<p>Berkeley (10 of 10), Cornell (8 OF 10), and ...uh...uh....Harvard (WAG).</p>
<p>To the ad-hoc CC admissions committee:</p>
<p>Thank you for your predictions--the "reveal" is coming soon!</p>
<p>Before drawing back the curtain, I'd like to ask those who merely posted
guesses to offer some rationale: why did you choose those three?
My chief expectation was explanation. </p>
<p>So if you have some spare time, why not supplement your (one-line) post
with a few comments? Grab a cup of tea, coffee or whatever else
and spend a few minutes in deep meditatation with the keyboard. Offer some advice--please. Remember what G.I. Joe says: "knowing is half the battle."</p>
<p>Well, I know nothing about physics. But here's my reasoning:</p>
<ol>
<li> Admission to top level graduate programs is responsive to professional sponsorship and networking.<br></li>
<li> You had a strong research background as an undergraduate, and applied to top programs.<br></li>
<li> In the normal scheme of things, your faculty mentors would advocate for you in the admissions process, trying to place you in the "best" program they could.<br></li>
<li> They would have strong ties, and thus some influence, at the institutions where they did their PhDs and post-docs. (Of course, they may also have strong ties elsewhere.)<br></li>
</ol>
<p>So I googled on over to the UCLA astro/physics faculty sites and identified the group that seemed most likely to be your mentors. I found them to be: 1 Berkeley PhD, 1 Caltech PhD, 1 Chicago PhD, and 2 Harvard PhDs. Since you didn't apply to Chicago, I was left with: Berkeley, Caltech and Harvard.</p>
<p>As SBmom wants to know: do we get a prize?</p>
<p>Well I hate to be the one to call it but......FOUL. She cheated. She didn't follow CC rules. She thought about it BEFORE making her choices, a clear violation of our Honor Code and by doing so gained an incredibly unsportsman-like advantage. Being new and all I believe we can go gently on her BUT, IMO failure to place her brain firmly in neutral before typing her answers to a "what are my chances" post sets a dangerous precedent and as the noted ethicist B. Phyfe has said , "we have to nip it in the bud". Consider your bud nipped Sandiegomom. (BTW, welcome to the board. And if you haven't guessed yet, I pride myself on being the "New Idiot on the Block", so don't even THINK about applying for my position.)</p>
<p>Mine were wild guesses, really, but I went with the schools that might be more of a mind to "build" their departments and thus might be more forgiving of the lower V scores.</p>
<p>I thought Caltech. I recently met a Harvard UG thre, now 3rd year grad. He got in via the who-knows-who route. Because Caltech so small, thought they could be more individualized in acceptances.</p>
<p>Now that Sandiegomom has explained, I agree. For graduate admissions, the statistics that count are the ones that are important for a particular discipline. In other words, the humanities will discount low Quantitative GREs, but math-heavy disciplines will discount low Verbal GREs. An applicant who has very strong recs from teachers who are not known to exaggerate and a great record of research should have no trouble getting in top graduate departments.</p>
<p>Bookworm:</p>
<p>At the graduate level, admissions are handled by departments. One issue to look for is whether the candidate's interests fit with a department's strengths. On this basis, I'd say Harvard and MIT (high energy physics) but I'm not sure about a third.</p>
<p>So, Curmudgeon, you're recommending a nip on the ole Bud can as I peruse the Board? Just want to get the rules straight!</p>
<p>A prize for Best Guess? </p>
<p>Unfortunately the private jet went to the winner of another contest.
But who needs material goods when self-satisfaction is on the line?
