hey there! i’m a prospective student for the slc class of '23. for the most part, i’m totally sold on the school. i love the location/academic model/community, and they clearly have strong departments for two of my primary interests, filmmaking & creative writing.
the only issue is that im also really interested in physics and especially in astrophysics (a pretty strange interest to have alongside filmmaking and creative writing, i know. but hey, i can’t control what im passionate about!), and from what i can tell, well… there’s not much that i can tell. i know they have natural sciences, but they seem to be a lot more arts-centered and therefore don’t advertise a lot of information about their programs in the natural sciences.
is it possible to study astrophysics at slc? have people done it? do people do it? what kind of resources do they have for it? is it reasonable to go to slc if i might want to have a career in astrophysics one day (would anyone in the field hire me having gone to a school without majors)?
If you love everything about SLC and want to do astrophysics, you may want to work with them to see how you can supplement the program to ensure that it’s as robust as possible.
Before agreeing to attend SLC – find out if you can perhaps–
get internships in labs nearby to do research
go on an exchange or summer program to do this sort of work, say at the Oak Ridge facility in Tennessee (I'm pretty sure they have that specialty there but if not then maybe there's another opportunity)
do research at SLC -- ask a professor what she or he is working on currently and see if you can get on board.
do an exchange program to another campus for a semester and focus.
For grad school if you have 1) history of this interest and 2) shown your chops in the field in terms of research and / or 3) have done a research project perhaps as an undergrad or with a lab later. That plus a tellar GRE score and LORs will probably get you into a decent grad program.
The short answer is yes you can probably do astrophysics at SLC and it might be flexible enough for you to create a very interesting path for yourself. OTOH you would need to be on task, focused and create the learning and work opportunities for yourself along the way.
Hi, we just visited SLC on Saturday with D20, who loved it. She’s not interested in astrophysics but we downloaded the course catalog to look at course offerings. Here’s the physics section for 2018-19
Classical Mechanics (CalculusBased General Physics)
Merideth Frey
Open, Seminar—Fall
The Quantum World
Alejandro Satz
Open, Seminar—Fall
Introduction to Mechanics (General Physics Without Calculus)
Alejandro Satz
Open, Seminar—Fall
Time to Tinker
Merideth Frey
Open, Seminar—Spring
Introduction to Electromagnetism,Light, and Modern Physics
(General Physics Without Calculus)
Alejandro Satz
Sophomore and above, Seminar—Spring
Electromagnetism and Light (Calculus-Based General Physics)
Merideth Frey
Intermediate, Seminar—Spring