Graduate school shortlist

[blondie]

So, I'm an international student from a country in Eastern Europe. I'm in my third and final year of study, I have a 4.0 GPA, one research project at my university and one in the UK, both computational work, 3-4 posters at some conferences. My PGRE is 850, I haven't got my General scores yet but I think I did pretty well on that. I decided I want to apply for Condensed Matter Theory, my main interests being pen and paper work in superfluidity, superconductivity, semiconductors etc. Given my background I'm not excluding computational work either but I'm more inclined towards analytical research. My grad school shortlist is as follows:

Princeton
Cornell
UIUC
Ohio State

University of Maryland
UCSD
U of Wisconsin
U of Michigan
John Hopkins

What do you think? Is it a right mix of reach, plausible and safe schools? Do they fit my interests? Also, I searched the universities websites for the research being done but if anyone has any more information about the CMT groups at these universities it would be very much appreciated.

[grae313]

Looks like a good mix to me. A word of warning though: almost every person I know who wanted to do "pen and paper theory" now programs. There really just isn't much of it anymore, and especially not in condensed matter.

I think you're applying to a good list of schools though and I expect you to have several good options to choose from.

[blondie]

Due to money and time issues I've decided to drop U of Michigan from my list. I like F Nori's research but not much else, plus the department seems kind of small so I feel my options would be limited there in case I change my mind. I'm also thinking of replacing John Hopkins with Rutgers. I know it's considered less good but at the CMT group at JH is only like 3-4 people and I like the research at Rutgers better. What do you think?