Pros for NOT taking MATH 1310 Calc I

The physics department is currently trying to re-shape the undergrad curriculum, so whatever written below is relevant up until now, Fall 2012, and I do not guarantee that the following will be true a decade later.

I am the "aim high" type of person, and due to that, if I were to change one thing I did in college, that would be to have NOT taken Calc I and directly have done Calc II.

As of Fall 2012, if an incoming first-year starts doing a BS Physics right away without having any transfer credit, you basically follow this schedule:

• First year
• Fall : Calc I, Intro Phys I
• Spring : Calc II, Intro Phys II, Scientific Computing
• Second year
• Fall : Calc III, Intro Phys III, Elementary Lab I
• Spring : Diff. Eq., Modern Phys, Elem. Lab II
• Third year
• Fall : Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics I, Advanced Calc
• Spring : Electricity and Magnetism I, QM II, Partial Diff. Eq.
• Fourth year
• Fall : Statistical Mechanics, EM II, Intermediate Lab
• Spring : Research, any one 3000-5000 level Elective

What's the big deal about following this schedule?

Following this schedule is perfectly fine. In fact, most undergrads follow this schedule and many got into very decent grad schools.

Here is the point of skipping Calc I. And for this, I'm assuming you want to take challenging upper-level classes asap.

Basically all physics classes are only offered once a year, and some math classes required for the BS are also only offered once per year. These include MATH 3255 Diff. Eq. (Spring), MATH 5210 Adv. Calc. (Fall), and MATH 5220 Partial Diff. Eq (Spring).

Now we consider that you take Calc II in your first-year fall. Calc II is the prerequisite for Diff. Eq., so you will take Diff. Eq. concurrently with Calc III during your first-year spring. Here comes the point. Since you now have the prerequisites for all the third-year physics and math classes, you can go straight to the third-year courses (Class. Mech, QM, etc.) while doing Intro III.

That was kind of obvious. Well... at least from hindsight. So why did I not do that?

The main reason was that I had no transfer credit for that class, even though that was completely high school materials for me. 

I come from a foreign country, and my high school math actually covers up to half of Calc II. At that time I was worried that I might need time to acclimate to the new environment, and therefore went the easy way. Bad choice. I did not study for Calc I at all, literally. Finished every homework in an hour, went to mid-terms and finished everything within 20 minutes, and left the finals in an hour because I wanted a bowl of soup. And  I still managed to get an easy A+.

I am not trying to be cocky here. Calc I is one of those classes that if you know it, skip it. You will get a lot of practices in physics and other math classes, so you don't have to re-familiarize yourself with basic differentiation and integration by taking Calc I. 

Calc I teaches you up to integration by parts, but that will be taught again in Calc II, so if you know everything before that, you are good. Don't bother about the epsilon-delta proof, unless you want to do a second math major. But the proof will be introduced in other proof-based math classes again anyways.

Enough of Calc I, but why do you want to do third-year classes early in your second-year?

Who doesn't want to do exciting physics? Most of the more exciting stuff are in the 5000-levels, and some of them can only be taken if you have done some of the fourth-year stuff in your third year. For example, mathematical methods is at the same time as statistical mechanics for this year (Fall 2012). That was also the same for Fall 2011. If you do stat. mech. in your fourth-year, it would be impossible for you to take mathematical methods. Instead of having your fingers crossed for zero time clashes for your favorite courses, why not start earlier and be ahead in the game?

With Calc I gone, probably your schedule will look like this, considering that you don't take all third-year courses in your second-year:

• First year
• Fall : Calc II, Intro Phys I
• Spring : Calc III, Intro Phys II, Scientific Computing,  Diff. Eq.
• Second year
• Fall : Advanced Calc, Intro Phys III, Elementary Lab I,  Classical Mechanics
• Spring : Modern Phys, Elem. Lab II,  Electricity and Magnetism I,  Partial Diff. Eq.
• Third year
• Fall : Quantum Mechanics I,  Statistical Mechanics, EM II
• Spring : QM II,  Intermediate Lab
• Fourth year
• Fall : 
• Spring : 

Notice I left some blank spaces up there. You still need to fit research and one 3000-5000 level elective into that. I guess I don't have to tell you where to fit those. There are a lot of good 5000-level courses at UVA, and now you have the freedom to take most, if not all, of those. Plus in this schedule, you can save time from classes in your fourth-year fall for your PGRE and grad school application.

This is a tough course load, but trust me, there are at least a few people doing that every year, and some (like me) regret for not doing that. Exemption from Calc II, relatively, is not a great deal, but Calc I does make a difference.

Conclusion: 

Don't let Calc I mess up your four years and reduce your chances of getting into interesting physics classes. Worst comes to worst, when the department says that you need Calc I credits for physics despite that you did partial diff. eq. (total b.s., but unfortunately I heard of someone who had to do that for Calc II),  you can always take it in your final semester as a lim(N->infinity)(super)^N easy A+, while doing string theory and general relativity.

What is important for your grad school application? - a UVA perspective

A few days ago, I've asked a professor on the admissions board what is important on a grad school application. Before you start reading, be aware of a few facts.

1. Grad school admissions can be even more subjective than undergrad admissions. Therefore, the points presented here may not be universal.
2. UVA is a public school, so there are considerations that most other private schools do not care.
3. I will elaborate a little bit more on some of the points that the professor raised. That will mainly be based on other sources I gathered on the internet.

