The main question left unanswered is: what is the OP planning to do in research? It would be ill-advised to apply at UCSD, or UIUC, for something other than condensed matter, whereas UCSC, Arizona State or Case Western may be a better fit for someone interested in astronomy.
As for particles...
Except that internationals are at a disadvantage at UCs (especially UCSB). Hence why I didn't apply at UCD, plus UCD (and also UCLA/SB) was characterized as being a "TA-level Ponzi scheme" by professors at home in that they will admit a lot of kids, but set up a rather large fraction of them to...
Yes, unfortunately.
I know top-10 schools amount to lotteries, yet the DGS once slipped some details about my position in that particular year's applicant pool when I asked about the possibility of returning from a medical leave before said leave started. It turned out that I was on some...
Oh I can assure you that the "extenuating circumstances" of my case made it so that it took months for them to reach that (highly unfortunate) decision. I understand they exhausted all their options before making that decision. Then again, I do not think anything program-specific actually caused...
Let's say that I was given unacceptable conditions for returning from medical leave; basically I had to self-fund at least the following year of a physics PhD. Knowing that doing so would result in a financial disaster, I am definitely withdrawing from the program, with the understanding that...
I know that it's often a conundrum faced when your research is in some theoretical area: sometimes finance seems adviseable, at other times IT (in high-tech industries or not) and finally, high school or community college teaching (a PhD is overkill for high school teaching, even though the...
I have no use for that particular avatar anymore. That said, maybe a stint in the workforce could tell me whether I should try again for a PhD or not.
Nevertheless, I know about all too many stories of PhDs whose research dreams are broken shortly after graduation, or otherwise abandoned...
Due to extenuating circumstances that I am not going into at this point (however, I may provide additional details if necessary), I am considering I have a MS, which I earned prior to dropping out from my PhD. My MS project was on a theoretical project involving topological defects.
Thus far, I...