This will give you an idea of some of the things you need to do and check before, during and after your application. It is based on input from past students who recently applied to graduate school. 

May - September 

• • Start your research into grad school early! This will give you time to really think about what interests you and figure out your plan for the next few years of your life. It’s totally OK to feel overwhelmed or unsure of what you want to do. 

  • Take a look at different programs at multiple universities. Talk to your peers, supervisor and people in your research group about their experiences in grad school and applying. They might be able to recommend good programs/help you make connections. 

  • Take note of the requirements (in terms of grades, personal statements, letters of recommendation and any other type of personal documents needed) and deadlines for applications. 

*It might be important to look at the costs of applications too as they can add up! 

*May also be good to start a calendar of deadlines 

• • Request information from schools that interest you and sign up to take any of the standardized tests (GRE…) needed. 

  • Start to think about your statement of purpose and CV.

September - November 

• This is a great time to attend university fairs for graduate studies. Physics departments and other faculties also offer open houses and info sessions. 

  • • At some point during this period, MSPS usually does a panel on grad school where professors and grad students talk about their experiences and are ready to answer your questions. CHECK your emails and attend it, you never know what you will learn. 

• Make a short list of the programs you are interested in, including: 

  • • • deadlines 

      • documentation needed (transcripts, personal statements, proof of nationality, etc)

      • how many letter of recommendations are needed (normally either 2 or 3)

      • application cost 

      • funding information 

      • which professors you are interested in working with

• Make sure you feel familiar with the application processes for each school. Do you have to prepare for interviews? Are all documents due at the same time or not?

• It might be a good idea to open accounts on application websites etc to truly know what the process will be like and to be prepared and sort out any problems well in advance!

• The deadlines for scholarships (FQRNT, NSERC, Mitacs, etc.) come up fast so you should investigate fellowships and scholarships regardless if professors require one. To earn one of these is a good boost to your application. 

• Write your statement of purpose (this can take a while so start early) and CV. It is a good idea to have someone look over them and to prepare to write and rewrite a couple of drafts. 

• Start asking professors for letters of recommendation. It is standard to attach your CV and transcript in that email. It would be great to already have a list of what universities you want to apply to AND the deadlines to submit the applications as well.

  • • From a past student: Mid-to-end October start emailing the people that you want to write refs for you. This gives them lots of time, but it's not too early that it's not concrete yet. It helps if you have a table of places and dates that concern them so they don't have to track down the schools. Also, ask them when they want you to officially add them / get the link to submit (remind them about it 2-3 weeks prior to the deadline if they haven't done/submitted anything).

• Request official transcripts. 

• Closer to November is a good time to contact potential supervisors. They might also recommend you papers and talks to take a look at; these are useful to give yourself a better idea of what their research is about. If they agree to meet you, make sure to understand their work and bring your questions on their research/what it is like to be part of their group. It is also possible they are not taking students for the next year which is important to know.

November-January 

• • Complete and submit all grad applications! Fill out all the information needed for the application. This might take a few hours per application. Make sure you do this early so professors have plenty of time to submit the letters of recommendation. Reminder emails close to the deadline are totally ok, just don’t overdo it. 

  • Submit your statements of interest. Take into account some universities have a specific format to abide by. 

  • You might need to prepare for interviews. Make sure you are ready to answer questions about your own research, your interests in the field and what you would like to do in the future. Every program does their interviews differently so do a little research into what to expect.

February-April 

• • Around this time you might start hearing back from universities. In the last few years, applications have become competitive and so rejections are likely. Even though it can get tough and stressful, stay positive! 

  • If you have gotten in and have a couple of options, contact professors again and talk to them and their grad students. This will make your choice a bit easier. Don't forget to confirm your acceptance before the deadline! 

Additional Notes from Past Students 

• • Talk to graduate students at the universities you are applying to / in the same programs and working groups. Do they have any advice? Are they happy? Opinions on debt? etc 

  • The more you do early on in the semester, the less hassle you'll have later when finals and mids start showing up! 

