[MRD85]

He was also only 16-17 years old at the time, completing an exam for university graduates.

EDIT: This was his second year, so he was 17-18 years old.

Also note this qoute: All in all, I probably only did about two weeks’ worth of preparation for the generals, while my fellow classmates had devoted months. Nevertheless, I felt quite confident going into the exam.

[hpcjoe]

I remember doing something like this for my comps. I had left one school with a masters, looking for computational physics stuff I was interested in. Found another and an advisor who was interested in this work.

I applied, got in, and started, while working full time. Graduate advisor called me up 2.5 weeks before starting and said "we want you to take the comprehensive exam in 2 weeks."

After much swearing and cursing under my breath, I said "sure".

I was told I had one of the highest scores in the written part. The oral part was just like this ... people asking me questions with vague definitions of various things. The example that sticks out to me was this one.

"Is the atomic radius of an neutral atom a strong function of Z".

Prof got annoyed when I asked them what "strong function" meant in this context; monotonically increasing/decreasing? Something else?

I do remember being asked a few questions I had no idea how to answer, so I basically started from first principles and hashed out approximations/calculations very quickly.

That was 29 years ago for me.

[enriquto]

lol, what is a "strong function"? It is not the first time I hear physicist use this expression and I have no idea what it means.

[qwhelan]

It's asking whether Z dominates in terms of contribution to the result. AKA "Does knowing Z allow you to estimate the radius to first-order?"