Frequently Asked Questions

 The School of Graduate Studies automatically reviews applications and waives admissions fees for certain applicants, including current Rutgers students and alumni,  active U.S. military and military veterans who plan to apply for educational benefits under the GI Bill, and participants in various scholar programs. There is further information  in the ``Application Guidelines and Fee Waiver'' section of https://grad.rutgers.edu/diversity-and-outreach/prospective-graduate-students. SGS also allows fee deferrals.

The department has a small budget that typically allows us to waive fees for a few applicants each year. Normally, all of these funds are used a few months before the application deadline.

You must have a 3.0 GPA - an average grade of B or better. For students whose GPAs are closer to 3 than to 4, you are a stronger applicant if your advanced undergraduate courses in physics, astronomy, or math have a GPA closer to 4 than 3.

Yes. You are required to have an undergraduate degree, but there is no requirement on how long you were an undergraduate. 

Yes ... but we want to be confident that you can succeed. So it is important for our evaluation that you have taken advanced undergraduate physics courses. It is very difficult to succeed at the graduate level if you have not. If you are missing more than a few of these courses, you should look into taking them before applying.

Yes. Again, we want to be confident that you can succeed, so recent evidence that you maintain an excellent understanding of advanced undergraduate physics would help.

Very important, particularly for Ph.D. applicants. The Ph.D. is a research based degree - you will spend most of your time as a Ph.D. student engaged in research. Letters from faculty who supervised your undergraduate research are important in our evaluation.

Many schools are re-evaluating the importance of the GRE. The GREs can be expensive. For students admitted to our program there is little correlation between GRE scores and probability of getting a Ph.D., but students admitted mostly have around average or higher physics GRE scores. The GREs do provide information on students from programs we are not familiar with, so they can help give us confidence that you can do well in our program. Different subfields place different amounts of emphasis on the physics and general GREs - none in some cases - so try talking to faculty in your areas of interest. Starting with fall 2022 admissions, we changed our requirements so that the GRE physics and general tests are preferred for  physics applicants, but optional for astronomy applicants. 

The English requirement is set by the School of Graduate Studies, and described in their web page at https://grad.rutgers.edu/admissions/international-students: "You are exempt from submitting TOEFL or IELTS scores if you are a Permanent Resident, US citizen, or an international applicant with a minimum of three years undergraduate studies or a masters degree with the mode of instruction being English."

Information in the IELTS and TOEFL tests, along with other information for international students, can be found at https://grad.rutgers.edu/admissions/international-students. An older version of this webpage is available at http://gradstudy.rutgers.edu/information/international-students. 

Since we do not offer or guarantee support to MS students, and research is not required to the same degree as for Ph.D. students, we do not evaluate M.S. applicants as strictly as Ph.D. candidates. We do want to be confident that M.S. candidates are able to handle the graduate course work, since courses form the bulk of their degree requirements.

We have in recent times been requiring M.S. students who want to become Ph.D. students to go through the Ph.D. admissions process and be compared to other applicants. As an M.S. student, you will have the advantage, or possibly disadvantage, of being well known to the faculty when you become a Ph.D. applicant.

We usually admit for September, since the graduate course sequence starts in the fall term, and we typically do not have available resources for new Ph.D. students starting in January. Occasionally students do start in January, but nearly all are students who were admitted for September and then needed to defer a term for personal reasons.

You can always apply for any admission date. We are more likely to admit M.S. students in January than Ph.D. students, due to the issues of course sequence and support. Starting in January would mainly make sense for an M.S. student who should start by taking some advanced undergraduate courses.

We are generally required to guarantee support to all Ph.D. students for 5 years. Ph.D. students are supported as TAs (~40%), as GAs funded by research grants (~40%), and by a variety of external or internal Fellowship funds and other university funded positions (~15%). The unsupported students mostly are working full time outside the university. Examples include senior students who have not quite finished their Ph.D.s but have despite this started a potentially permanent (non-academic) position, and international students on OPTs. A few senior students are only supported as PTLs (part time lecturers, paid per course.) Please read the ``Graduate Student Support'' web page.

