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Renewable Energy Career Plans, Physics GRE?

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 7:17 am
by katrijnn
Hello,
I am currently a physics undergrad at Drexel University in Philadelphia. I am planning on pursuing a career (and therefore grad work) in renewable energy. Should I still take the Physics GRE or would some type of environmental engineering GRE be more beneficial? I would be working in some type of applied physics/engineering area, so I think it would still be useful but someone else might know better.
Thoughts?
Katrijn Netherton

Re: Renewable Energy Career Plans, Physics GRE?

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:47 pm
by Minovsky
The only reason to take any sort of GRE is to satisfy admissions requirements. Look at the admissions requirements for programs you are interested in for the answer to your question.

Re: Renewable Energy Career Plans, Physics GRE?

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:49 pm
by microacg
Kind of a related question I have... if you studied physics and might be interested in a related area (applied physics, or something else where physics is a major pre-req) how do you go about researching what is actually out there?

Do you start by researching jobs that use physics, then trace back to what advanced degrees lead into those careers? Or do you start by researching different specific topics, and then looking at what exact jobs utilize those skills. In either case I'm not sure the best way to go about learning more about this.

I mean, we've all picked up some stuff just through conversations and reading various things (such as on these forums), but I haven't found any one specific source that is very useful for this goal, yet.

Re: Renewable Energy Career Plans, Physics GRE?

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:44 pm
by bfollinprm
microacg wrote:Do you start by researching jobs that use physics, then trace back to what advanced degrees lead into those careers? Or do you start by researching different specific topics, and then looking at what exact jobs utilize those skills. In either case I'm not sure the best way to go about learning more about this.
Either of these ways can be a good way of going about it. It depends on which you know more about: do you know what specific kinds of problems you're interested in tackling? Or do you know more about the kind of career you'd like to have? Those are two related but not isomorphic questions; likely what you end up pursuing will be driven by a little of both. If you have questions about a specific branch of physics or physics-related study, you should ask the forum; we have knowledgeable people on nearly everything.

The american physical society website http://www.aps.org/careers/index.cfm and the society of physics students http://www.spsnational.org/cup/ have some good lists of careers outside of academia to peruse.