<p>The subject/material itself is not important. However, its difficulty is, and the ability of the student to handle difficult courses is.</p>
<p>“First, even physics majors don’t have a complete understanding of Newtonian physics”</p>
<p>Of course it’s all relative, but people who finish 8.012 at MIT better have a very, very thorough understanding of newtonian mechanics (otherwise, they wouldn’t have passed). I think you meant classical mechanics. If so, no, physics majors don’t get the whole picture of classical mechanics by junior year usually. By classical mechanics, I mean analytical mechanics, which uses scalar quantities and generalized coordinates instead of Newtonian mechanics, which uses vectors and mostly cartesian coordinates.</p>