image: a Black woman with long straight hair wearing a graduation cap and graduation gown with purple lines. source

Surviving & Thriving as a URM in Astro|Physics 5: Applying to Grad School

This process starts the year before you apply, ideally.

See earlier parts of this series: I, II, III, playlist, IV

Let me start by apologizing for writing this in November, when it’s past a few deadlines. Spring would have been more helpful. Even summer/early fall. Unfortunately, while many are applying to grad school, I’ve been dealing with an incredibly unfun combination of family deaths and applying for faculty positions, while also keeping up with up actually working/dealing with the rest of life that doesn’t stop.

Applying to graduate school in physics and astronomy (science in general) is really, really stressful, especially if you don’t have good advising. My hope here is to give you some ideas of how it all works in the fields I know best: physics and astronomy. Ideally, you start this process in the fall of your junior year, but you work with the timeline that you’ve got. I will talk about the things that I think one should do in the ideal scenario but also address what happens if things go sideways.

First of all, applying to grad school is like college in the sense that you have reach programs, programs you’ll probably get into, and safety schools. Apply to schools that fall into all three categories for you, and you can figure that out from looking at info about admissions on their website and finding out how people from your university have previously done.

Know that the professor in the area of research you’re interested in and who sent you a nice email might not be on the admissions committee and therefore might not get much of a say in support of you. Also, just because a professor is very well-known in a field doesn’t mean they are nice to work with. You will have more lasting success working with an advisor you work well with, rather than just having a letter from someone famous who treated you like shit.

In order to apply to PhD programs you will need a few things:

1. GRE General and Physics GRE scores. While some schools are finally starting to rely less on these scores, those are primarily high ranked programs that are hard to get into, so you can’t get away with not taking them. My advice is to take them during your junior year so that you never have to think about it again if you do well, and if you don’t do well, you have plenty of time to do what you need to in order to improve. I recommend Conquering the Physics GRE for preparing for the physics exam. The general exam is basically a glorified SAT, and doing well comes down to memorizing a bunch of words, learning to write in the style they expect, and learning the types of math that they test, many of which should have been covered in your physics/astronomy major curriculum, but may need some de-rusting. Please remember that the GRE is not a measure of intelligence and is only at best problematically a measure of knowledge — if you do well, that’s great. If you don’t do well, maybe being a professional test taker is not a good job for you, which is good because that job doesn’t exist. But I do believe you can learn to do well on these tests, and I recommend people start studying the summer before their junior year. Please get tested for learning disabilities that may require accommodations. Being neurodiverse isn’t a bad thing. It’s just different! Different strokes for different folks!
2. At least three letters of recommendation. Ideally all three of these will be from people who knew you in a research capacity and from people who are willing to say very positive things about you. It’s better to ask a postdoc that you worked with directly than a professor you had for a class where they barely knew your name. If you don’t have three research letters, then ask professors who got to know you in their classes. This is one reason (AMONG MANY) that going to Office Hours is a good idea. (Once, I got a summer research job out of going to Office Hours.)
3. Transcripts. Do your best, but by the time you’re applying you can’t change much about this.
4. Personal statement/research statement. This should express your potential research interests. My advice is to express interests in everything that you might be interested in, not just one thing if you have more than one thing. That makes it easier for departments to believe you won’t drop out if you can’t do that one thing. Try to show that you’ve really thought about it and don’t just say, “I want to solve quantum gravity.” Avoid popular tropes because the admissions committee is going to read hundreds of these applications so they’re going to see your favorite TV show reference at least 10 times. Keep in mind that there’s a limit to how much people on the committee may care about the fact that you’re an underrepresented minority (unfortunately). Also, go to the writing center at your university and get help with writing if you need it. Make sure you proofread for typos and spelling errors. Those can really piss admissions and fellowship committees off. Here is some decent advice about writing the personal statement.

