Physics after Engineering

This blog is about my journey from engineering to fundamental science, this is how it goes.  I used to be like a small child amused by the tricks of a magician in almost every physics class. Getting to know the physical significance of any equation is a next-level pleasure. I fell in love with physics in my junior college days and decided to pursue my career in physics. I was a decent student scoring above 250 in mocks of mains and sometimes even in advance and was very overconfident to not appear for Bits entrance. On the day I had my jee mains I was not allowed to start my jee mains on time there's a long background story. I felt like Karna from Mahabharat in the examination hall as I could not recall anything I've studied in this state and I fucked myself and my dreams. After all this drama we(those who were expected to perform well in advance) were called by our tuition to Mumbai for JEE  advanced preparations. JEE mains result was declared I got 104 and cut off was 105 e...

It’s been two years since I started my PhD program in physics at Cornell University and it’s been quite an eye opening journey so far I must admit. I have always written about going from engineering to physics before this, but I guess it’s time to share experiences from the other side now. In these two years, there are a lot of things I have discovered and realized. Note that all these things might be more specific to PhD programs in the US, but some things are of course generic. The Physics Before entering the PhD program, I felt that I knew quite a bit of physics, knew a lot of buzzwords perhaps and you know, you think you would solve the big unsolved problems in physics. But boy oh boy, wait till the reality hits you hard. It’s quite common for students in their first couple semesters to start attending other professors’ group meetings to know about their research and eventually join their group. I was interested in theoretical condensed matter physics, so I went to tho...

Hello, everyone reading this blog. I took the JAM 2020 exam and scored a 233 rank which is fine. But this text is not related to my rank. There are many blogs on this site guiding you to what books to read, how to prepare, what exams to take, even what schedule to follow daily to get a good AIR and they did a pretty awesome job writing it, not gonna add a word on that. Well, this read gonna be somewhat different. I’ll be sharing my journey into physics and the problems I see in the fellow student community regarding the process of learning physics. This blog is for becoming a better physicist along with being a ranker (which believe me the latter is way too easy). So here it goes. During my primary school time, there was a show on the Discovery channel “Into the Universe with Stephan Hawking”. I used to watch those shows with an absolute concentration. Maybe he was the reason I’ve left engineering, haha. Till I was 16, I had a lot of fun making projects like an LDR rocket launc...

              Hello, fellow Astro-enthusiasts. In this blog, I will tell you about how I was able to enter into the field of astronomy/astrophysics despite my engineering background. I hope my experiences can be of some help to you.  Let's get started.  (If you are short on time, skip to Section 4) 1. Background I did my B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIIT Jabalpur. Although it is an institute of national importance, still it lacks the kind of courses or infrastructure IITs have. In my first year, I joined a research lab in our institute and experienced research in mechanical engineering. Though it was an important project, the work I was doing there lacked a certain gravity *no pun intended* to me.  I later got exposure to Astronomy through the Astronomy and Physics Society of our institute. A couple of my seniors were into astronomy and they told me about vast arrays of online courses available on platforms like ...

Hello Friends, My name is Kunal Vyas. I am a Mechanical Engineering graduate, the year of 2018 from Mumbai. Like most of you, I too aspire to become a Physicist someday and to do that, first I had to change my field of study from Engineering to Physics. Today, when I write this post, almost a year after completing my Engineering, I would like to believe that I have been successful in changing my field. A few days ago, I got to know that I have been allotted a seat in IIT Bombay for MSc Physics. Here, I would like to tell you about my journey into Physics, how I was able to achieve what I did, and also any kind of information that will help you to do the same. Preparations : I had decided to commit a year completely to learning Physics and preparing for exams after my Engineering. I had taken JEST, JAM, and TIFR-GS in 2018 too, and had realized then that I am capable of doing well in these exams if I work hard enough. So I started in June. I talked to people and read some Quora...

Hello friends, I am Pravesh Sharma, I have completed B.E. Mechanical from a state government-aided autonomous college (MITS Gwalior) in Gwalior Madhya Pradesh. In this post, I am writing my story of my ‘joining physics after small setbacks in academics’. My Background Story I always liked physics since my high school days. During my college years, I had an inclination towards learning the physics of the concepts covered in my engineering syllabus (which I realized later). Since the second year of my college, I thought of joining a company with a good salary or PSUs in mechanical engineering (because of peer pressure) but I didn't study seriously before end semester exams, because of which I got backlogs over backlogs and my CGPA started decreasing. At the end of the third year when my 6th-semester result came out, one devastating thing happened, I realized my CGPA was so low that it was near impossible for me to make it over first division at the end of the degree, that ...

Can I switch from Engineering to Physics? Is it possible to do a PhD in physics after B. Tech in engineering? Can I pursue physics after *put any branch* engineering? These are some of the questions I used to ask 3 years ago. Back then, I couldn’t find a clear answer. But if you are asking a similar question today, I have found an answer and it is a resounding YES!!! Yes, you can do physics after engineering,  in fact, you can do a Ph.D. in physics after any branch of engineering. There, I said it, and for some of you, this assurance is probably enough to begin the pursuit. But there is another set of people. These are the ones like me who were from an unsupportive engineering college, a college with an age-old rigid academic system which gives you no freedom of taking courses beyond your engineering branch, no real electives, a physics department that is pretty much dormant, and no real reputation for research anywhere. And it is precisely for these students that I w...