Pablo Lemos Portela (MS ’15) decided to be a physicist when he was eighteen, the age at which students choose their field of study in the Spanish education system. He applied to Ph.D. programs in the U. S. and U. K. without much guidance to help him successfully tackle the foreign application process.
“When you come from another country, a very big disadvantage you have is that you don’t know exactly how this works here,” Pablo said. “The statement of purpose—I thought it was more of a personal story, but when I came here I found out I was supposed to talk about my research.”
Accepting an offer from the University of Chicago’s Master of Science in the Physical Sciences Division (MS-PSD) program, Pablo immersed himself in a rigorous academic environment that taught him the skills he needed to compete for a place in an American or British doctoral program. Now he has accepted an offer from the University of Cambridge, where he will build on research in Cosmology that he began at UChicago.
Robert Wald, the director of the MS-PSD, met with Pablo each quarter to offer guidance on course selection and career plans. “He helps you to choose classes, but he also tries to understand what you want to achieve with them, and if he doesn’t think you’re on the right track, he’ll tell you that maybe this isn’t the right class for you,” Pablo said of Professor Wald. “His door is always open for you.”
Other professors gave him feedback on application materials—“Some of them even reviewed my statement of purpose and told me what to change about it,” he said. His advisor, Scott Dodelson, helped by reaching out to professors he knew at other universities; perhaps most importantly, Professor Dodelson helped Pablo to define his research interests through the Master’s thesis, a program requirement.
Pablo knew he wanted to do research in Cosmology on large-scale structures—“structures so large, galaxies are basically like dots,” he explained—and he needed a project that allowed him to work on a problem in the field. Professor Dodelson directed Pablo to the study of vorticity, a concept from continuum mechanics that has recently been taken up by cosmologists who believe it can offer a better understanding of the universe.
To gauge whether his student had the skills to handle the different components of the research problem, Professor Dodelson asked him to read some recent papers on vorticity. “He explained it, gave me the papers and said, if you don’t understand this, you may have to look for another project with me, or with someone else.”
“He explained to me why he thought it was interesting. There was a lot of math or simulations that had to be done. But every time I got stuck on something, he was always there to get me out of the problem, or explain to me how he thought I could solve that.” Joining Dodelson’s research group, Pablo attended the group’s weekly meetings, where members discussed what they were working on.
As he prepares for his move to Cambridge, Pablo reflects on the crucial part his Master’s year played in his career as a physicist. Immersion in Chicago drastically improved his English. He received mentorship on the application process, learning the importance of strong faculty recommendations, GRE scores and a statement of purpose centered on scholarship and anchored in research experience. “Now that I look back at it with more perspective, I think my first application must have been a real mess,” he said.
By coming to the University of Chicago, Pablo was able to familiarize himself with the system and strengthen his PhD applications by drawing on the help of faculty and administrators affiliated with the Master’s program in the Physical Sciences Division.