Seeking the ground state of string theory

The greatest obstacle to developing a string phenomenology is our lack of u nderstanding of the ground state. We explain why the dynamics which determi nes this state is not likely to be accessible to any systematic approximati on. We note that the racetrack scheme, often cited as a counterexample, suf fers from similar difficulties. We stress that the weakness of the gauge co uplings, the gauge hierarchy, and coupling unification suggest that it may be possible to extract some information in a systematic approximation. We r eview the ideas of Kahler stabilization, an attempt to reconcile these fact s. We consider whether the system is likely to sit at extremes of the modul i space, as in recent proposals for a low string scale. Finally we discuss the idea of Maximally Enhanced Symmetry, a hypothesis which is technically natural, compatible with basic facts about cosmology, and potentially predi ctive.