, hurricaneal said:

Finally, some schools said they are willing to take me as a MS student. Do you know whether that will help when I apply to a PhD at exactly the same place after that?

Thank

Of course, unless you are a crappy masters' student