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<p>Only if they walk on water. :)</p>
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<p>Yep. The MIT physics alums I know who went to grad school are now doing PhDs at places like Caltech (a couple of those), Columbia, Harvard, and UCSB. They are not exactly suffering for having not been able to get a PhD from MIT.</p>
<p>Since you want to go to grad school, make sure that you develop reasonably close relationships with at least a few professors. Your letters of recommendation are as important as your grades.</p>
<p>Don’t discount the idea of doing research elsewhere. A physics major friend of mine (the one who’s now a Columbia student) did a couple of UROPs, (including one in systems neuroscience when he was relatively young and new to physics - see my previous comment about how other disciplines use basic physics) but the experience that he really blathered on about was when he was a summer research intern at Los Alamos. In addition to enjoying the work, he thought it was valuable to get to experience the environment of a government lab, and compare it to the academic environment.</p>
<p>And yeah, keep your mind open about majors. I have one friend (who, like you, came from a disadvantaged background) who came to MIT to do astrophysics and ended up as a happy architect instead.</p>