Here I’m going to say a few uncomfortable things, but I want you to not take them personally: if you say that you want to do particle physics theory (or any kind of theory frankly) and nothing else, your application will get the most scrutiny and have to overcome the highest bar. Theoretical particle physicists are infamously unforgiving when it comes to admissions, demanding that students have had unusual course work (which basically means you went to a fancy high school and a university, instead of college), high GRE scores (80th percentile), high GPA (4.0 is good), and research-based publications (on the arXiv at least but preferably in a journal). And keep in mind the numbers I just gave will have statistical variation depending on the program, but the gist is, a lot of people get interested in physics because of particle physics, but there isn’t space for everyone who is interested to do it. There is fiercer competition to be admitted as a particle theory student. If you want to do particle physics but could be happy doing another kind of theory — like the very popular condensed matter theory! — say that.

Having said that, I had none of those things when I applied to grad school. I also initially applied to a combination of top ranked physics programs and top ranked astronomy programs. I got into the astronomy programs and only after winning an NSF fellowship, earning my Masters, and being made to feel uncomfortable for being too physics-y in my astronomy program did I make a lateral move to a physics PhD program.

Anyway, speaking of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, you should absolutely apply for them every time you are allowed to (once as an undergrad and once as a grad student). Winning one is a prestigious honor, it provides your department some financial relief, and you will be more highly paid than other grad students most of the time. Even receiving an honorable mention for one can garner you some benefits (when I️ applied this included guaranteed supercomputer access). I was an honorable mention the year I applied for grad programs, and I was the only person in my grad program to win one my first year of grad school. If at first you don’t succeed, try again!

Importantly, notice also that the NSF GRFP requires that your research plan address Broader Impacts criteria and also gives you an opportunity to talk about your trajectory as a student in a personal statement.

1. I remember a white officemate advertising to me that she wasn’t going to spend much time on the Broader Impacts criteria because they weren’t a big deal. I won the fellowship, and she did not. She had more research experience and more prestigious letters of recommendation than I did. The graduate research fellowship program is the one place where Broader Impacts consistently do matter.
2. This is absolutely the time to be personal about your experiences as an underrepresented minority. And by personal I mean don’t just say general things like, “We all know that there are fewer than 100 Black American women who have earned PhDs from physics departments.” I mean, talk about your mom working two jobs so that you could stay in your magnet high school in west Los Angeles (except don’t use that exact story, because it’s mine). Talk about being the only work-study student in your study group. Talk about the number of times people told you that you were succeeding because you were a Native American beneficiary of affirmative action, not because of the strength of your intellect. Talk about your hopes and dreams for the communities you come from. Show that you offer something that your white officemate who never had to struggle financially doesn’t. Do not say something like, “I’m a woman, so that counts.” (I’ve seen white women do this on NSF applications.) You need to say why it matters, how it shapes your views, and how it will shape you as a scientist in the future.
3. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND CRITERIA CAREFULLY.
4. Proofread your essays carefully. Seriously. Go to the writing center for help if you need to. Or if you’re me, your mom. Honestly, the time that I learned the most about how to write was the two rounds of NSF GRFP applications that I did. My mom edited so heavily that she rewrote them. She doesn’t know anything about being a scientist besides what I’ve told her, so scientific expertise wasn’t necessary. By learning from her edits, I learned how to write well enough over the years I developed so a blog entry like this takes me an hour or two to extract from my brain.
5. Make the deadline. There are no exceptions.

You should also look around for other fellowships like GEM, the Ford Predoctoral (another one where I was an honorable mention but not a success), NASA Harriet Jenkins, and others I probably don’t even know about.

(Be aware of the need to file estimated taxes, should you win a fellowship.)

Here are my answers to some questions about potential scenarios:

Ok, I got into a program, now what?