M.S. students are generally self supporting. They are not offered appointments as either TAs or GAs or Fellows. They can take on PTL assignments, perhaps make arrangements to work on research for faculty for pay, or find employment outside the department.

TA and GA appointments include tuition, fees, and health insurance. Fellows typically get a higher stipend, but limited tuition support, different health insurance, and need to pay their own fees. PTLs only get a paycheck, and have to cover their tuition, fees, and insurance themselves.

Rutgers students with appointments get paid every 2 weeks. This means that a couple months each year you will receive three paychecks instead of two. Some expenses, like rent, are typically paid monthly, so please budget appropriately.

Most students have academic year appointments, and are paid for the months of September through June, with paychecks coming from mid September through mid July, every 2 weeks. Separate arrangements are needed for students with AY appointments to be paid for the summer months of July and August. Most students are paid by their advisers to do research, but some instead teach a section during the summer.

Students without appointments often take on teaching / research for pay, as coads / PTLs.

Typically it takes a few weeks after arriving at Rutgers to start getting paid. All your paperwork needs to be in place so that you can be added to the payroll system. Your payment for the pay period plus any previous periods that were not yet paid needs to be figured out by a deadline some days before the pay date. Thus it is typically mid to late September before you receive your first paycheck.

Continuing students will notice that their paychecks can change in early July, due to change of stipends and / or appointments,  in early September, if starting a new appointment, in early January, due to a change in the number of work days in the year, or in early February, if the fall and spring term appointments have a different stipend.

Our graduate courses divide into a set of core courses generally taken in the first year, and advanced courses generally taken in subsequent years. Rutgers allows credits to be transfered under certain conditions, including that the credits are relevant to your field of study, they do not substantially overlap a course you have taken at Rutgers, and you have passed 9 credits of coursework at Rutgers. A maximum of 24 (12) credits may be transfered to count for the 72 (30) credits required for a Ph.D. (M.S.) degree.

The program has a requirement that you pass core courses, either by taking them or by passing a ``challenge'' exam. So, for example, many students who have passed graduate quantum mechanics elsewhere come to Rutgers, pass the challenge exam, and then transfer the credits later.

You should talk with the GPD about credit transfers, including about whether advanced courses taken elsewhere can be used to satisfy the program advanced course requirements.

 A number of universities in New Jersey and New York formed an inter-university exchange that gives you the opportunity to take courses elsewhere and get credit for them. For information about this opportunity, please see https://grad.rutgers.edu/academics/inter-university-exchange.

You are free to make arrangements to work with faculty with mutual interests at any point, starting from the summer before you begin graduate school. It is important for applicants to research which faculty they might want to work with - perhaps none of our faculty work in your area of interest and you should be going elsewhere. You do not need to make arrangements with faculty to be accepted. New students can start working with an adviser during their first year, but they do not need to. They are generally expected to find a research adviser by the end of their first year.

Department graduates usually have very low unemployment rates, with about half of our graduates moving to postdoctoral positions and about half moving into potentially permanent positions in a range of industries. The American Institute of Physics, https://www.aip.org/statistics, surveys career outcomes for the field. Hiring data including salary ranges can be found at https://www.aip.org/statistics/whos-hiring-physics-phds. Employment data can be found at https://www.aip.org/statistics/employment.

 Applications are evaluated by the department's Graduate Admissions Committee, typically in November for spring term admissions and in late January and early February for the much more common fall term admissions. An initial round of offers is made in later Janaury and early February for September admissions. Processing admissions offers is done in a School of Graduate Studies computer system, which will email you an admissions email / letter, and independently in a School of Arts and Sciences computer system, which will send you a second email detailing the financial offer, to which we attach a department letter as well. In parallel with making offers, but on a somewhat slower time scale, we also process rejections. You can also check your status in the SGS applications system, or email us, the GPD or GPDAA, at the department.