As the title says, I am looking for some advice about graduate school. I am currently in my senior year and am taking the pGRE in about a week. I have many interests in physics and I know many graduate schools require you to pretty much know what you want to do. I'm just going to explain where I'm at right now, so sorry about the lengthy post.
I know for sure I do not want to go into experimental physics. I am simply far better at mathematics and theory than experimental design and instrumentation, not to mention that I generally do not enjoy performing experiments. I also happen to be pretty good at theory. I have cultivated a pretty decent mathematics background and genuinely enjoy mathematics and theoretical physics quite a bit.
Computer science has proven to be a skill of mine and my professors have taken notice to it. I've written many simulations in my free time at this point and have a CS minor, so computational physics is attractive to me. I'm probably better at the programming side of things than the pure theory, to be honest. I suppose you could say its my passion.
I originally wanted to go into GR since I have always loved space. I have done research on neutron stars and I even took an upper-division course on the topic after convincing the chair to offer the class. However, many of my professors, including my research mentor, told me not to go into the field. Mainly because it is exceedingly difficult to get any funding. My professors have been primarily urging me to go into condensed matter physics or quantum information. Primarily because of my computational ability and knowledge of classical algorithms. However, I am uncertain about whether or not I'm a good fit for these fields. We don't have anyone in either field except on the experimental side of things that I can talk to. I really love writing simulations and using numerical methods, but will condensed matter physics really interest me? I loved statistical mechanics in Thermo, but I did not really enjoy the materials section of E&M, so I am kind of at a loss about what to think. As far as quantum information and computing goes, I really have no idea what to think. I have a fair bit of experience in classical computing, but how applicable will this be? I only barely followed an explanation of Grover's algorithm and I really don't understand Shor's algorithm. I know these are things I will learn in grad school, but I guess I just want to be able to talk to some people in the field and find out what they really do. I am more than a little uncomfortable with committing myself to research that I only have a vague notion of.
If it helps at all, here's some information about what I've done so far:
Scores
School: Saint Louis University
Physics GPA (Major): 3.75
Math GPA (Major): 3.50 (Complex Analysis kicked my ass so hard)
CS GPA (Minor): 3.72
Cumul. GPA: 3.70
GRE Verbal: 162
GRE Quantitative: 170
GRE Writing: 4.5
Carbon Nanotube Research(2.5 years) I have helped run the lab, I've run growth cycles in a CVD, and I'm developing a model of carbon nanotube patches as capacitors (possibly developing into a paper, primary author).
Quantum Computing Research (1 year) I wrote a LabView program for analyzing resonators in an adiabatic refrigerator. The program controls the temperature, runs the vector network analyzer, and finds the quality factor.
Neutron Star Research (1 year) I have written programs to solve for the interior and exterior solutions of neutron stars. For the interior, I've written a program for a static and spherically symmetric star (RK4 for integration). I am currently working on a slowly rotating solution. For the exterior solution, I have written a program that accounts for frame-dragging (Leap-Frog 2nd order for integration).
Jobs, Awards and Activities I've been an introductory physics lab TA for a year and a half. I've been tutoring in physics, math, and computer science for two years. I have a couple awards and scholarships for grades and whatnot. I have a silver medal in the University Physics Competition, 10th place in the Missouri Collegiate Math Competition, and a "successful" designation in the Mathematical Modeling Competition. I also got into the 86th percentile in the Putnam Competition, with a score of 20/120, haha.
tl;dr If you have any advice about how to pick a field to research in or just about grad school in general, please feel free to comment.
Submitted October 18, 2014 at 09:11AM by sifodeas http://ift.tt/1CzfFXo PhysicsStudents
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