<p>Where are these Colleges selecting their PhD students from?? My s is going to be a Physics major. So far he is accepted to University of Miami, U of Florida, U of Maryland, and Rennselaer. Waiting on Cornell, Princeton, and Carnegie Mellon. He want to get a PhD. Which colleges do they prefer to select from.</p>
<p>correct me if im wrong, but i hear that UC Santa Cruz has a top Astrophysics program</p>
<p>the air force academy has one of the best physics programs out there.</p>
<p>Sorry to bring back a dead thread, but why is it that Georgia Tech is number 11 on that first list, but not even top 20 on the other one?</p>
<p>Hello,</p>
<p>My son, a high school junior currently taking AP Physics, just visited the physics department at Cal Poly and became very enthusiastic. He was very interested in the labs and the “hands on” flavor of the department (as well as the friendliness.)</p>
<p>Does anyone know how the Cal Poly program compares nationally? To other California colleges/universities?</p>
<p>Has anyone heard of a strong physics program at a Christian college?</p>
<p>Thank you for any and all insight!</p>
<p>Sandy</p>
<p>S is a physics major, we looked at Cal Tech. But he picked Brandeis, a small Jewish school.</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz is arguably one of the best astrophysics out there… it can be put alongside MIT and the others. They’ve got affiliation with Stanford’s SLC, the Kek observatory in Hawaii, Berkeley’s Cyclotron and the radio telescopes near santa cruz. </p>
<p>I would go there if they gave me some fin. assistance, so I will go to USC probably and intern at UCSC haha.</p>
<p>I wonder if anyone considers how much the departments at these best ranked schools are cushioned by the students academic ability from the start. If we are talking about department excellence/decency, then wouldn’t it make sense to consider how much a percentage of students actually improve academically, or that the department has to cope with keeping the department strong while dealing with a struggling demographic of students, and therefore their reputation? This would be a more direct assessment of teaching ability and vitality of the program.</p>
<p>I do think amazingly successful faculty is a great advantage, although I don’t know if this is entirely being used to its potential since these are undergraduate “accumulation of semantics” classes. And yes TA’s usually teach the classes instead of this faculty, but then again usually the TA’s are very capable. Besides, you could always look them up on youtube or read some of their books.</p>
<p>I also think being among very intelligent/academically inclined students can obviously be a advantageous as well.</p>
<p>while considering a school school I would primarily look at these factors, and the kind of classes and flexibility in the classes offered. I would also continue to consider the same thing in the corresponding math department, and also make sure the teachers themselves have a decent evidenced academic background to know what they are talking about (which is pretty much the case everywhere). The ability to take a graduate level course in physics or math could be advantageous. </p>
<p>Apparently bachelors degree only granting institutions with ten or more graduates have a higher success and opinion rating (on communication, teamwork, and satisfaction of the department) compared to masters granting institutions for physics as their highest degree offered, and departments with fewer than 10 graduates per year - on aip.org</p>
<p>additional info on large phd granting institutions is also on the website, and the stats are obviously what anyone would expect.</p>
<p>I also think it is pretty safe to say education is what you make of it. No matter where you go, ultimately you have the vast majority of compared agency to do what you want with physics in undergrad education. This being said, find something cheap.</p>
<p>“wouldn’t it make sense to consider how much a percentage of students actually improve academically”</p>
<p>Agree; a standardized ratio of GRE/MCAT/LSAT to SAT/ACT or something similar might be interesting, but hard to do for physics. What other ways could it be done? HS vs. college GPAs would be hard to normalize.</p>
<p>It’s pretty commonly agreed upon that for undergrad if you plan on a masters or PhD, it matters more what grades you got and the research you did rather than where you went, ie straight a’s at a second tier school than a 3.75 GPA at say, Caltech. But does anyone know when it starts mattering where you went when you are applying to graduate school? Basically, what is the lowest ranked school you can go to for physics and still be prepared for Harvard, MIT, Caltech, or another top 5 school for their graduate program? I definitely want to get my PhD in astrophysics, maybe cosmology or relativity, and MIT is my goal for graduate school, but I dont want to have $40,000+ debt when I get my BS to go on to grad and accumulate another $60,000+. I know a lower rank doesn’t necessarily mean they’d give me more money and scholarships, but there is a correlation. Could anyone help me or give.me some insight? Sorry to hijack the thread.</p>
