Hello guys! I’m a high school senior and will be starting college as a CS major. Right now, I think I want to either a) become a software developer after college, or b) go to graduate school, get a PhD, and try to become an astrophysicist. Double majoring in CS and physics at my school shouldn’t be too difficult, since they share a lot of required courses. However, I don’t want to double major if I don’t have to. Also, I don’t want to ONLY major in physics for various reasons.
My main question is this: If I take the astrophysics route, could I get into a good graduate astrophysics program with only a minor in physics? Probably not, right? I’m trying to pick my classes for next Fall, and need to know how many physics/astronomy classes I should take. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I looked at the PhD physics program application requirements of three universities: UCLA, UC Davis and Stanford University. None of them mention an undergraduate major (or minor) in physics. However, two of them require the GRE Subject test in Physics to be taken (for UC Davis it’s only recommended).
Entry into these programs is highly competitive. UC Davis says it aims to admit 25-30 from ~400 applicants per year and “the average GPA for admitted students is about 3.7.” Stanford says it admits ~60 out of 600+ applicants per year. (I couldn’t find UCLA’s data on this.)
Added to this is the fact that the graduate courses have, of course, various undergraduate physics and math courses as prerequisites.
So it looks to me that this track requires a huge commitment of effort (as well as unusual ability), probably equivalent to getting a bachelor’s degree in physics, whether or not, technically, the undergraduate degree is obtained.
Then there is the question of the ease of getting gainful employment in it afterward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm) predicts 400 openings for astronomers, 4,900 openings for physicists and 345,900 openings for software developers during 2014-2024. https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/employment/phd1yrlater-p-14.pdf shows that, a few months after getting their doctorates, 40% of physics PhDs have “potentially permanent” employment, about 5% are unemployed and the rest are in a postdoc appointment or temporary employment. Astronomy and astrophysics dissertation subjects are kind of in the middle among dissertation subjects with respect to initial employment being “potentially permanent”.
Note that some physics graduates (at the BA/BS or PhD level) go into other areas like computing or finance where their quantitative skills are useful in adapting to the type of work, since actual physics jobs are not that plentiful.
Preparation for physics or astrophysics PhD study probably effectively requires physics and math course work that is pretty close to that included in a bachelor’s degree in physics.