The physics department graduate admissions committee is composed of 20+ faculty members and a few current graduate students.  Each of the applications we receive is reviewed by 1-3 members of the committee.  These reviews attempt to evaluate the likelihood of a student successfully completing the graduate course work and completing an independent research project that is the hallmark of a Ph.D.  Information from the personal statement and letters of recommendation are used at this stage.  Once reviews are available, the full committee considers admission to the program by evaluating the reviews, GPA, and test scores in a holistic process.  There are no cut-offs for GPA or test scores.  This process runs from the last week of January through the first week of March, with students notified by email during that time frame.

Students that are admitted to the program are provided support through a Teaching Assistant or Research Assistant position (about $30,000 per year), given a full tuition waiver, and offered subsidized health insurance.  Admitted students are also invited to attend one of our two recruiting weekends in the spring to learn more about the department.

To help gauge the level of students in our department, the tables below provide some statistics on the students that have entered the department in the three years of 2015-2017.

GPA and GRE scores for domestic students
  Average 25% – 75% range 5% – 95% range
GPA 3.79 3.69 – 3.96 3.42 – 3.98
GRE Verbal 162 158 – 166 153 – 169
GRE Quantitative 164 162 – 168 158 – 170
GRE Writing 4.3 4.0 – 5.0 3.5 – 5.0
GRE Physics 809 735 – 875 620 – 960
GPA, GRE, and TOEFL scores for international students
  Average 25% – 75% range 5% – 95% range
GPA 3.75 3.62 – 3.90 3.48 – 3.97
GRE Verbal 156 152 – 160 147 – 165
GRE Quantitative 168 167 – 170 163 – 170
GRE Writing 3.5 3.0 – 4.0 2.7 – 5.0
GRE Physics 948 920 – 990 820 – 990
TOEFL 102 99 – 106 91 – 114

For additional information about the application process, please refer to the FAQ page