Your comments are really doing me some good...Thank You.</p>
<p>There might be an e-card for the winner. Not much at stake (but see sentence three).</p>
<p>So, when do we hear?</p>
<p>Marite, nice to hear from you</p>
<p>curmudgeon -</p>
<p>No need to go easy on sandiegomom1. She's not new. We knew her all last season. It just took her a while to turn up on the new website.</p>
<p>. . .had the same thought as Sandiegomom, but was too lazy to do the work; just figured there might be some California physics mafia or something. Plus a post on another thread gives a decent clue.</p>
<p>Well, very early on (I had the first gueses) I went with...</p>
<p>Caltech, Berkeley and MIT</p>
<p>I picked the 2 California schools because they were California schools, like UCLA, and I think research prof recs and contacts are paramount and without reviewing the background of every prof in the UCLA physics dept I just thought they would have contacts in other CA state schools. I thought Stanford might just be a little too snooty to let your GREs slip by, and Harvard (the n#1 physics program in the country) defintitely too snooty!! On the other hand my totally uninformed prejudices selected MIT as the most likely school to overlook a poor verbal GRE. They don't care if you can speak or write English as long as you can speak and write physics, science, whatever! </p>
<p>And totally BTW, my brother spent several years at UCLA (biophysics) and my father was a theoretical phycisist. None of that rubbed off on me!</p>
<p>Hey can I get a 50/50 or altleast the opportunity to phone a friend?</p>
<hr>
<p>ANSWERS</p>
<hr>
<p>Pencils down! Make sure you name appears on the answer sheet, erase all stray marks, and pass your test booklet to the front of the row. Here are the three schools that granted admission for doctoral study in physics:</p>
<p>(1) Duke U -- U.S. News Survey: Rank 31 for Ph.D. Physics
(2) Yale U -- " " : Rank 13 " " " "<br>
(3) Caltech -- " ": Rank 1 " " " " (tied with MIT) (Enrolled)</p>
<p>N.B.</p>
<p>Harvard and Stanford are in the top five. Stanford sent me a rejection letter
both times I applied. Duke U labeled me as "one of their best applicants", and
offered a sign-on bonus (bribe). MIT didn't have to think twice: the rejection was in the mail before the application even got to them! Johns Hopkins had 10 spots for their top ten applicants (300 applied). The others had their own reasons.</p>
<p>There was a multi-way tie for first place. The Best Guess award goes to everyone who chose Caltech (surprised no one suggested Duke!) and scored
one out of three.</p>
<p>Here's my guess: maybe these schools don't stress GREs. I was once told that the top 20 didn't make cuts on standardized test scores. Maybe their system is more inclusive, like the Comprehensive Review that UCLA uses, only for physics students.</p>
<p>That's all. Thoughts?</p>
<p>It depends on the applicant pool. Not only size (as in the case of JHU) but also composition. Admission committees try to come up with the strongest cohort of admits within sub-disciplines as well as across the board. In other words, graduate admissions are a bit like undergraduate admissions: the departments seek to build a class that reflects the interests of the faculty. This may explain why you got in at Caltech#1, Yale (#13) and Duke (#31), but not at Harvard (#3) and MIT (#1).
In your case, though you had 800 on the GRE Quantitative, I have to assume you had plenty of math courses at a much higher level than the GRE. Those courses would count for far more than the GRE. And the Verbal GRE probably does not count for much in math-heavy departments.
But hey, I guessed wrong.
Congrats on being accepted to Caltech, Yale and Duke. Are you going to Caltech?</p>
<p>I wouldn't know - know nothing about physics, or about grad school entrance these days. Might have something to do with the kind of TA slaves they currently need (they need math slaves)...or something else.</p>
<p>But if this were at the undergrad level, I wouldn't have thought much about it. If you were to take the 25-75% figures at the leading colleges and universities, it means that a full quarter of the student body attending had scores lower than those listed. Sometimes much lower - I would be willing to bet that every Ivy League school enrolls students with SATs in the 1100s every single year. Not necessarily a lot of them, but it is not particularly rare. And the multiple admissions wouldn't surprise either - the hooks that could get a student into one place with lower SATs are likely the same hooks that could get them into somewhere else.</p>
<p>Well bummer-- you gave the answer before I jumped on the bandwagon. Many grad schools will select students whose undergrad research experience alligns with their faculty research interests and activities. Accordingly, many of the faculty know each other and can recommend a strong research student to someone who could really use a bright, hardworking grad student in their lab, especially one who is already "trained up". As such, I would have paid less attention to your scores and more to your research experience. I would have asked where the faculty that you worked with on the undergrad level each did their grad work, as these connections ar also important. Last year, I visited 13 colleges with my s. who plans to pursue applied or engineering physics. We visited most of the facilities you mentioned, though at the undergrad level. Many times, we found ourselves chatting about what research was going on at the other institutions we visited, who was using which gas in their supercooled atoms lab, etc. Physics is a small world, where everyone almost knows everyone, particularly in the subspecialties, and oftentimes it is not what you know (as represented by test scores) but who you know. Perhaps someone at Duke just got a huge grant in one of the areas you have had experience in, and have the $ to pay a grad student research asssistant stipend-- hence the $$$ enticement. This is a very different game at the graduate level. But the game was, non-the-les, fun. Do I get a consolation prize and lovely parting gifts???</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>Admission committees do not look at their teaching needs when making decisions. They try to admit the best students, though there may be concern over whether a student who wants to work in a field where there is no faculty should be admitted, and also some negotiations (faculty want students to train). This is why there is often an imbalance between the funding needs of graduate students and the learning needs of undergraduates. In history departments, for example, faculty and graduate students cover the whole spectrum in terms of space and periods; but 90% of undergraduates want to take courses in American history.</p>