(Northern) spring semester is coming to an end, and I hope it marks one year until I graduate. My supervisor agrees that this timeframe is sensible, so I hope to graduate at the ceremony on Friday 6 June, 2014 (I might designate that as D-Day??).
Since that's coming in less than 13 months, I need to start thinking about what I'll be doing after that. My plan for a long time (I've never had a different plan) has been to look for a postdoctoral position. I will look preferentially at physics departments. My reasoning is that I like teaching physics and working with physicists, so my ideal job eventually would be as a professor within a physics department. I think it is easier to move out of a physics department than into one, so I want to see what options there are staying affiliated primarily with physics for the moment.
I noticed an advertisement for a very generous fellowship in the study of complex systems, and decided I should apply for it. I'm not sure that my chance of getting it is particularly high, because surely it is extremely competitive, but I know it's a lot higher than if I don't even apply for it!
In order to have something useful to say, I went to have a chat with Dan, who taught an interesting course on environmental complexity that I took and enjoyed a year and a half ago. He had some useful thoughts to share. He gave some specific names of people and places, that I have begun to follow up a little (starting by reading some papers written by the people). In general, I found that his approach was to think about the top universities and who is at them.
That was quite helpful to me: the difficulty is knowing how to look more than looking. I had been reading various papers from PRL (a very prominent physics journal), but there were too many and it was hard to judge what was worth reading. This way, I can start with a list of the top physics schools and go from there.
He particularly mentioned Chicago and Harvard as schools especially worth looking at. Harvard was on the top of my list when applying for PhD programs, although I didn't get in, and Chicago was runner-up when I was choosing a school from those to which I was accepted. Beyond those, I haven't looked or thought very much, but here is a list of US News' top-ranked physics PhD programs, along with a geographical description aimed at my Australian audience. I've grouped them by region, to help you visualise the places I might end up.
Northeast
MIT
Harvard
Princeton
Cornell
Yale
Columbia
Penn
California
Stanford
Caltech
Berkeley
UC Santa Barbara
UC San Diego
UCLA
Midwest
Chicago
Illinois
Michigan
Wisconsin
Near Washington DC
Maryland
Johns Hopkins
Other
Texas
Colorado
Washington
Of course, it's not certain that I'll end up at one of these places, but don't be surprised if it happens. If you're wondering why I'm still looking at a ranking of PhD programs, it's because I consider it a good proxy for the quality of the program as a whole.
As you can see, my thoughts are not very concrete at the moment. I'll be sure to keep you informed.
Your thoughts may still be abstract but your topic is concrete! Thanks for this - I like to see the list of unis and their position. We are looking forward to an American Journey which includes a stop at one of these places ...
ReplyDeleteI remember that, when I was applying for grad schools, I marked a little map with the places I was considering. Of course, I then realised that I was much better off with two maps: one for California, and one for the northeast (Chicago being the only university in between to which I applied).
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