<p>I'm interested in majoring in astronomy. How good is Smith at getting their students into top grad schools?</p>
<p>I doubt there is a large enough sample to know. I do know that the combined 5-College Program in radio-astronomy is among the best for undergrads in the U.S. Also well-known among the LACs, especially for astro-physics, is Williams. Why don't you e-mail the department?</p>
<p>Thanks. I think I will email them.</p>
<p>i don't have personal experience with the physics and astronomy department, but was very close with some majors who graduated in the past two years. It definitely has its pros and cons.</p>
<p>Pros: TINY classes (under 5 people in upper level courses), nurturing yet challenging environment, a focus on group work, and practical problemsolving, and an engineering department that allows for more hands-on courses.</p>
<p>Cons: Small enough that course offerings can be limited (astronomy majors take a sizable percentage of their courses off campus, which is fun but can be timeconsuming, especially without a car), a lack of focus on memorization and simply solving formulaic problems, which can hurt a lot on the physics gre, which I don't believe is essential for astronomy phD programs but is for physics phD programs. </p>
<p>With that said, the Smith physics grads I know of are doing the following: Engineering/Architecture program at Berkeley, astronomy or astrophysics (i forget) phD at UMass, mechanical engineering phD at Cornell, physics education phD at Berkeley. So grad school is not a problem, and almost all these people also got into traditional physics phd programs.</p>