<p>How does Harvey Mudd's Physics program compare to Williams College's Physics program? What are the benefits of Harvey Mudd that Williams doesn't have, and vice versa.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting general source of statistics on Physics. Lots of different types of data out here:</p>
<p>[Education</a> and Employment Data - American Institute of Physics](<a href=“http://www.aip.org/statistics/]Education”>Statistical Research Center | American Institute of Physics) </p>
<p>Here is one item where you can see where the two schools fall in comparison to each other:</p>
<p>[Physics</a> Bachelor’s Degrees - Table 4e](<a href=“http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/edphysund/table4e.htm]Physics”>http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/edphysund/table4e.htm) </p>
<p>This is an interesting link (even though it is at Reed’s website) if you are interested in getting a PhD after your undergrad degree:</p>
<p>[REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]REED”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
<p>Research is required at Mudd, either a one year research project or via the “clinical” experience which is a project completed as part of a team with a sponsoring organization (company, outside national lab, etc). I don’t think you would find anything like the clinical program at Williams – Mudd has put a lot of energy into working with outside sponsors on this program. They flashed a slide at accepted student days of the research dollars that undergrad intitutions without graduate programs have, and Mudd was at the top of the list by quite a bit (I think Swarthmore was a ways behind at second, not sure of the rest of the list). They also said they have been focused on diversifying their funding sources so they aren’t so dependent on NSF grants as some other schools, since goverment funding is really at risk right now. That is something you might want to ask about at Williams.</p>
<p>Thanks! That is really helpful. Do you know how Swarthmore compares?</p>
<p>Well… my D was accepted to Swarthmore and Mudd for this coming fall, plans to major in physics, and picked Mudd. 
Swarthmore does have a very strong physics department, although it is pretty small – we had an interesting conversation with a professor there about his research with a device that simulates the temperature on the surface of the sun (he showed it to us). That said… Mudd is just a more STEM focused school, and it seems like they went a lot further out of their way to show us multiple physics labs (my D was quite taken with the optics lab), have us meet professors and students, and talk abut the specifics of the physics major when my D was at accepted student days. At Swarthmore it is just one of a bunch of majors struggling for college funding and resources, IMHO – we really had to go searching to find someone to talk to about it.</p>
<p>When we asked about funding sources at Swarthmore (were they concerned about government funding cuts to science grants? did they have any plans to address this by diversifying their sources of funding?), the person responding looked puzzled and a bit condescending. He said something like, “Well, we haven’t had any issues yet, so we aren’t worried about it.” Which I thought was a pretty insular attitude in today’s world. Mudd answered this question with some surprise that it was asked, but they had a ready answer that they have been thinking about it and what they have been doing about it. </p>
<p>If you are interested in the astronomy side of physics, then Swarthmore or Carleton might be good schools to consider. I don’t know that Mudd is as strong in that area – just don’t really hear them talking much about it.</p>
<p>Oh, that is good to know. So if I’m interested in quantum mechanics/theory and high energy physics do you think that HMC would be a good choice? I mean, I’m sure it would be a good choice no matter what, but would it be better or equal to Swart., Carleton, and Williams?</p>
<p>You should visit and see what you think on your own… my D also was accepted to Carleton, and chose Mudd. But you really need to decide yourself. I actually think any of them would probably be good choices. But I think each school has its own “flavor” and you need to be comfortable. All are also fairly difficult for admission, so you might apply to all – Mudd is especially hard to get into for males (guessing you are based on your user name).</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I don’t know if I’ll be able to visit, but I’ll definitely be sure to look deeper into all of them. Thanks for the help, it’s good to get some insight from someone as involved as you seem to be.</p>
<p>Two more LAC size schools on the west coast that you might want to consider are Reed College and the College of Creative Studies.</p>
<p>Unique among LAC’s, Reed has its own nuclear reactor. </p>
<p>The College of Creative Studies is not really a college, but rather something like an intense fast track for a few majors at UCSB. If you’re absolutely, positively, sure about want you want to major in, CCS provides a separate path of classes during freshman and soph. years.</p>
<p>My impression from college visits with my son is that at either of these two places (like HMC), you’d get a level of gung-ho academics that are not really exceeded anywhere, but with different flavors. With Reed you’d get very broad general education requirements that will stretch a wider spectrum of your abilities. With CCS you get fast tracked into lab research, at a big university, in parallel with taking upper division courses as a junior and senior.</p>
<p>Visiting in person to get the rather unique vibes at HMC, Reed, and CCS is a really good idea. You also are picking a place to live for four years. So the different locales of suburb, small city, and big city all have different vibes along with the different academic slants of the schools.</p>
<p>Thanks SkyWitness, they both sound great. Out of the three, would you say that UCSB CCS would give me the most opportunity for research?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t necessarily single out CCS as best for research.</p>
<p>But I will say that if your top goal is to arrive at some cutting edge lab bench somewhere and discover something new, you will want to expand your set of possible schools to research universities like Berkeley, Stanford, and Caltech. Places with giga-bucks of funded research are just going to have more lab benches, and more places to sit in front of them.</p>
<p>Among the things you would get at a small college are a sense of community, more individual attention, and (maybe guessing here) more encouragement to strike out in your own direction, as opposed to being plugged into some bigger research enterprise.</p>
<p>If you mark the start of modern physics to the publication of Galileo’s first book in 1586, you can appreciate there’s a fair amount of already discovered physics to learn, if only to ensure you’re not rediscovering something already known. So my general purpose suggestion is to focus on how good a fit the learning environment of different schools feels when visiting as the higher priority vs. the research environment.</p>
<p>Yeah, that is good to know. Thanks.</p>