  • You can also talk to profs at McGill to figure out which school might be a good fit and what profs are nice to work with. 

  • Some profs don’t accept students who don’t personally email them… 

GOOD LUCK!!! I know it can be very stressful but you can do this! Talking about it to friends can help but sometimes people don’t stop talking about it so don’t feel bad for removing yourself from the conversation if it is overwhelming. A lot of the application deadlines are in December and tend to be during the exam period so make sure you start early and stay organized as it will help eliminate some of the stress. Finally, don’t be afraid to apply because you think you will be rejected. Don’t underestimate yourself! Sometimes there is a bit of luck involved and you never know what will happen :) 

Additional Comments from an Advisor 

• If you are asking for a reference letter from someone you haven't worked with for a little while, it would be a good idea to send them a list with details about your role in their lab / remind them how you were a great addition to their lab. 

• During the interview process, make sure to accept any opportunities to talk to the group's students. Ask them all kinds of questions about life in the city, the school admin, the prof's supervisory style (weekly one-on-one meetings or mainly supervised by post-docs), the opportunities to attend conferences, etc. Another thing to consider is that students in a group might not be comfortable saying negative things about their supervisor to a total stranger (you). If you are lucky enough to be interviewed by multiple profs at one school, feel free to ask the students of each group about the other groups. This way, you can hear the gossip, or at least find out if people in your preferred group ever talk to other folks in the department or not. 

• If someone does not get into the school they want (or to any schools) when they first apply, there is the option of spending a year working. Working in industry, or a university or government research lab will provide even more experience that can 1) give you a better idea of what kind of research you like/don't like; and 2) strengthen your application with more research experience and hopefully an additional reference letter. Then apply again, with a stronger application and a clearer picture of what you're looking for in a grad project and program. 

The application process varies between institutions so you will need to do your own research into each program and university you are interested in. However, below, the general process for applying to graduate school in the physics department at McGill is outlined. 

1. 1. Students applying for graduate school use the uApply system, which will still be valid for January 2023 admissions. As of Sept 2023 onwards, a new system called "Slate" will become the portal for applying. Contact the graduate advisors for more info! 

   2. Students can generally apply for a Masters (MSc) if they are coming from undergraduate studies. It strengthens an application if the applicant has already communicated with a professor that is interested in supervising and funding their graduate research (applicants should list the interested professor in their application). You can apply without having spoken to a professor first - your application (basically transcripts, research statement and letters of reference) will become available for professors to review. Then, if a student interests them, professors can contact these students directly for further information. 

   3. MSc students are required to take five 500-700 level courses and PhD students two 600 or higher level courses as part of their degree requirements. PhD students also have to complete a preliminary examination. Masters students may transfer to PhD after the first year of study pending a review by their supervisor and a committee meeting. 

   4. From a professor: people are directly admitted into a group at McGill. So if a certain professor wants to take someone, they’re almost guaranteed to get in. Not all schools are like this. It’s actually much more common for departments to have a central admissions committee that makes these decisions for the whole department. This is something useful to find out about for the particular schools that one is applying to. (E.g., it changes the relative importance of getting in touch with the professor beforehand). 

Most institutions will require the following documents: 

*This is meant as a general list to get you thinking about the types of documents needed. What is actually required will change depending on the university so make sure to check each one!

• • Official transcripts (order in advance) 

  • Personal statement (statement of purpose/research or letter of intent)

  • Multiple letters of recommendation (~2-3) 

  • Standardized test scores (GRE, English proficiency…) 

As with most major decisions in life, you’ll want to consider both professional and personal fac- tors. On the professional side, questions you should ask yourself include things like:

• Do I have my heart set on a specific subfield? Or is the subfield not so important, as long as I’m doing fun day-to-day work?

• Where do I land on the spectrum between paper-and-pencil theory and nuts-and-bolts experiment, and how broad is my spectral window?

