Yes, but we cannot provide financial support. You will need to pay for your own travel to Davis and living expenses, and you will not receive a stipend.

Yes, but we cannot provide financial support. You will need to pay for your own travel to Davis and living expenses, and you will not receive a stipend. The National Science Foundation, which provides support for the REU program, requires that all students have been enrolled full-time in college immediately prior to the summer REU.

Only a very rare high school student would be prepared for an REU project in any case. Over the past seven years we have accepted only four college freshmen.

Maybe. If your degree was in a field that would not be considered preparation for continued study in physics, then yes. For example, you can apply with a previous degree in English Literature or Psychology, but not with a previous degree in Math or Engineering.

Each mentor looks for different things, so there's no simple answer to that question. Above all, we want good fits between students and their projects. Ideally the project will match the student's preparation, physics interests, and preferences as to how to spend his time. The single most common reason that we rule out a student for some project is lack of sufficient computer skills, although we do also have projects that require little or no computer experience.

To strengthen your application, either try to get some schoolyear research experience (if you're at a school where that's possible), or take a programming class.

If your college does not have research, your lack of experience will not hurt your application. The REU program exists in large part for the sake of students like you. At UC Davis, we make a particular effort to offer projects to top students from two-year colleges.

At the other extreme, if you are a junior at a major research university we will wonder how interested you can be in research if you haven't yet gotten involved in any. Plenty of students have convincing answers: family, finances, health, recent change of major, etc. Just be sure you explain your situation in your application.

Computers that don't run Windows have more trouble handling DOCX than the other listed formats. We want reading the applications to be straightforward for all our faculty mentors, on whatever computers they may happen to use.

Open the document in whatever word processor or viewer you're using. There may be a "Save As" or "Export" option that allows you to select a format. Alternatively, you could print the document to a file, which will probably be PDF or PostScript (PS) format.

Between the research experience and computer experience fields and your essay, you should be able to cover the important parts of your CV. There is no indication that a formal CV has helped any of our applicants in previous years. However, if you really feel that a CV is crucial to your application, then either upload a file for your essay and include your CV at the end, or upload the CV as an additional transcript.

We know. Please calculate it yourself.

We're aware that some schools don't give letter grades (especially to freshmen) and that others (particularly those abroad) only give grades at the end of the academic year. We will be reasonable about this. Fill in what you can, and make a note about your school's system in the "elaborate on your answers" field at the bottom of the application form. Definitely make sure to let us know what classes you took in the fall and what you're taking in the spring.

No. We accept unofficial transcripts for two reasons. First, we don't want students to forgo applying on account of expense. Second, we ask that you upload your transcripts directly to our online system. That saves us the (substantial!) work of scanning and uploading the transcripts. It also improves readability; occasionally official transcripts are designed not to be scanned and become nearly illegible. Finally, it means the transcript is available sooner and ensures it isn't misfiled with the wrong student's application.

No. We understand that the transcript you upload will be unofficial, and that's fine with us.

No. Upload the first one (preferably your present college first). You'll then be prompted for whether you want to upload additional transcripts. You can have as many as you want, and you don't need to upload them all at the same time.

You might have missed the last step of the submission. From the status page, click on "Upload transcript?" If you see a message, "Transcript is uploaded but not yet submitted," you should then click on "Submit Transcript."

First make absolutely sure you've entered his e-mail address correctly. Second, ask if they might be in his spam folder. The subject line is "Recommendation Request for UC Davis Physics REU Program" or "Recommendation Reminder for UC Davis Physics REU Program." If that hasn't solved the problem, he can send the letter to reu@london.ucdavis.edu. There are also some guidelines for the letter at http://london.ucdavis.edu/~reu/letters.html.

E-mailed letters are uploaded manually to a database, usually on the day they are received or the next business day. A script matches letters to the correct applications once a day (in the middle of the night). Thus most e-mailed letters will register on your status page as submitted by the second business day after they were sent.

For paper mail the process is the same, except that mail delivery adds about one week to the above estimate.

If a recommendation arrives before the application, it should register as submitted as soon as the application is complete.

Definitely check that your letters arrive, and contact us if they seem unduly delayed. The automatic matching does sometimes fail, for example because a name is misspelled.

Sorry! Please send it electronically to reu@london.ucdavis.edu instead, and we'll try to fix the problem for future users. It's helpful if you can tell us what operating system and web browser you use.

Contact us and ask whether we'll make you an offer before your other deadline. Usually the answer is no, but sometimes we really are on the verge of an offer. When you call, it occasionally speeds things up a bit (for example, if a mentor was planning to make a decision on a Wednesday but finds the time to look at the files Tuesday instead).

Since each offer we make is for an individual project, we have to make the offers sequentially. That generally means only one per week for each project. If you are, say, the fourth choice for a particular project, you won't hear from us until late March (and then only if the three students ahead of you decline).

Unfortunately, no. Contact the other programs and see what they can tell you before our deadline. We use a one-week deadline, as do many other REU programs. It's a balance between the needs of successful applicants who want to compare their different options and the needs of the students who may get offers in the next round. We want to finish the admissions as quickly as possible so that unsuccessful applicants have time to make alternate plans.

There is also the possibility that the system will jam if students aren't given firm deadlines. You might find it amusing to think about how that would work, if you've managed to maintain a sense of humor through this fairly stressful process.