<p>I was just looking through other threads and found that the physics major is very underrepresented here on CC. I thought I would put together a top ten physics undergraduate list, in terms of prestige and resources. Feel free to add or subtract from the list at will.</p>
<p>In no particular order:</p>
<p>Stanford
Harvard
Princeton
Cornell
MIT
CalTech
UIUC
Berkeley (undergraduate though?)
Columbia
Harvey Mudd College</p>
<p>Just a random list that may help those looking to apply to the top physics programs out there. It also depends on where you are looking to go into. UChicago is good for theoretical, but I didn't think it had enough resources, IMHO.</p>
<p>Per Capita Undergrad Production of PhDs and Doctoral Degrees </p>
<p>Academic field: Physics & Astronomy<br>
PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: 1994 to 2003 from NSF database<br>
Enrollment from 2004 USNews<br>
Formula: PhDs divided by undergrad enrollment times 1000 </p>
<p>1 California Institute of Technology 221
2 Harvey Mudd College 120
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 80
4 Carleton College 31
5 Princeton University 30
6 Rice University 28
7 Reed College 27
8 Harvard University 25
9 University of Chicago 25
10 Swarthmore College 21
11 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 20
12 Haverford College 20
13 Case Western Reserve University 17
14 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 17
15 Grinnell College 16
16 Williams College 16
17 Yale University 16
18 Whitman College 15
19 University of Rochester 15
20 Amherst College 15
21 Goshen College 14
22 Cornell University, All Campuses 13
23 Marlboro College 12
24 Stanford University 11
25 University of California-Berkeley 11
26 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 11
27 Stevens Institute of Technology 11
28 Oberlin College 11</p>
<p>Note: Chicago probably should be moved up a few places, perhaps up around Princeton. The use of 2004 enrollments as the denominator doesn't account for Chicago's massive increase (25%) in undergrad enrollment in the last ten years.</p>
<p>Cool data. There definetely are a lot of LAC's producing the physics majors. IMHO, I prefer the research universities because of the added opportunities on campus. Although, Swat and Carleton and HMC are tops of the list in my book as far as good LAC undergraduate physics.</p>
<p>~would still take top 10 research university over them, though~</p>
<p>
[quote]
would still take top 10 research university over them, though
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are pluses and minuse both ways. </p>
<p>At a research university, you will be low man on the totem pole, but you'll get to see people doing a lot of cool stuff. </p>
<p>An LAC Physics department won't have as much cool stuff, but as a Physics major you'll most likely do hands-on research with your professor, including summers, and, very often, end up published as an undergrad, which is terrific preparation for getting into and succeeding in grad school.</p>
<p>Nobel Prize winner, Thomas Cech (head of the Howard Huges Medical Institute) has a great essay outlining the strengths and weaknesses of undergrad science education at both types of schools. He did undergrad at Grinnell, PhD at Berkeley, and was on the faculty at UColorado.</p>
<p>The "PhD production" list probably has more value in Physics and other hard sciences than in any other field because Physics/Astronomy career paths are so heavily research/academic oriented and typically include getting a PhD.</p>
<p>I always look at those hard numbers lists with caution. For one, it's not difficult to get into a science grad school, but instead the challenge lies in getting admitted to a top one. I'm sure Stanford sends more students to top schools than a place like Marlboro College. From looking at syllabi, tests, and problem sets, the higher ranking schools provide more rigorous educations with the expectation that the students can handle it. That's not to say that only top schools will provide good educations. I know Reed College is great for physics prep. One of the professors there is the author of two widely used physics ug textbooks and who better to learn than from the man himself?</p>
<p>I guess it also depends on where you go. Would I be correct in saying that Berkely's grad school is so great that is shadows the undergraduates? I didn't find this at Cornell, with so many undergrads, but it may be there too. I just heard worse things about Berkeley and like universities undergraduate education.</p>
<p>That said, I hope to be able to pursue undergraduate research at a PhD granting University. I know there seems to be a lot of opportunities at Cornell. (Biased, yes) Hopefully some active pursuit of research will make it more like a LAC attention-wise and University atmosphere and facilities-wise.</p>
<p>A few useful resources for people looking at physics program:</p>
<p>The American Institute of Physics has a complete listing that describes degree-granting undergraduate physics programs in the U.S. While on this page, be sure to read the thought-provoking report "Does it matter where I go to college" <a href="http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/undergradtrends.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/undergradtrends.html</a> Also check out the Enrollment and degrees report at the same page -- it is very interesting to look at various schools (including those being discussed) and see the number of actual physics graduates/majors compared to the total number of students. Harvey Mudd wins hands down in terms of the ratio of physics majors to number of students. No school in the US graduated more than 52 undergraduate physics majors in the year covered by the report --- Harvard is the one with 52 majors, by the way.</p>
<p>The American Association of Physics Teachers' National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics has issued a large evaluation of undergraduate physics programs that is helpful in comparing various schools. The report includes very detailed case studies of about 15 undergraduate physics programs at various schools. (Use the link "Site visit case study reports" to go directly to the case studies from the main site)
<a href="http://www.aapt.org/projects/ntfup.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.aapt.org/projects/ntfup.cfm</a></p>
<p>Both sites are very interesting if you want hard numbers instead of biased guesses.</p>
<p>interesteddad, I think that would be a more useful ranking if the number of PhD's were instead divided by the number of students in the physics department, rather than the whole school. After all, having a large department doesn't make it automatically better. </p>
<p>Also, an analysis of students ending up at top physics graduate schools would be extremely useful, but hard to compile. Caltech is the only school I've seen that lists where their graduate students came from. Unfortunately Caltech isn't that big so the numbers may not be statistically significant. In any case, here is a list of where Caltech grads came from. To make it easier you can paste it in excel and do an autofilter:</p>
<p>Amherst College
Amherst College
Arizona State
Arizona State U
Beijing U
Beijing Univ.