• Where do I land on the project size spectrum? That is, do I prefer working with only one or two close colleagues, a “medium” sized group, or a high-energy-style mega-group?

• Are there any specific research groups or faculty members that are on my wish list?

The answers to the above questions will most likely be enough for you to select an initial set of schools for consideration. It’s important to maximize breadth in your list of schools: it’s impossible to gauge research groups or programs on paper alone, and what may seem like an obvious first choice may end up being the exact opposite in reality. 

Prof’s Advice: As a rule of thumb, applying to ∼ 10 schools total to give yourself reasonable chances of success while simultaneously keeping the paperwork and decision process manageable. One or two of those applications should be to “backup” schools that aren’t as heavily oversubscribed as the big-name, top schools.

Department type: Some schools have separate physics, astronomy, and/or applied physics departments, often requiring separate applications (with little to no cross-talk in the selection pro- cess). Check the faculty listings carefully when deciding which department to apply to, and do a detailed comparison of program requirements, e.g. classes, qualifying exams, typical graduation time frames. For any experimentalists reading these notes, pay special attention to applied physics departments. Not many institutions have separate applied physics departments, but there’s usu- ally really fun and interesting work happening in there. For any experimentalists who are tempted to apply to engineering departments, you should proceed with tempered expectations. Engineering departments usually don’t know what to do with physicists, because they’re expecting incoming students to have a standard set of classes and skills (like CAD, control theory, etc). If you have your heart set on moving into an engineering program, your best bet is to make a personal connection with a potential advisor well in advance, so that person can vouch for you during the admissions process.

Connections to other research centers: Pay attention to universities that have strong ties to research centers or national labs, because those institutions may have expanded research and networking opportunities. The connection between Waterloo and Perimeter is one example in Canada. There are many more examples in the US: Berkeley and LBNL, Caltech and JPL, Stanford and SLAC, Chicago and Fermilab+Argonne, Boulder and NIST, Princeton/Rutgers/NYU/etc and CCA, MIT and Haystack+Lincoln Labs, and the list goes on.

Personal factors: A full graduate degree will be ≳ 5 years of your life, and you should not underestimate the importance of being happy during that time. If you’re miserable outside of work, your research will also suffer. Personal factors are, of course, unique to individual people, but some things you may want to think about include distance from friends and family (measured in terms of travel time, not geographic separation), weather, cost of living, general quality of life, political climate, etc.

What are professors looking for? 

There can be a *huge* variance in what different professors look for. 

While one prof told me they don't mind if students don't have an extensive research record in the field they are applying to, another put a high value on prior research experience. Some said that high grades were important, while others believe that grades are more of a threshold, they have to be decent for the student to be considered but do not need to be perfect. It all depends on the professor so make sure to see what the ones you are interested in working with value! 

Strong letters of reference are important to make your applications stand out and corroborate that you would be a good choice of student. Profs like to see that you demonstrated a level of proactiveness in your research among other “traits” that allude to you doing well as a graduate student. This is the kind of thing that they can find out in letters of recommendation. 

It is also valuable to be able to express yourself well. Students that can describe their past work in an articulate way are liked by potential supervisors. 

Finally, don’t feel shy about contacting professors. Put in the work to understand what the people you may be interested in working under are doing and how it is done (in a lab in the basement, at a desk in an office…). If it still appeals to you, contact them and explore whether it would be a good match. Make sure to do your homework before sending your email though - it isn’t useful to email a prof who does mainly experimental work about how you are interested in theoretical work… it is important to do more research than their small blurb on the university website. 

A cautionary note about ChatGPT: although ChatGPT can be an invaluable tool for summarizing information, including gathering details of a particular faculty member’s research program, avoid ChatGPT in writing your emails unless you do heavy post-editing and filtering. Raw ChatGPT output has a telltale robotic and generic tone that is easy to spot. Keep in mind that in many cases, the faculty members who you write to are professional observers for a living, so you won’t be fooling them.

The most important thing to remember is that graduate school in physics should be free. At least that’s the norm in North America. 

