>>10868800i took a course on "selected topics" that did some string stuff and AdS/CFT in grad school. i also self-studied a little of Polchinski's textbooks. i do not claim to be "good" at string theory though by any means, most of what i learned in that course was lots of fancy math tricks that I didn't really put into a better picture, and i wouldn't be comfortable taking an exam of polchinski exercises
i didn't end up staying in hep-th but of the guys i did know who did graduate from hep-th, many of them seemed to be very lacking in a general understanding of it. and even the hep-th professors would occasionally completely make fools of themselves and make gaping errors and act like "haha wutevz im hep-th prof"
people who really understand string theory are a higher tier than most mortals
