<p>@ivyaspire yeah man in '17. btw you live in olympus mons, mars? xD its the largest volcano in mars, 16 miles high. now thats cool!</p>
<p>@NP
Yes dhaka U teaches c/c++ to engineering students. Besides i want to apply to US, though i am currently enrolled at dhaka U for applied physics, to further my studies in network eng. I hav a big plan for that & thus need a lot of resources. Btw i do not intend to seek a degree at dhaka u but to do some college courses to make me prepared for my studies at US.</p>
<p>@amyharvard It looks increasingly unlikely that I will get accepted into a US college this time. I just don’t know what to do…</p>
<p>@Eatyoualive shut up dude! of course you’ll get in somewhere. i know you will. have faith man.</p>
<p>@eatyoualive:
as akashdip said u will get in somewhere.</p>
<p>@ akashdip: yeah I do know that about Olympus Mons 
Btw we’ve something common. We do like Astrophysics :)</p>
<p>@ eatyoualive : Don’t give up your hope, man… U still have the April 1st decisions left. So don’t worry :)</p>
<p>@Decibel: Great! Take all the programming classes it is great prep for any engineering program. But one thing I don’t understand. Are you a student of the university itself or you’re in secondary school but taking classes as an outsider??</p>
<p>NP</p>
<p>@akashdip: Getting into any program at Caltech/Harvard is difficult. What I meant to say was that for those of who are needing financial aid, PhD is much better than doing your undergrads, where colleges are much more reluctant to give out FA.
So a PhD for astrophysics at Caltech would give you higher chance than an undergrad at the same place, but this is assuming all other things remail equal and that you apply for FA. FA is the biggest factor that nails down most international students hoping to study undergrads, but in postgrads it becomes less of a problem, particularly for those who want to do research.</p>
<p>As I advised Decibel, you should familiarise yourself with programming languages, practice for the Physics GRE/general GRE, get as much research experience as possible (reading and co-authoring papers in scientific journals is a great way) and master software packages like MATLAB. They don’t teach everyone these skills even in U.S. undergrad students seeking a physics degree, but they are of great use in doing scientific research. Also make sure your English is up to the standard of other Americans. That will make you a competitive applicant for places like Caltech/Harvard. Even if you don’t have those skills, you are still a competitive applicant at the lower rated schools where they want to attract science PhDs to boost their research ratings, but I am assuming you want to make the best out of everything. It is never impossible to do that.</p>
<p>But just out of curiosity, why have you selected astrophysics? Why not something like condensed matter or quantum field theory?</p>
<p>NP</p>
<p>@ivyaspire bro, you wanna do research in astrophysics? btw did you know i was born on the very day Subramanyan Chandrasekhar died, 08.21.1995?</p>
<p>@NPcomplete specifically i wanna spearhead a reaseach on solar flares. magnetohydrodynamics interests me very much.</p>
<p>i’ll certainly try my best to get into caltech. since my primary focus will be the sun, i’ll be needing a very good infrastructure & caltech has the best faculty for observational astrophysics.
i do know some c++ & java. i’ll try to learn up a few more & will hone my skills in the ones i already know. btw what is matlab? never heard of it before.
my vocabularly is certainly at par with the american kids, if not better. thats not a problem at all.
and what do you mean</p>
<p>…by coauthoring scientific journals? i mean, dont tell me the literal meaning. what type of journals?</p>
<p>@akashdip : So we are gonna get another Chandrashekhar 
although I have some national olympiad championships in astronomy, I don’t wanna major in astrophysics. I wanna enroll at neuroscience or bio prog in undergrad!</p>
<p>Nd akashdip I’m assuming you’d be lyk Raj of Big Bang Theory. Cz Astrophysics and Caltech… Dude u’ve a lot of similarity with Raj. btw, I do lyk Raj :)</p>
<p>i know i shouldnt be asking this, but cant help it; why not astrophysics?
i love molecular biology & neurobiology too(amy farrah fallow, huh? xD)
btw i super-hate raj. or more specifically, i hate the way indian men are stereotyped in american television. and i cant identify myself with any character from TBBT.</p>
<p>Oh ohkay…neva mind I told ya in a sense of Caltech and Astrophysics… these are quite similar with Raj Well, for your first question my answer will be, I love amateur astronomy rather than taking it as a profession :)</p>
<p>i like TBBT very much. but i’m sure nobody can identify himself with any of the famous four. they’re all so super-nerds, all of them scoring zero in social quotient.
i do like sheldon’s strange sense of humour though.
but i hate raj. i even hate the way he talks english. never have i heard anyone here in west bengal talk like that. but then again, he’s south indian not a bengali(no offence south indians!)</p>
<p>@ivyaspire cool!</p>
<p>btw you realise TBBT is in the category 18-49? and i aint even 17 yet. but, who cares!</p>
<p>Yeah thats true… He got a nice accent…‘Respect’ 
Btw dude, Were you in Indian IOAA (International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics) team? I know some of them. Nitin Jain, Sujit Gholap (This guy was from west bengal, grabbed a Silver in 2009), Aniruddha Bapat (btw, this guy is in Caltech now) … nd Aniket Sule, the Indian team leader. India is quite good at astrophysics.</p>