<p>You should have only around $25K in federal debt for undergrad, and you’d typically be paid somewhere around $25K per year for your PhD (slave labor for teaching undergrads), even at less than tip top schools like, e.g., CUNY.</p>
<p>This discussion thread has been helpful. I’m still interested in hearing if anyone has an answer to Julieannab’s question: does where you got your undergrad degree in physics pretty much determine where you can get into graduate physics? My son wants a phd in theoretical physics, but wants to attend a small liberal arts college (preferably Reed or Carlton) for undergraduate in Math and Physics. Does this limit his options for which graduate schools he can get into? If anyone knows the answer to this applied to small liberal arts colleges generally, not just the 2 I’ve mentioned, that would be most excellent.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>^ My guess is that if such statistics had ever been captured, we would be talking about them.</p>
<p>It would entail some work, and would answer a different question, but professors’ bios are often available online; their undergrad schools coud be tabulated.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick response to my last post.</p>
<p>I reviewed the bios of professors at some top physics grad schools (e.g., Harvard, MIT, CalTech, Cornell, University of Chicago), and I found none who admitted attending a small liberal arts college. In fact, nearly all of them who attended school in the U.S., attended one of the top physics grad schools (e.g., Harvard, MIT, CalTech, Cornell) as an undergraduate. It’s a small sample, so I’m not sure what it tells me. What I wonder is, what are the chances of attending a top physics graduate program if your B.S. is from a small liberal arts college?</p>
<p>There may be few physics PhDs from small liberal arts colleges because:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The small liberal arts colleges are small, so they are not feeding as many students into the PhD pipeline as big universities are (even if they have higher per-capita PhD program matriculation and graduation rates).</p></li>
<li><p>Due to the relative unpopularity of the physics major, many small liberal arts colleges’ physics courses are limited, so they may not be that suitable for a physics major. So only a subset of them may actually be feeding physics graduates into physics PhD programs. (Reed and Carleton do appear to have the full set of core junior/senior level physics courses for a physics major.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>One thing also to consider is that if you son is more than one grade level ahead in math (will have completed college sophomore level math (multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations) before graduating from high school), he should consider whether he will want to take graduate level math courses as an undergraduate. If so, he may want to consider whether the undergraduate-only schools will be suitable for him.</p>
<p>Usually a research university with a graduate program is a better choice for preparation to get into a top graduate school in physics. It doesn’t have to be a big program but the access to graduate courses is important for a better preparation. Our program at [Illinois</a> Institute of Technology](<a href=“http://www.iit.edu%5DIllinois”>http://www.iit.edu) regularly has graduates get into strong graduate programs, such as MIT, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas Austin, and others. The characteristic of these students is that they seek out research opportunities during the summers and the academic year and they take some graduate courses in their final year of college.</p>
<p>^ Exceptions are schools that require an original research thesis of all undergrads. Grad schools see that these students already know how to do research, and have an example of it. It’s this requirement of all undergrads that raises the per-capita future PhD percentage of small schools, along with their lack of professional degrees.</p>
<p>Hello - I am wondering if you can get a job with an undergrad degree in physics.</p>
<p>Also, does anyone know what reputation College of the Holy Cross has for its physics program?</p>
<p>^ Probably not as a physicist, if that’s what you mean. What are your goals, short and long term?</p>
<p>James J. Collins received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Holy Cross in 1987 and a doctorate in Medical Engineering from Oxford in 1990. From 1987 to 1990, he was a Rhodes Scholar. He won a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 2003, becoming the first bioengineer to receive this honor</p>