<p>Can anyone comment on the quality of the physics department at Brown, quality of professors, size of classes. Thanks.</p>
<p>Physics faculty are involved in cutting-edge research and provide lots of opportunities for undergraduate involvement in research. They are very accessible and interested in teaching, advising, and interacting with students in less formal ways. The quality of teaching is generally pretty high, with some professors who are really exceptional who have won awards for their teaching. The department typically has an average of around 15 concentrators per year, and most of the classes for undergrads. have something like 15-30 students.</p>
<p>Does anyone know specifically what sort of research is being done that undergrads can get involved in? What sort of resources are there?</p>
<p>You can do anything that any of the faculty members are doing.</p>
<p>Check out</p>
<p>Brown</a> University</p>
<p>They'll have all the professors there with CVs and statements of interest and probably have a blurb or two about equipment/facilities.</p>
<p>Just look at the professors in the physics department and check their research interests.</p>
<p>Student research under Professors is extremely well available at Brown. As a rising sophmore, my daughter got paid work one summer from a physics professor and he took her and his grad student and post doc to the Fermi Lab at the end of summer for a paid 3-day trip (granted she was crunching data not really doing research on her own, I suppose.) But she got that job by knocking on doors and speaking with him. It allowed her to live there for the summer a take a class.</p>
<p>Brown has a program called UTRA which will fund you for $3,000 over the summer for research. You apply under a faculty sponsor. dd did this this summer, but not in physics. </p>
<p>I know dd has a friend from Brown who is at Berkeley in a fellowship for theoretical physics, so you can get to that level through the program.</p>