Pretty much all graduate schools pay a stipend to their students, so that you’re essentially earning a salary to go to school. It won’t pay as much as a full-time job in industry, but it is usually enough to cover living costs like rent and food. 

Comment from professors: In North America, you should never accept a graduate school offer in physics if it is not funded. If someone makes you an unfunded offer, it means they don’t really want you. 

If you are discussing graduate school with a professor who is a potential supervisor do not feel weird asking how stipends / funding would work. If you do so nicely, they should be more than willing to discuss. 

That said, it’s good to look for external scholarship/fellowship opportunities for two reasons: 1) it’s a nice extra line to add to one’s CV and 2) sometimes, winning a scholarship/fellowship that makes you free to a school can magically turn a waitlist decision into an acceptance. 

At McGill, most students who apply and have already contacted a supervisor also discuss funding from the supervisor. In addition, all graduate students are offered a Teaching Assistant (for a minimum of 3 terms for MSc and 6 terms for PhD) to supplement the funding they receive from their professor. In addition, there are about ~10 fellowships that students accepted into the program can apply for each year. 

Students with high averages can apply for NSERC or FRQNT funding, which is quite generous. These are highly competitive however. US citizens can apply for the NSF fellowships or the Hertz fellowship. 

From a past student: Make sure to check the cost of living vs funding and apply to government scholarships if you're eligible. 

Application fees: schools generally require a fee for graduate applications, and those fees can be quite hefty (particularly in the US). If you don’t have the financial means to pay, do not be shy about contacting the admissions office to ask if there’s any chance of waiving the fees. The fees exist primarily to prevent people (or bots) from mass spamming their applications, but if you can convince the admissions office that you’re a real human with genuine interest and who’s under financial pressure, you can sometimes convince them to waive the fees. 

Things to think about when deciding which institution to attend: 

• • Admission criteria (i.e. prerequisite courses, GPA requirements, GRE required? …)

  • How many letters of reference are required? 

  • Cost of attendance vs availability of financial aid / funding

  • Professors/working groups available to study under 

    • • Would you be happy in the environment you would be working in? 

      • Do you need to find a professor at the school or is one assigned to you based on interests? 

      • Make sure you are aware of the research interests of faculty before applying. 

  • What is the size of the department and does it focus specifically on what you want to pursue (and do you want it to?) or does the department have a wider variation of focus?

  • Can a Physics student apply to other Master's programs such as Math or Engineering (if interested)? 

  • Can you complete a terminal master's, or do you have to apply to a PhD? 

  • If you're not in Honors, how to stand out as a candidate. 

  • If I take time off, how can work experience contribute to my application for a Master's? - It can also be good to look at more social aspects such as how far from your family and friends you will be, the language and lifestyle (people in the area), do you like / get along with the people you will be working with… 

Some general advice when choosing a school: If you know exactly what you want to do, go somewhere with a strong program and focus on that area. If you aren’t quite sure, choose somewhere with a bigger department with lots of different research so you will have a larger choice. 

Professor’s advice: When researching graduate schools, I encourage people to come up with not just a list of schools, but a list of *people* to work with at each school. This is different from undergrad. In graduate school, most of your time is spent doing research with your research group. This means that your research supervisor will have (by far) the biggest influence on whether you have a good time or not. This is why it’s important to figure out which supervisors you might want to work with when coming up with a list. Once you have a list, find people in the field (grad students, postdocs, or professors) who actually personally know the people on your list. Then start *gossiping*. You’ll learn interesting things like “oh, so-and-so sounds great on paper, but he really bullies his students and isn’t a good mentor”. Personality is just as important a factor as research interest when it comes to picking a research supervisor. 

Specific to certain programs such as astro/cosmology: in Canada, most universities that have astro have it as a sub-component of a larger physics department (like we have at McGill). In the US, however, ~50% have the combined model and ~50% have separate astronomy departments. However, even when there are separate astro departments, often the physics departments will also have some astro professors. Thus, students interested in astro and other areas with this similar problem need to make a choice as to which department they want to apply to. If stuck, it might be helpful to make a list of professors in each department that you might want to work with. If one list is substantially longer than the other, there’s your answer. 

