<p>Hi! I'm interested in colleges in California that have the best physics/astrophyics/astronomy programs. From what I've reasearched so far, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford (cuz of SLAC?) and UCSC are the best. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>Caltech, most definitely.</p>
<p>I second that. Far as I know Caltech is the best, especially since they have JPL.</p>
<p>lol i do not have the grades for caltech. i was looking more towards the UCs</p>
<p>As far as grades are concerned... if you have them for Stanford and Berkeley, you have them for Caltech :)</p>
<p>I have a BA in Physics & Astrophysics from Harvard, and a MA & PhD in Astrophysics from Berkeley...</p>
<p>In California, the best places to study astrophysics are:
(Please, for the love of <insert your="" higher="" power="">, do NOT take the actual rankings too literally...)</insert></p>
<p>(1) Caltech, Berkeley <--- along with Harvard, Princeton, they are the BEST
(3) Santa Cruz <--- Surprising, but true... they are AMAZING
(4) UCLA, San Diego, Santa Barbara <--- all 3 are EXCELLENT
(7) UC Irvine, Stanford <--- relatively much weaker, but still decent</p>
<p>Note that at some of these places, Astro is NOT a separate department, but part of Physics.</p>
<p>I turned down Caltech for grad school because it really was not a personal fit... a lot of the grad students at Berkeley also turned down Caltech for the same reason... it takes a special kind of person to fit in at Caltech.</p>
<p>Contrary to what might be expected, Stanford is very weak in astrophysics... they have a top 5 physics pogram overall, but certainly not in astro.</p>
<p>thank you!! that was a really helpful post. Now i'm slowly narrowing down colleges...</p>
<p>oh, and Kazz. I said those looked like the best colleges, not that i had the grades for any of them lol =)</p>
<p>I thought I would add 3 schools not in California, but still out west: University of Washington, University of Colorado, and University of Arizona are all top 20 programs...</p>