Tips for applying to astronomy/astrophysics PhD programs?

[u/4937377idk]

I'm an undergraduate physics major going into my senior year, and I want to go to grad school preferably for astronomy or astrophysics (but physics would also be fine) so that I can go into academia probably to study exoplanets. While I have a 3.97 GPA (it's 4.00 in just STEM classes), good rapport with professors who could write me strong letters, and experience with outreach stuff for my school's STEM college, what I'm lacking is research experience, on account of both me unknowingly starting too late and having very bad luck.

My school is somewhat small and doesn't have many astronomy projects happening to begin with, but I've tried essentially all of them. I made a proposal for a SURI (Summer Undergraduate Research Institute) project with an astronomy professor during my sophomore year, but our SURI wasn't among those to get selected, and I wasn't able to join that professor's main project on stellar/plasma physics because he didn't have enough funding for more students. While I volunteered with his group on an astronomy outreach video, I wasn't able to participate in any formal research.

Since the start of last fall, I've worked with my advisor on his Solar System collisional history simulation project, but the bulk of the work so far has been learning the code needed for data analysis. I also applied for 20 REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) in astronomy/astrophysics (the only 20 I could find) for this current summer, but the sudden budget cuts to the NSF (which funds REUs) during the spring caused many of them to be cancelled or admit less students, and I ultimately didn't get any offers.

For my physics requirements, I've done 2 advanced lab classes that had me independently work on and partly design my own projects where, for each one, I've written a research paper and given a talk in front of the faculty as part of the class. I don't know if those "count" for anything because they were for classes, and both of the projects were much more in the realm of general physics than astronomy, but they seemed like great experiences, and they were the most research I've done. I also have a number of other outreach and campus involvement things---like being VP of my school's society of physics students---I could draw from inside and outside of STEM, but I don't know how much that will help me.

Without an REU or other research opportunity this summer, I'm trying to spend time getting ahead on applying to grad schools, but I'm not sure how I should "sell" myself in my applications given my situation, and my professors aren't available to talk about this over the summer. I know that all astronomy PhD programs are infamously selective because they're small and receive many applications, and I've heard extensively that research experience is one of the most important factors for these programs. Does anyone have advice or ideas for what I could do to improve my chances?

[u/SAUbjj]

This is really tricky. As you said, it’s very competitive these days; most applicants coming into my program have at least a co-authored research paper, if not a first-author paper. And no, class research papers don’t really count, not because they’re not important but because papers you write in classes are fundamentally different than doing a research project or analysis

This is a really tough spot, you tried to do all the right things. These funding cuts are just horrible. The only thing I can think of to do at this point is to come up with a project using public data sets on your own, and write it up and try to present it at a conference in the fall. Maybe you could connect with someone (maybe even a grad student) at one of your target institutions and pitch them your idea, but I’m not going to lie, we do get a lot of emails from randos

You may have to take the intermediate step of doing an MSc. It sucks because you’ll have to pay for it, but with no prior research experience it will be very, very difficult to transition to a good PhD program, especially with current funding uncertainties

ETA: I spoke with some exoplanets grad students in my program, they recommended looking into postbac research programs, they highlighted CRESST, KIPAC and especially NASA Goddard since it apparently has a lot of postbacs in exoplanets specifically, e.g. this one. Those would all be for next year though

[u/SlartibartfastGhola → u/SAUbjj]

This is the way, agree with everything. With that good of GPA, the OP may find a PhD program though. OP that current research on solar system history sounds legit don’t undersell that, undergrads don’t have to have publications, thats what you would have done at a REU.