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Berkeley
Bogazici Univ.
Brigham Young U
Brown Univ.
Brown Univ.
Bryn Mawr
Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo
Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo
Cal State - Fresno
Caltech
Caltech
Caltech
Caltech
Caltech
Caltech
Caltech
Caltech
Cambridge
Cambridge U
Carnegie Mellon U
Carnegie Mellon Univ.
Carnegie Mellon Univ.
Case Western Reserve U
Chinese U of Hong Kong
Chinese U of Hong Kong
Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong
Claremont McKenna College
College of William and Mary
Colorado School of Mines
Colorado School of Mines
Columbia
Columbia U
Columbia U
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Cornell
Dartmouth
Dartmouth
Dartmouth
Drake U
Drexel U
Duke
Duke Univ.
Emory Univ.
Fudan U
Fudan Univ.
Georgia Inst. of Technology
Gordon College
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Harvey Mudd
Haverford College
Hillsdale College
IHEP
IIT
IIT Bombay, Stanford
Indiana Univ.
Iowa State Univ.
ITESM
ITT
Johns Hopkins U
King's College London
King's College London
Korea Adv. Inst. of Science & Tech.
Kyoto Univ.
Louisiana State U
Louisiana State U
Lousiana State University
Macalester College
METU
Middlebury College
MIPT
MIPT
MIPT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
MIT
Montana State Univ.
Moscow Institute of Physics and Techonology
Moscow State U
Moscow State U
Moscow State U
Moscow State Univ.
Moscow State Univ.
Nat. Taiwan Univ.
National Taiwan U
National Taiwan U
National Taiwan Univ.
National Taiwan Univ.
Northland College
Northwestern
Novosibirsk State Univ.
Ohio State U
Ohio State Univ.
Oxford
Oxford
Oxford U
Peking U
Peking U
Peking Univ.
Peking Univ.
Peking Univ.
Peking Univ.
Peking Univ.
Peking Univ.
Peking Univ.
Peking University
Pennsylvania State U
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton
Princeton U
Princeton U
Punjab University
Queen's U
Queen's Univ.
Queen's Univ.
Queen's Univ.
Queen's Univ. at Kingston
Reed College
Reed College
Reed College
Rensselaer
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Rice
Rice Univ.
Rostov State Univ.
Sabanci U
Seoul Nat. Univ.
Seoul National U
Seoul National U
Seoul National U
Seoul National Univ.
Simon Fraser U
Simon Fraser U
Sonoma State Univ.
Southern U A&M College
St. Petersburg State
St. Petersburg State Univ.
St. Xavier College
St. Xavier's College
St. Xavier's College
Stanford
Stanford
Stanford
Stanford
Stanford
Stanford
Stanford
Stanford
SUNY Buffalo
SUNY Stony Brook
SUNY Stony Brook
Swarthmore College
Tata Institute
Texas A&M U
Texas Tech Univ.
The Abdus Salam ICTP
The Johns Hopkins U
The Principia College
Trinity College
Trinity College
Tsinghua U
Tsinghua Univ.
Tsinghua Univ.
Tsinghua Univ.
U College London
U of Buenos Aires
U of Canterbury
U of Chicago
U of Chicago
U of Chicago
U of Chicago
U of Florida
U of Hong Kong
U of Houston
U of Iceland
U of Illinois
U of Illinois
U of Maine
U of Maryland
U of Melbourne
U of Michigan
U of Michigan
U of Oklahoma
U of Oregon
U of Pennsylvania
U of Pennsylvania
U of Rochester
U of Sydney
U of Texas
U of Texas
U of Toronto
U of Utah
U of Washington
U of Wisconsin
U of Witwatersrand
UC Irvine, Cal State-Hayward
UC Los Angeles
UC Los Angeles
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Santa Barbara
UC Santa Barbara
UCLA
UCLA
UCLA
UCSC
UN Las Vegas
Univ. College Cork
Univ. College Dublin
Univ. de Buenos Aires
Univ. of Arizona
Univ. of Arkansas
Univ. of Athens
Univ. of Athens
Univ. of Bucharest
Univ. of Buenos Aires
Univ. of Calgary
Univ. of Chicago
Univ. of Chicago
Univ. of Chile
Univ. of Colorado - Boulder
Univ. of Helsinki
Univ. of Illinois
Univ. of Joannina
Univ. of Kentucky
Univ. of Manitoba
Univ. of Maryland
Univ. of Maryland
Univ. of Massachusetts
Univ. of Melbourne
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Oklahoma
Univ. of Otago
Univ. of Parma
Univ. of Riverside
Univ. of Sao Paolo
Univ. of Saskatchewan
Univ. of Sci. & Tech of China
Univ. of Sci. & Tech. of China
Univ. of Sydney
Univ. of Tennessee
Univ. of Texas
Univ. of Texas
Univ. of Toronto
Univ. of Toronto
Univ. of Toronto
Univ. of Virginia
Univ. of Warwick
Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison
Univ. of Washington
Univ.of Manitoba
University College Cork
University. of Wisconsin
Upsala College
US Navel Academy
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
USTC
Virginia Polytechnic
Vrije Universiteit
Washington U
Wesleyan Univ.
West Univ. of Timisoara
Western U of Timisoara
Westfalische Wilhelms U
Williams College
Xavier College
Yale
Yale</p>
<p>Berkeley, Caltech, Cornell, Harvard (huge number here), MIT, Princeton, Stanford and many non-US schools make very good showings. Of course we still haven't taken department size into account.</p>