<p>How is it? I'm going next year and I wanted to hear any and all input, seeing as its my current field of choice.</p>
<p>I’m interested as well.</p>
<p>It’ll flatten you, hopefully, unless you’re one of those crazy kids who flattens others. physics majors at columbia are a little crazy, the profs are passionate and give students a lot of attention, it’s what you’d expect.</p>
<p>Along with CS majors, Physics students were the most hardcore dudes (almost all male) at the College. I knew a few that dropped Physics for “easier” majors, like Chemistry and Geology. More power to you if you can hack it.</p>
<p>In general, Physics professors are the most indecipherable lecturers around. Hopefully, the rest of the Columbia curriculum will make you more well-rounded than the typical MIT-physics grad.</p>
<p>^jameschen, that is completely inaccurate, physics professors at Columbia are almost all (all in my experience) very clear. They might be either boring or theoretical sometimes, but every single one I have encountered (and this is a large number) is enthusiastic and understandable. Math professors are traditionally the worst, I’ve had several brilliant minds teach me in math, who simply cannot convey simple concepts and develop jn us a practical intuition for what they are saying.</p>
<p>I’ve said it elsewhere, but:</p>
<p>I was going to do physics. Quantum Mechanics 2601 with Brian Cole kicked my butt so hard that I wimped out and went into Math. Cole was a great lecturer as long as you’d been to all of his previous lectures; if not, he moved too fast for you to catch up.</p>
<p>Previous semesters, I had John Parsons, who is one of the best lecturers I’ve ever seen (seriously, he’s a tour de force), and then Amber Miller, who despite knowing her stuff was a miserable lecturer. It was Amber’s first semester, though, and from what I understand she’s improved considerably since then.</p>
<p>zajc will KILL any love you have for the subject, just sayin’</p>
<p>Sorry, in my post I said that “in general”, physics lecturers are indecipherable, not singling out Columbia physics professors in particular. The only Columbia physics prof I had was George Tzanakos. He was Greek and completely indecipherable. A friend of mine flunked out of his class. On one midterm Electricity & Magnetism exam, he got a 1. I recall getting a 25, which was a point or two ABOVE the mean for the class.</p>
<p>Is it harder to study Pure Physics than Applied physics at Columbia? Any comments on the Applied physics program?</p>
<p>applied physics is actually the one with the nobel laureate in it (Horst Stormer). But both are extremely strong programs. Pure Physics is a little bigger and has some of the bigger names, like Brian Greene, but both are excellent and there is little difference in respectability.</p>