<p>I want to major in Physics, and will most likely go graduate for astrophysics.</p>
<p>Now, should I worry how strong the Physics department is in a certain college for undergrad? Or should I just choose the college I like and worry about that for Grad?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>The undergraduate department is actually not that important, even less if you don't plan to go to graduate studies. The evidence is that many LAC's do very well in placing people into graduate research programs. Secondly, at the undergrad level, the depth will be about the same.</p>
<p>The exception is that if you think you're really good and want to get into top-level research while doing your undergraduate.</p>
<p>With a general and popular subject like physics, you probably won't have a problem at many, many schools. Sometimes larger departments can offer broader courses and some schools such as Caltech can offer a lot of research to undergrads. You should not worry about the rankings too much, maybe just a bit- if it's not on the Gourman ranking or something like that, investigate as to what's available, and it will likely be far more than you need.</p>
<p>Fandangoya, department strength is important, but as most would agree, when it comes to the traditional disciplines, like Physics, there are literaly dozens of very good undergraduate departments. For example, in West Coast alone, I can think of 12 AMAZING Physics departments:</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology
Harvey Mudd College
Pomona College
Reed College
Stanford University
University of Arizona
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Davis
University of California-Irvine
University of California-Los Angeles
University of California-San Diego
University of California-Santa Brabara
University of Washington</p>
<p>The Midwest has close to 20 excellent departments:
Carleton College
Grinnell College
Indiana University-Bloomington
Michigan State University-East Lansing
Northwestern University
Oberlin College
Ohio State University-Columbus
Pennsylvania State University-University Park
Purdue University-West Lafayette
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
University of Notre Dame
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Washington University</p>
<p>The South has 10 or so excellent Physics departments too:
Davidson College
Duke University
Emory University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Rice University
Texas-A&M University-College Station
University of Florida-Gainesville
University of Texas-Austin
Vanderbilt University</p>
<p>Of course, the East Coast universities have excellent Physics programs also...too many to count.</p>
<p>Undergraduates need to consider factors such as the breadth and depth of course availability, the quality of teaching, opportunities for undergraduates to become involved in research, facilities for experimental work, opportunities for interactions among undergraduate majors and between undergraduate and graduate students, and - perhaps most importantly - the frequency and quality of interactions between undergraduates and faculty members outside the classroom. Department strength with regard to rankings of the quality of research done by faculty members (unless there is no or only extremely poor research being done) is very important at the graduate level, but not very relevant to one's undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>If you want to do serious research, then you might want to consider one of the undergraduate schools that produces future PhDs at the highest rates. The top ten for physics:</p>
<p>CalTech
Harvey Mudd
MIT
NM Institute of Mining
Reed
U Chicago
Princeton
Carleton
Marlboro
Rice</p>
<p>I think it is very important to at least make sure the department is adequate. There may a lot of fine physics departments but there are also a lot of poor physics departments. Some reputable liberal arts colleges have fewer than 5 physical sciences (physics+chem+geo) graduates each year while others have 30 or more. Some reputable universities have fewer than 10 physical sciences graduates each year while others have over 100. What kind of curriculum and facilities could the tiny departments possibly offer?</p>
<p>not boston college.</p>