For people who are undecided as to if they want to pursue a specific branch / field of physics, it would be better to apply to a program / project in a general physics department that might offer an easier ability to switch between the different areas.

Choosing a school when you got into a few different ones: Congratulations on making it this far! Getting into multiple grad schools is hugely exciting, but the decision process can also be immensely stressful. Although it may sound silly, my advice is to take a systematic approach to the decision process by making a spreadsheet. Make a list of all factors that are important to consider: these include pragmatic factors like stipend, number of potential research advisors, TA requirements, class and qualifying exam requirements, as well as personal factors like departmental environment, overall feel of the university and city, cost of liv- ing, taxes, distance from family and friends, weather, political climate, etc. For each school you’re considering, assign an arbitrary numerical score to each of the categories, and add up the point total. Even though this exercise is only pseudo-quantitative, it does force you to take a step back and consider all factors at the same time. When making important life-changing decisions, it’s all too easy to have mini panic moments when individual decision factors pop into your mind. Going through this spreadsheet exercise helps buffer your thoughts and low-pass the panic, allowing you to see the big picture.

Prof’s Advice: One of the most important ways to inform your assessments is to visit the schools in person. I cannot overstress the importance of in-person visits, which are typically paid for by the schools that admit you. When you visit, you’ll be able to immediately gauge the overall happiness level of the grad students, personal fit with your potential advisors and with the department, and how much you like or dislike the geographic area. Seeing how many of the students and department members are smiling will give you infinitely more information than any amount of webpage scouring.

Even after going through the above exercises, you may find yourself in an endgame situation where you’re down to deciding between the last two or three places, and they’re deadlocked in a tie. It’s easier said than done, but take comfort in knowing that this is a good problem to have, and if there were an obvious right or wrong choice, you wouldn’t be mired in analysis paralysis. So rest assured that no matter what you choose at the end of the day, you’ll do great!

Statement of Purpose: 

• • Statement = time consuming! Start as early as possible! 

  • Profs stated that they look for students who can express themselves well and statements that have good, coherent writing. 

  • From a past student: these personal statements are hard as you need to sell yourself. Tell them why you would succeed in the specific program (and justify - where's the evidence?). You can talk about some of the relevant classes you took in undergrad and your own research and interests. Don’t forget to mention what research at the university you are applying to aligns with your own interests. Tell them which professors seem to be potential supervisors and why you chose them (aka what did you like about their research). Try not to make it too cliche. 

  • Get an advisor / research supervisor / someone else to comment on and edit your drafts if possible. Get opinions so you can keep making better drafts until you are satisfied! 

CV: 

• •  It’s good to look at the requirements for a program and tailor your CV to these. - The CV used for grad school applications is quite different from one you would use to apply to a job so make sure you do it correctly. You can take a look at professors’ CVs on their webpages as they can give you a nice idea of what a professional school CV should look like. 

  • Consider attending a workshop (such as the one TSI puts on for undergrads). 

Transcripts and GREs: There are usually some course GPA (and sometimes GRE) metrics applied as a first pass to thin the pool. In the post-COVID era, most schools have modified their GRE requirements and are no longer requiring GRE scores for admission—and in many cases, they won’t even accept the scores if you try to provide them voluntarily. So generally speaking, unless this situation changes, taking the GRE exams might not be necessary. If a school does allow you to voluntarily submit physics GRE scores, this option is mainly valuable if you’ve had some rough patches in your transcript, and if you want to demonstrate to the admissions committee that you do, in fact, know your basic physics like a boss. If you’re already a rock star on your transcript, then there’s absolutely no need to optionally submit physics GRE scores.