Try to go to the visitation weekend. If they ask you to pay for it yourself and you can’t, be honest and say you’d like to visit but can’t afford it. Then while visiting, keep in mind the old saying that when someone shows you who they are, believe them. If you have a bad experience or your gut says no, don’t force yourself to go somewhere that won’t be healthy for you. Seven years is a long time to be somewhere that makes you completely miserable right off the bat. Also, don’t accept a financial package you can’t afford unless you’ve really done the calculations of how long it will take you to pay off seven years worth of student loans to cover the differences. Really no one should go into debt for a PhD, but I did because I had medical needs that my stipend and insurance couldn’t completely cover. Just know what you are getting yourself into.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: talk to current students and see if you like their lives. Their lives are your future life. These are the people you will be officemates and classmates with.

Conduct yourself like visiting a graduate program is a visit to a professional environment, because it is. Pay attention to whether the faculty seem to understand this. Also, if there are rumors about sexual harassers/racist/-phobic harassers on the faculty, take those rumors seriously.

But what if I have a low GPA?

Apply anyway. Put extra time into preparing for the GRE, try to focus on doing well in research settings and write a strong personal statement.

But what if I have a mediocre GPA and I do mediocre/poorly on the GRE?

Congrats, you’re like me. I still succeeded, in part because not every graduate program is going to unnecessarily emphasize these numbers. Enough schools understand that GPA and GRE aren’t everything, and in my case, my letters of recommendation counted a lot. Then, I did well and made the moves I needed to do what I wanted to do. Also consider bridge programs. (More below.)

What if I have an OK GPA and GRE scores but no research experience?

It can be harder to get into a graduate program with these conditions, so it may be you will need to take a year to get research experience and apply later. But you should apply anyway and see what happens.

What if I can’t afford to apply?

Taking the GRE is expensive, as are application fees. Honestly, this is a shitty situation to be in, and as a work-study/Pell Grant student, I took out additional loans to pay for applications while also making extensive use of fee waivers wherever I could get them. Definitely make sure to ask schools you are applying to about potential fee waivers and also ask your home department about on campus resources to support you. If you are a member of a minority-serving organization, ask them about it. If there is an on-campus chapter, ask if they know any alums who would be willing to sponsor your application process.

Chanda, I took your advice and applied anyway and didn’t get in anywhere.

This is not the end of the world. Consider applying for a bridge-style program like Columbia’s or the well-known Fisk-Vanderbilt. There are a lot of reasons why someone might apply to one of these bridge programs instead of going right to a PhD. One of them is that these programs have been successful in giving some people the tools that they need to open the doors that seem shut to them, and they also have late application deadlines so you can still apply after you’ve gotten news about other grad programs. One distinguished alum of the Fisk-Vanderbilt program is Dr. Jedidah Isler, the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics, from Yale University, former TED Fellow, former National Geographic Explorer, host of #VanguardSTEM, and 2017 Root 100 Honoree. (That’s a very longwinded way of saying badass!) As I said above, it’s important to talk to current students and alums of any program you get into so that you can get a sense of what you’re getting yourself into. Bridge programs are diverse and some of them, I think, are better executed than others.

Should I apply directly to a Bridge program instead of a PhD?

Why choose? Do both! There are a lot of reasons why you might want to do a bridge first. I don’t know much about Dr. Isler’s reasons for being part of the Fisk-Vanderbilt inaugural class, but it seems to have worked out for her. And for what it’s worth, even though I managed to pass my qualifying exam at UC Santa Cruz, my time in the astronomy department there ended up functioning as a bridge for me. As I said above, it’s important to talk to current students and alums of any program you get into so that you can get a sense of what you’re getting yourself into. Bridge programs are diverse and some of them, I think, are better executed than others.

I think I want to do theoretical physics but I’m not sure/have no experience.

Apply to grad school! But also consider applying for the Perimeter Institute Scholars International program, which is formally a master degree program but I think of it as kind of a theoretical physics taster. (I don’t believe you can learn quantum field theory in six weeks, but I do believe you can get a sense of whether you love it or hate it.)