<p>Brown will allow you to have a completely open curriculum; as I recall there are no specific courses required for graduation.</p>
<p>We have a good friend whose son went to Brown, majored in physics and outside of a class in Judaism, NEVER took a single English/Soc science class.</p>
<p>His mother was quite dismayed about the fact that her son had an Ivy League education yet in his four years had failed to take anything at all in the humanities outside of that one religion class.</p>
<p>Sounds like they are cut from the same cloth.</p>
<p>If you are actually in ID, WY, or MT, the geographic diversity has to be a boost to your S’s admissions chances and possibly merit money. (But then, you knew that…) </p>
<p>Have to really think about how hard it would be to travel to each school–big difference between changing planes once or twice.</p>
<p>I nth Carnegie Mellon. It’s located in Pittsburgh, but I hate cities and the CMU campus felt surprisingly non-urban. (To compare, I crossed off Pittsburgh because there was nowhere on the campus I could stand without hearing cars. CMU’s campus is much quieter and more enclosed.)</p>
<p>Also, Brown is trying to make more of a name in the sciences and will please him with the Open Curriculum. College Hill is steep and painful, though.</p>
<p>I think my second cousin went to CMU. I’ll give him a call. </p>
<p>We’ll go see Brown so we’ll see if the open curriculum and the fencing team trump College Hill. </p>
<p>Dad’o’2, yes we’re in them thar states. I’m hoping the geographical plus will offset somewhat the unavailability of fancy EC’s. Taking all day to fly to east coast is a way of life, just like driving 12 hrs to a fencing tournament. If we can get someplace in 2 flights, its a treat.</p>
<p>eadad: that’s partly my fear that he will never get a broader education if he went someplace with minimal requirements, but who knows how these things will turn out.</p>
<p>Close to you, Chapman U just imported a team of 5 physics professors last year from another American university, can’t recall which. So I assume they’ve transformed the department. Could be interesting…</p>
<p>Close to me, everyone’s said it: RPI, Case…also Oberlin is quite strong in sciences, flat as an Ohio pancake. </p>
<p>Tip: if you see distribution requirements, look deeper to see if there are courses tailor-made for those who
have an aversion to that department. For example, at Oberlin, my D who came from the opposite direction (math-phobic) satisfied her Quantitative Proficiency requirements with some unusual courses, for example: Musical Acoustics. Perhaps – at any school – a course catalogue might reveal courses that reach across the aisle to allay your son’s concern about studying in the humanities. A literature course in science fiction? A course called “The History of Invention.”</p>
<p>REED–in Portland. THey have some sort of physics achievement for a small school. He might not like freshman seminar, but it is certainly a school for the quirky.</p>
<p>You might also check Carleton–they have good science too.</p>
<p>For many, a career in physics implies earning a PhD, so undergrad schools historically producing a high percentage of future physics PhD earners may be of interest to your son. This list was originally posted by interesteddad.</p>
<p>Here are 100 to consider. These one hundred colleges and universities produced the highest percentage of future Physics/Astronomy PhDs per graduate over the most recent 10 year period. Obviously a lot of tech schools are represented, but there’s something for just about everybody (different sizes, different locations, different selectivities):</p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database</p>
<p>Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database</p>
<p>Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000 </p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period
1 California Institute of Technology 96
2 Harvey Mudd College 64
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 29
4 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 20
5 Reed College 13
6 Carleton College 13
7 Princeton University 13
8 University of Chicago 13
9 Rice University 13
10 Case Western Reserve University 9
11 Harvard University 9
12 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 9
13 Swarthmore College 9
14 Haverford College 8
15 Stevens Institute of Technology 8
16 Whitman College 8
17 Grinnell College 7
18 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 7
19 Colorado School of Mines 7
20 Yale University 6
21 Williams College 6
22 University of Rochester 6
23 Amherst College 6
24 Goshen College 5