Reference letters: Once the coarse metrics have been applied and your application package lands in front of a human, that human will consider your entire application as a whole. The most important component of your application is your reference letters. Make sure that you choose your references so that your letters are both strong and linearly independent in terms of content. Although it’s ideal to have reference writers who can speak to your research experiences and capabilities, it’s often difficult to find three different faculty members in this category. Don’t panic if you don’t have three research-focused reference letters from faculty—that’s perfectly normal! Other strong reference options include the following: 1) postdocs or senior researchers who can speak in more detail about the technical aspects of your work, 2) faculty members who can comment on any of your experiences that demonstrate your leadership and communication skills, 3) faculty members who taught classes where you really stood out (not just by earning a high grade, but by e.g. doing an especially amazing final project, or asking all the best questions).

When contacting your references, give them at least two weeks’ notice before your first ap- plication deadline. Reference letters take a long time to write, and your writers typically have many applicants to take care of simultaneously. Also make sure to give your reference writers a complete, well-organized list or spreadsheet of 1) the schools you’re applying to, 2) reference letter deadlines (arrange your list chronologically as a favor to your writers), and 3) submission instructions, whether it’s accessing a specific website or waiting for an automated request email.

Waiving your rights: Most graduate schools will ask if you wish to waive your rights to see your reference letters when you submit your application. You should always waive your rights to see your complete application file. If you don’t waive your rights, then you essentially send a message to the selection panel that you don’t trust your reference writers to say something positive, and the selection panel might wonder why you don’t have confidence in your references. Furthermore, when your reference writers see that you’ve chosen to not waive your rights, they will be more likely to sugarcoat their text at the expense of making the descriptions more generic and vague in their positivity—and that’s a bad thing. Your reference letters are far more meaningful when they’re written honestly, without the damper effect that comes with not waiving your rights.

Research statement: as a piece of general advice when crafting your statement, think about your audience. The person who’s reading your application will most likely be sleep-deprived, and very grumpy at the prospect of having to sift through hundreds of papers. You have very little time and space to catch that person’s attention, so make every word count. For every sentence that you write, ask yourself if it could have just as easily been written by someone else: examples of generic statements include “I am a straight-A student,” “I have always been fascinated by how the world works,” “experimental work is rad,” “I heart physics,” etc. Nobody wants to read that insipid rubbish for the 100th time. You should always illustrate, rather than assert. Instead of saying “experimental work is rad,” describe some especially awesome projects that you’ve done (either for school/research or just for fun) so that the reader can get a better mental picture of you as a person. Every sentence that you write should be “uniquely you” to leave a lasting impression.

If you have the good fortune of having a beautiful glamor shot of some hardware that you’ve built, a plot showing a particularly impressive analysis or simulation result, etc, it is worth carving out the space to include that figure, because pictures are worth 1000 words. Your tired reader will be grateful for that visual oasis in the desert of dull text.

Although you can largely recycle your statement text for all of your applications, it’s worth including at least a couple of customized sentences that are tailored specifically to each particular institution. These sentences should briefly explain why you’re interested in that institution, and why they should accept you. Focus on using strong language to convince the reader that you will bring fame and glory to their institution—because you will be the perfect fit for research group(s) xyz, where you will be able to immediately contribute to project(s) abc and hit the ground running with the skill set that you already have in hand. Do not waste your breath with empty statements about how excited you are about being a member of the institution, or generic flattery about how great of a school it is. Focus your text on advertising yourself.

Differences between programs in Canada versus the US:

Program structure: the main structural difference between Canada and the US is the level of distinction between the MSc and PhD programs. In Canada, the MSc and PhD degrees are treated as two separate things, although students often seamlessly transition from the MSc to the PhD, continuing on the same research project. In the US, the line between MSc and PhD is usually blurred, and you apply for a grand unified graduate program that encompasses both degrees. Although MSc degrees do exist (and it’s fairly easy to exit a graduate program with an MSc in hand, if you end up deciding to not complete a PhD), many PhD students in the US never even bother with getting a separate MSc.

