Do I need to have published a paper to get into a top 20 PhD program for physics?

Graduate School
1

<p>I am currently a student at the University of Maryland. My quantitative GRE is a 710 and my verbal is a 640. My GPA is currently less than a 3.0 but I got my transcript wiped so none of my classes count. I think I might be able to do better and get straight A’s if I retake those classes. I have done research before at JPL and CERN, but it hasn’t been published. Do I need to publish a paper to get into a top 20 school like the University of Washington?</p>

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<p>Sketch!..</p>

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<p>No.</p>

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<p>What do you mean you got your transcript wiped? How does that even happen? And even if that really happened, how do you expect to get into a PhD program with a wiped transcript?</p>

<p>With a 3.0 and just a 710 in quant, things would not look good for a physics PhD program.</p>

4

<p>Hi, I’m posting on behalf of a friend so I’m not sure he wants me to go into that much detail, but he used two technicalities to get his transcript “wiped.” He was very creative about it, but suffice it to say that he can’t do that again.</p>

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<p>Most undergrad students aren’t published even at top universities. I asked the AE program at Umich about how much an application affects admission. The coordinator replied that “the ratio of admitted students who are published versus admitted students who aren’t is about the same as the ratio of applicant are published versus applicants who aren’t.” I’m not sure if that’s for a physics program.</p>

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<p>A point to ponder: if your friend does manage, using whatever technical tricks, to get into the UW physics program, he will be still be toast if he doesn’t pass the Qualifying Exam (upon which the information from those “wiped” classes might factor in if they were STEM-related). Not passing the Qual will get one kicked out of the program no matter how stellar one’s research.</p>