Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hello, new to this forum, so excuse me if I'm forgetting some protocol.

Anyways, I'm an undergraduate at University of Arizona, and will be going into my last year there.
I'm a physics,math, and french major looking to go into grad school for physics, preferably high energy/particle/qft.

The thing is though, my GPA isn't super great. I've been kinda lazy and have been letting A's slip into B's too often, and this semester my 2nd Electrodynamics semester had a crazy difficult final which turned my A into a C (70% of the final was about an in-class example a month prior, wasn't expecting it). Anyways, I'm sitting at a 3.55 overall, where the constituents are: 4.0 in french, 3.5 in math, and 3.2 in physics. I've gotten A's in quantum mechanics, particle/nuclear physics, and computational, so I don't feel super bad about anything, but I guess I'm still worried.

I've been doing research on limit setting of ATLAS data from the LHC and will continue until the end of my final semester.

Not looking to go into anything prestigious, but I was thinking of studying abroad in France for my master's.

I guess what I'm asking is:
What level of grad school should I be looking for?
How competitive is my GPA/stuff?

I think the PGRE will play a larger roll in your application than it does for other people. Your GPA is low, but you also had 3(?) majors. If you do well on the PGRE, it could probably offset your GPA a bit and show that you still have a strong ability in physics. So if you do decently on that, I would guess that you could be shooting for schools ranked in the 20-40 range by U.S. News. Your experience sounds pretty good, so I'm also assuming you will get good letters of recommendation.

On the other hand, if you do poorly it will affirm that your GPA is an accurate representation of your abilities, at least in the committee's mind. Of course everyone knows the test really isn't a very good indicator of gradate school success, but it's the only other thing they have to go off of.

Also, if you haven't already, have a look through all of the profiles and admission results from previous years, you might be able to find a few that are similar to yours.

Thanks for the reply stengah!

hello all scientists,it was really helpful and i would like to ask you my chance of getting into top 10.

my bachelor is civil engineering with gpa 70% on 100% scale(or 3 out of 4).
because of lack of interesting,after graduation I continued my education in physics at the best university in my country with gpa 19 out of 20(master degree).

I am international student with gre subject 990 in physics and math.
very professional Recommendation and awesome SOP.

I have 2 ISI paper.and have worked in on of the best institute for mathematics and theoretical physics as an internship.
so do I have a chance for Top 10 or not? any suggestion could be valuable.
Thank you so much

Thanks for information.

Dear all, just keeping this thread updated so that other people with similar gpa's can use this as an example.

I just took the GRE a few weeks ago. My score is:
Q: 164 (88 percentile)
V: 159 (81 percentile)
W: 4.5 (80 percentile)

I plan on taking the PGRE next week. So far my scores have been 600-700, but they've been steadily rising.

Stretch choices: McGill U, U Washington, UBC, U Penn
Safety: U Arizona, U Drexel, U Oregon
Others: UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Davis, U Colorodo, U Rutgers

If anyone has any questions or commentary, feel free to ask!