The Best Astrophysics Institutions for Americans.

College Search & Selection
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<p>Eyes on the skies</p>

<p>By Spencer Hunt
The Columbus Dispatch Sunday May 27, 2012 8:25 AM </p>

<p>OSU super- cameras, telescopes will help locate hard-to-find Earth-like planets</p>

<p>Taking a picture of the night sky is relatively easy if you have a decent camera with the right settings.</p>

<p>Taking a series of pictures of millions of stars in hopes of finding faint flickers of light to detect hidden Earth-like planets?</p>

<p>Not so easy.</p>

<p>In fact, you need three cameras. Three, 340-megapixel cameras.</p>

<p>That don’t exist. Yet. * A team of Ohio State University astronomers and engineers is building the cameras with the help of a $5 million contract with the Korea Astronomy and Space Sciences Institute. </p>

<p>The cameras will be mounted atop custom-built telescopes that will be installed in observatories in Australia, Chile and South Africa.</p>

<p>Continue to read and see the breakthrough “Microlensing Telescope” diagram…</p>

<p>Source: [Eyes</a> on the skies | The Columbus Dispatch](<a href=“http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2012/05/27/eyes-on-the-skies.html]Eyes”>http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2012/05/27/eyes-on-the-skies.html)</p>

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<p>Small Telescope Helps Make Big Discovery</p>

<p><a href=“Small Telescope Helps Make Big Discovery - The New York Times”>Small Telescope Helps Make Big Discovery - The New York Times;

<p>Bump!!</p>

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<p>^ I did ctrl + f then typed ohio in that article and, surprise surprise, Sparkeye7 makes another shameless OSU plug.</p>

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<p>^^ As always, thanks for the acknowledgement, dfree124!!
I will highlight for you this time!! :p</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>*With all the recent advancements and discoveries, tOSU is destined to move into the Top-5 imho. Go Bucks!! :)</p>

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<p>Wow! Awesome thread, and thanks for the bump. You said that these reflect both the undergrad and grad rankings, but it seems like undergrad education isn’t necessarily the same because undergrad quality largely depends on the focus on teaching, ability to teach, and availability of research opportunities for undergrads.</p>

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<p>What exactly is the difference between those schools listed in The Shangri-La List and The Elite 5 list?</p>

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<p>The Elite 5= Education + Job
Shangri-La= Brand name + Setting + Funding + Education + job
(Both are only extensions of the “Ivory” which is the main list. ie- The other lists are only comparisons of specific characteristics)</p>

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<p>Sooo… How do you know that the undergraduate experience at each of these schools is just as proportional to the graduate education?</p>

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<p>Thanks so much for this list! It is really helpful :slight_smile: I have a question - what do you think of liberal arts schools such as Haverford and Swarthmore? How are their programs, do you know? For me, distance is a problem, so I am only allowed to apply to Caltech on the west coast (still trying to convince parents otherwise!), and Michigan and Penn State both have very little need-based aid for me. I think I’m good enough to get some merit aid, but I’m not sure if the aid will be good enough to offset the high cost (>$40000 at both places). Haverford and Swarthmore both seem interesting, and are close to home, but I was wondering how their programs are.</p>

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<p>creacher, what is your methodology? how do you measure “quality of the education, research, connections, and student outcome”? What kind(s) of outcome(s) do you measure, and what are your data sources? How do you weigh these criteria/measurements for an overall ranking?</p>

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<p>“University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. (Unemployment)”</p>

<p>Sophomoric</p>

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<p>I would think that many students who want to study astrophysics in top undergraduate programs would seriously consider going on to doctoral programs in related fields. To these students, it might be important to observe which college departments seem to do the best job of attracting students, then motivating and preparing them to complete PhDs in those fields.</p>

<p>According to National Science Foundation data available on the webcaspar.com site, these are the 25 top colleges for PhD production in physics (based on the percentage of alumni earning doctorates in physics between 2007-2011):</p>

<p>California Institute of Technology
Harvey Mudd College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Swarthmore College
Reed College
Bryn Mawr College
Harvard University
Lawrence University
Williams College
University of Chicago
Haverford College
Princeton University
Carleton College
Stanford University
Rice University
Cornell University
Grinnell College
Rensselear
Vassar College
University of California-Berkeley
Colorado College
Johns Hopkins University
Columbia University in the City of New York
Oberlin College
Brown University</p>

<p>(Compare to the “physical science” list on this page: <a href=“Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College”>http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

<p>My list is based on alumni PhDs earned in physics during 2007,2008,2009,2010, and 2011.<br>
It does not include PhDs earned in astronomy.
The ranking above is based on the percentage of all alumni earning physics PhDs, which I approximate based on the number of PhDs earned over the 5 year period, divided by the number of undergraduates (available from Wikipedia).</p>

<p>There are other methods to measure and compare PhD productivity (for example, normalizing by program size, i.e. measuring only the percentage of physics majors who go on to earn physics PhDs). Using this method, according to my calculations based on Common Data Set data (section J, “degrees conferred”), the colleges where the greatest percentage of physics majors go on to earn physics PhDs (> 20%) include: Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, and Lawrence. The colleges where the next greatest percentage of physics majors go on to earn physics PhDs (10% - 20%) include: MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, and Williams. I don’t have CDS data for Chicago. I haven’t calculated the percentage for every school listed above (nor for colleges not listed above). One might get a more accurate count of graduating majors by using IPEDS rather than CDS and enrollment data.</p>

<p>Of course, many strong physics (/astronomy) students, even in the best physics (/astronomy) programs, won’t choose to pursue graduate degrees at all. PhD productivity is but one possible outcome measurement (although I believe that of all available outcome metrics, it may be the one that best reflects department academic quality.)</p>

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<p>Thanks so much! That was really helpful. Do you mind including the exact link to the website where you found the list of top 25 universities for physics Ph.D production from? I tried to look, but couldn’t find the list by subject area. Thanks! </p>