<p>I have heard from many sources that getting a PhD in theoretical physics is a trap. The US trains twice as many PhD's as there are jobs available. Also, there is tough competition and only a 1/4th of PhD's get tenure at a university!</p>
<p>The point is I'm in my 2nd year of college as a physics major and am wondering if I should end at a B.S. and apply to medical school. I really do love physics and can see myself doing research on problems that interest me, but not at the expense of constantly being jobless and having to relocate every year or so.</p>
<p>Also, what sort of a factor does race/ethnicity of a physics PhD student play in getting hired? Does it also depend on which institution you received your PhD? i.e. (Caltech PhD > UC Irvine PhD?)</p>
<p>Wow I hope this is not true. It would suck very very much… I can’t believe physicists are so underrated, even when we all know without physicists like Einstein, we wouldn’t have all of this technology.</p>
<p>The physics major (like the math major) really needs an area of application or emphasis or concentration to help with marketability. You may have to augment that physics program to something like: engineering physics, physics/optics, physics/electromagnetics, physics/computer science or even medical physics.</p>
<p>any area of science you might consider doing research in is NEVER going to have “enough” tenure positions open. most large phd programs will be putting their people in industry. even schools like MIT or harvard…</p>
<p>I’ve heard that it’s not actually hard for a physics phd to get a high paying job at wall street, its just that there are much easier ways to make 100k then going through graduate school… So if you would really like to learn about theoretical physics and go through the graduate school experience then I wouldn’t worry about not having a job at all if you are good, its just that you might have difficulty getting an academic position, since as you said, there is an oversupply of graduate students and an undersupply of new tenure track positions avaliable. </p>
<p>As noimagination said, there is a lot of very good discussion of this over at physicsforums.</p>