25 Cornell University, All Campuses 5
26 University of Dallas 5
27 Wabash College 5
28 Stanford University 5
29 Beloit College 5
30 University of California-Berkeley 5
31 Carnegie Mellon University 5
32 Johns Hopkins University 5
33 Hastings College 5
34 Lawrence University 5
35 Illinois Institute of Technology 5
36 Columbia University in the City of New York 4
37 Oberlin College 4
38 Monmouth College 4
39 Bryn Mawr College 4
40 Gustavus Adolphus College 4
41 Kalamazoo College 4
42 College of William and Mary 4
43 Earlham College 4
44 Worcester Polytechnic Institute 4
45 Pomona College 4
46 St Olaf College 4
47 Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus 4
48 Rhodes College 4
49 St John's University (Collegeville, MN) 3
50 Bates College 3
51 Macalester College 3
52 Brown University 3
53 Wesleyan University 3
54 Bethel College (North Newton, KS) 3
55 Brandeis University 3
56 Kenyon College 3
57 Hope College 3
58 St John's College (both campus) 3
59 Franklin and Marshall College 3
60 Bowdoin College 3
61 Washington University 3
62 Walla Walla College 3
63 Middlebury College 3
64 University of Missouri, Rolla 3
65 Drew University 3
66 Guilford College 3
67 Southern College of Seventh-Day Adventists 3
68 Moravian College 3
69 Clarkson University 3
70 Polytechnic University 3
71 Hamline University 3
72 Tougaloo College 3
73 Vassar College 2
74 Andrews University 2
75 University of California-San Diego 2
76 Lehigh University 2
77 College of Wooster 2
78 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2
79 Wake Forest University 2
80 Duke University 2
81 Albion College 2
82 University of Virginia, Main Campus 2
83 Trinity University 2
84 University of Alabama in Huntsville 2
85 Benedictine College 2
86 University of Puget Sound 2
87 Michigan Technological University 2
88 Dartmouth College 2
89 Cooper Union 2
90 Pacific University 2
91 Florida Institute of Technology 2
92 Xavier University 2
93 Northwest Nazarene College 2
94 South Dakota School of Mines & Technology 2
95 Hendrix College 2
96 Bucknell University 2
97 Millsaps College 2
98 Southwestern University 2
99 Bethel College and Seminary, All Campuses 2
100 Wofford College 2
101 Wellesley College 2
<p>I know OP said not in the south but Rice would seem to be a good choice. It is in Houston (and right down town) but it doesn’t have that feel As Vosron shows it is a major Physics PhD feeder school with a stellar reputation in physics. It is ranked by USNews as one of the best undergraduate teaching schools and is well known by employers and grad schools alike.</p>
<p>^ Note that while Rice itself is very politically balanced, the city of Houston does feel like Texas. If you can get over the geography (and the heat), though, it’s a great choice academically.</p>
<p>Interestingly, I had just run into someone from Houston, and asked them about the heat. His answer was, we have lots of air conditioning. I was surprised to hear that it does actually get down to freezing at times. Truth to tell, it’s just the inverse of what we have here which is lots of heating for several months of the year. You just don’t plan on being out much, except to ski of course, during the winter months.</p>
<p>DS does dislike the heat/humidity however, it was the one thing he wrote on his assessment as something he doesn’t like.</p>
<p>^ Having recently returned to the Mid-Atlantic from 6 weeks in Austin, I agree–there’s lots of air conditioning. However, the UT-Austin campus is HUGE and outdoors isn’t air-conditioned. It was just breathtakingly heavy heat, not like Floridian humidity. (Keep in mind that this is July, during one of Austin’s hotter summers on record.) However, I hear from a Houston friend that Austin is much drier than Houston.</p>
<p>Carnegie and Hopkins are excellent schools; without more data, cannot be sure they are safeties. Haverford and Swarthmore are great small schools for quirky bright kids.</p>
<p>However, outside of city schools (and both Carnegie and Hopkins are, like MIT, in large cities), I don’t know where you iwll find a school with many trees.</p>
<p>^^yabeyabe, Regardless of his stats, I don’t think CMU and Hopkins could be considered safeties? Even if his SAT numbers are all above 750? Except writing, of course.</p>
<p>Ihs, what I meant to say was that, evne with the good numbers you mentioned, unless there were other major pluses in his favor it is hard to think of JHU and CMU as safeties for virtually anyone.</p>
<p>CMU may be a match if you apply to several of the schools, but of course my son insisted on only applying to the School of Computer Science which has the lowest acceptance rate! (15%)</p>