Here is the conclusion. Basically, there are two most important things: PGRE (Physics GRE), and GPA.

The idea behind why these are important is, in fact, fairly simple. After two years in grad school, you will need to take a qualification test (or simply, the qual). The format of the test varies from school to school, but the point is the same -  that is to see if a student is capable of becoming a PhD candidate. Grad school is place to train potential researchers, and they want students to pass the qual. For that, they will need some kind of reference. And you guessed it: PGRE and GPA.

The next thing grad schools consider is your potential to become a good researcher. Note that I said potential here, but not ability. Some students might not have the chance to develop the ability during their undergrad years, and most grad schools are well aware of that. Therefore, another way of saying this is that grad schools like smart people.

Some schools have a certain cutoff for PGREs, and your GPA reflects how good you are as a student during your undergraduate years. So make sure you be stellar - or at least try to be - in those two.

Many people stress a lot about recommendation letters. It seems that at UVA, recommendations mainly have two usages: (1) check for consistencies in the application, (2) bump up less-than-stellar scores/grades. This implies that here if you have a 990 out of 990 in your PGRE and a 4.0 GPA plus as long as your recommendation is not crappy, you are almost guaranteed admission. (The scores are an exaggeration, but you get the point.)

In even more competitive schools than UVA where the average GPA and PGRE scores are so high, the recommendation letters play a much more important role. The professor did not say much about this, but I will talk about this in some later post.

How about other stuff?

Grad courses, gradership, teaching assistanceship, publications, club positions... These are not that important. If you need to spend ALL your time developing the "perfect" application, do actual work in research-related stuff and get a good recommendation from your supervisor.

Grad courses are cool, but usually professors like to take in smart people, and they fully recognize that a lot of smart people don't take grad courses. The best thing a grad course can do to your application is to compensate for some bad grades.

Being a grader or TA would help you get a place in probably a high school or community college, but that is not very relevant to grad schools. Instead of having someone being able to teach, they would rather have someone better at doing research.

Publications now. This can be a tricky one. A lot of people boast about having tons of publications, while many others get none and still can get into the top schools. Unless your publications show extremely substantial work (which is highly unlikely for an undergrad) and you are one of the very few first authors, your publications will not affect you much. Of course, if a professor at your target school likes one of your publications very much, that is a different story.

Don't even bother to mention that you are the president of the knitting club. Grad schools like interesting people, but that is the very last thing they consider when they have two applicants with nearly identical profiles. You can be interesting and grad schools do like this, because this is someone they will work with for the future 6-8 years. As a professor, would you prefer someone interesting or boring if they are equally qualified for the position? You know the answer. My point here is that I really don't know how to convey this message effectively in your application, so I would leave that out and hope that a professor might mention that in their recommendation, which would be strongly than you writing about yourself anyways.

This time I have discussed if a piece material is essential in your application. Later I might talk about individual materials a little more deeply.

Or maybe something completely different.

Some resources for applying to grad schools

Here are some websites that are useful for applying to grad schools. The information here is taken from last year's (Spring 2012) "Grad School: To go or not to go" talk.

• Ruffin Evans's guide to grad school  http://people.virginia.edu/~ree5f/gradguide.html
• A very general and useful guide written by the legendary UVA physics undergrad Ruffin Evans
• Who hires physics students?  http://www.physics.purdue.edu/career/whohires.shtml
• US News Physics Grad School ranking  http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/physics-rankings
• NRC PhD program ranking  http://www.phds.org/
• GradSchoolShopper  http://www.gradschoolshopper.com/
• Despite its name, it is actually specific to physics grad schools

SPS Meetings

Always check the SPS website for the latest information about talks and research opportunities:
http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/spsuva/

The Society of Physics Students (SPS) holds weekly meetings every Friday 1pm-2pm in the Physics Building room 313. There will be pizza and drinks.

In the meetings, we will have a guest speaker, who is usually the department colloquium speaker, to talk about his/her research. The level of the talk will usually be scaled to a version readily accessible to third- and fourth-years, while the advanced second- and first-years should also be able to get some good knowledge out of it.

If you want to know more about SPS or SPS activities, the contacts are also in the above link.

Welcome!

Great. So you like physics.

But let's talk a little bit about me first.

I am Elton. As of Fall 2012, I am enrolled at the University of Virginia (UVA) as a third-year international student majoring in physics. My physics-related involvements include the following: vice president of the Society of Physics Students (SPS), physics department representative at the College Council (CC), research assistant, and grader.

Why did I set up this blog? Most probably because I know that I know nothing, but there are also other students on the same boat with me. I intend to present what I know about physics at UVA while gathering more information to be shared.

I intend to include, but not limited to, the following materials:

• Student life as a physics student at UVA
• Research
• Opportunities inside/outside the department
• Courses
• Graduate school preparation (I got to say I am not the expert in this yet, since I am still an undergrad, but I post what I hear from professors, grad students, talks and other sources)
• SPS/CC-related news
• Departmental news
• Fun/Nerdy stuff
• MUCH MORE...

That is a lot.

I will try to update the blog regularly, but due to my class, research and work schedule, please allow me to rest a little bit if I feel I need to.

Done. Let's get to some physics!