This presentation was given during a collaboration visit I went on to my alma mater Duquesne University from March 26 – 30, 2025. Unlike my typical research talks, this presentation was about my perspective on applying to graduate school. While I think the superior version of a talk like this would be Jaideep’s own Physics Grad School Application “Bootcamp”, I do think that my attempt at this kind of presentation has merit for offering my own perspectives on what a graduate program is like for students who were not certain about applying to graduate school. I also think it differs in the breadth of materials I provide for the students to reference – from the beginning of my planning process, to requesting recommendation letters, to receiving acceptances or rejections at the end, I shared everything I could find from my application process with the students.
When I was in the process of applying to graduate school in Fall 2021, I remember the challenge of trying to accumulate all the application materials and wishing that I had some examples to look at to help guide my thinking – these are the sort of elements that I included in my own presentation. I was expecting the process to be a 50 minute talk with 20 minutes of questions, but to my surprise many student had questions in real time and the experience became more of a discussion between us. I hope they view the experience as helpful for making the decision to attend physics graduate school!
-Aiden Boyer