Stern College for Women

Resources

Graduate Schools

Planning for Graduate Studies in Physics and Related Fields

Review a guide by the American Association of Physics Teachers

Read this resource by the American Physical Society

The Timeline

The best strategy is to decide on the list of graduate schools during your junior year and check the schools' deadlines. Then use the GRE bulletin to work backward and figure out the appropriate dates for the GRE tests. The timeline below is thus just a general advice, applicable to those schools that have application deadline of January 1 or later.

1. August preceding thegraduating year: study and register for the subject GRE test

2. Fall of the graduating year: take general GRE test

3. September of the graduating year: meet with career services and physics department faculty to determine which programs to apply and to try to determine which area of physics is of interest to you

4. September of the graduating year: start researching fellowships. Their deadlines may be as early as October.

5.November of your graduating year (tentatively): take subject GRE test

6. November, December of your graduating year: send applications to graduate schools