<p>I am a high school senior who wants to become a theoretical physicist. My far-fetched dream is to ultimately work for CERN. But for now, I'm planning on going to a public school close to home and then a private ivy league school for my grad and doctorate. Which college will give me a better chance at getting into an ivy league school like Princeton or UPenn. Also, which college offers the field of research I need to towards theoretical physics?</p>
<p>Getting into a top physics PhD program requires high achievement in grades in your BS, in standardized testing (GRE and physics GRE), undergraduate research experience and letters of recommendations. It is extremely competitive. It is even more competitive for theorists than for experimentalists as there are far fewer slots. Looking through their websites it appears to me that Rutgers has the much larger physics department with professors doing research in far more different fields of physics. Look through the websites yourself and think about which will lead to the stronger credentials for your ultimate objective.</p>
<p>rutgers… but tcnj is great to</p>
<p>Your undergraduate college does not matter that much in graduate admissions, not directly. There are certain programs that graduate admissions committees will be more familiar with, especially if you happen to work with a famous professor (unlikely in undergrad), but overall they are far more concerned with what you do in college than where you go. If you get theoretical physics research experience, do an REU, get top grades and great letters of recommendation, you can go pretty much anywhere from undergrad.</p>
<p>Both schools have their advantages. Rutgers has the obvious advantage in being a strong research school, so there will be more research and more opportunities, plus more options. However, the focus in those labs may be on graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and undergrads may do more mundane tasks. Small liberal arts colleges typically have smaller research programs, but there are no graduate students to compete for slots and so you may be doing tasks that a grad student would do at a big university. Many (most?) LAC professors go to LACs specifically because they want to work with undergrads and include them in their research, and they will likely have more time to devote to mentoring you. Also, the schools are about 40 minutes apart, so it’s possible that if you had a car you could volunteer in a lab at Rutgers even though you go to TCNJ.</p>
<p>I second cltdad’s suggestion to go to the websites and see what kind of research professors are doing. If their CVs or latest publications are posted up, look and see the dates. Are people actively publishing at TCNJ? Search “undergraduate research” on both websites and see what you come up with. Ultimately, you can probably get into a theoretical physics PhD program from either school, but you may have to work harder at one or the other.</p>
<p>I also would like to note that the “Ivy League” is an athletic conference and is somewhat meaningless especially at the graduate level. There are several great physics programs outside of the Ivy League, such as Caltech, MIT, Stanford, and Chicago. And a lot of the top programs are housed at public universities, such as Berkeley, UIUC, UCSB, Michigan, UCSD, Maryland-College Park, Texas-Austin, UCLA, Colorado-Boulder and Washington. Make sure that you look carefully if and when you get to the point of selecting a PhD program and think about fit, not just prestige.</p>