This is the time of year when many undergraduate physics students are looking to apply to grad school. The first step is to research potential graduate schools. There is a very useful website called gradschoolshopper.com that can help here. It is hosted by the American Institute of Physics, and it allows you so search for schools by state, subject, and degree. You can also ask a professor that specializes in your area of interest for an idea as to what schools are good for your subject.

This brings up the second step: thoroughly researching the schools that you are applying to. It does you no good to have a smoking hot application, if the school you’re applying to doesn’t offer anything in your field of interest. It also keeps your application from sounding like a form letter. If you say that you are interested in a field that a school offers, it may help you get accepted there.

For the application itself, the three biggest influences are your GRE scores, your GPA, and your letters of recommendation. For your GRE and GPA, the only things you can do are study hard and take the GRE twice. For your letter, however, you are going to want to make sure that whoever you ask to write it knows you. The best letter you can get will come from your research advisor, as they can comment on your research skills, which looks much better to a grad school than a generic ‘good student’ letter.