Selection process: within Canada, it’s more common for individual advisors to accept appli- cants. For example, at McGill, all faculty members have access to the application database, and it’s the responsibility of each individual to decide whether or not to accept student(s). In the US, admissions are usually done by committee, rather than individual faculty members. The committee typically applies some coarse metrics (GPA, GRE, etc.) as a first pass to thin the pool, reviews the remaining applications, and then admits students based on a combination of track record and even distribution across subfields. A consequence of committee-based selection is that you’re typically not assigned a default advisor when you enter a graduate program in the US. Finding an advisor is something of a speed dating process, and it’s not uncommon for students to move between more than one research group within the first 1–2 years of study before making a final decision.

Funding: because of the differences in selection processes described above, the funding structure for graduate students also differs between Canada and the US. In Canada, your funding usually comes from your advisor and is therefore tied to that person’s research grants. At most institutions, your base stipend is supplemented by a TA stipend. There are also fellowships in Canada (e.g., NSERC) that give you the opportunity to further boost your income and sometimes buy out your TA duties. Tuition fee policies vary across Canada: at some institutions (like McGill), you’ll need to pay those fees explicitly, and at other institutions, tuition is already pre-deducted from your take-home stipend. In the US, graduate offers usually fall into one of three categories: TA, RA, or fellowship. These categories are usually in increasing order in pay. In a regular TA position, your stipend funding is split between the income you make through teaching, and fund- ing from your advisor or the department. An RA is a full-time research position with no teaching duties, so it’s more expensive for the person/department who’s funding you (which means that they see your research time as more valuable). Finally, fellowship funding comes from a special pot of money in the department or university that’s reserved for the top applicants. If you land a fellowship, that means that you’re essentially free of charge (or at least comparatively low cost) to whoever becomes your advisor, which means that you’ll be in high demand and will have more freedom to choose the research group that you want. Tuition fees are covered by your advisor or department, so you do not have to explicitly pay them in the US system.

Outside of the US:

I wish this section for going outside of North America was bigger. It seems the general advice is: Start early, contact profs you may be interested in working with and/or advisors at the schools you are interested in - they will have a lot more info on the topic and be able to help you with the details. 

In Europe, most places will ask you to pay a student fee but are otherwise free and you can get paid for TA-ships / the equivalent. The UK has a different system - most university websites include information about the tuition and schooling level for international students. 

It's smart to poke around at different universities in the countries you are interested in and get in contact with those who know more about the process.

A general process would be: 

• • Figure out where you are interested in going 

  • Looking into the universities there and the different programs and profs you could work with that interest you 

  • Contact both the professors you are interested in working with and the university for more information as an international student 

  • Research funding, housing, and visa options 

    1. • You will also have to think about travel costs, getting around in the city/country you move too, health care, etc. 

       • Make a to do list (including deadlines) and follow through! 

This is not an exhaustive list of all the fields of physics there are, however, I tried to compile some to get your brain thinking about what you could be interested in and what is out there. For McGill, you can find the list of research areas here. Some other useful websites about careers in physics can be found by following this link and scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Lots of fields are open to BSc physics students, including many interdisciplinary fields, however, look out for specific prerequisites that you might need. Also, if you are interested in something more obscure/not well known and don’t know how to get in the door, it is completely fine to send a nice email asking a prof how they got to where they are, or ask someone in a related field what they would suggest you do to get involved in the area. 

• • Astrophysics, astronomy, cosmology 

  • Atmospheric physics 

  • Biophysics 

  • Chemical physics 

  • Condensed matter 

  • Data science 

  • Environmental physics 

  • Geophysics and geology

  • High energy 

  • Mathematical physics 

  • Medical physics 

  • Nuclear 

  • Optics 

  • Particle physics 

  • Physical oceanography

  • Quantum computing 

  • Relativity 

  • etc … 

Other fields: 

• Aerospace engineering 

• Education and science communication 

• Finance 

• Law 

• MBA, entrepreneurship 

• Robotics 

• Satellite and radar technology 

• Software engineering and development 

• etc …