Most physics majors would look to pursue a PhD degree. An MS degree isn’t really sufficient to do much in physics and is costly, so generally only international students choose to enroll in masters programs (because they typically need a degree in an American university to be competitive for a PhD program, unless, of course, they graduated from some well-known universities overseas). To be competitive for a good PhD program, a student really needs to stand out among some of the best students anywhere. S/he needs meaningful research experiences (which s/he can’t get without sufficient theoretical preparation) and lots of relevant coursework.
This isn’t limited to physics. My S is a PhD program in AI. It’s insanely competitive (acceptance rates at the top programs are sub-1%, even for a highly self-selected group of applicants). An applicant needs every advantage s/he can get. In his area, there aren’t lots of courses (because it’s so new) to take, but he was expected to do lots of researches and to keep up with all the other researches in his area.
I don’t know which university your S attends, but my impression is that Canadian universities have somewhat higher requirements within the major, relative to American universities? Canada seems to be sort of intermediate between the US and the UK in terms of amount of the undergraduate degree devoted to the major.
(Since my son is seriously considering attending university in Canada we have been comparing each school’s curriculum in depth, and this is what we are seeing in the STEM fields he is looking at, at least.)
The conversation has turned to grad school admission. What percentage of college grads go immediately on to grad school? I think somebody thinking of law school, medical school, or a PhD program, will have more restrictions on their college course selection. Take them out of this discussion, they are the minority. They are not going to be the group of college kids who turn around the decline in humanities majors.
Law school: none, though there may be some that can look better or worse to admission readers for applicants in the borderline zone of GPA and LSAT.
Medical school: significant pre-med requirements, but not otherwise restricted.
PhD programs: depends on the PhD major as to what is required or expected. In some cases (e.g. economics), may be significantly different from the typical undergraduate major.
It sounds as if med school and law school are not a part of grad school.
I am guessing there’ll be more from the LACs.
And likely more from a place like MIT per @tsbna44 's data a few days ago.
Thinking the Princeton percentage is higher than other colleges (as a top tier school).
That 40% grad school is probably heavily influenced by MBA students. I wasn’t considering them when I posted. However, I think MBA students are a different breed than other grad students. They won’t have strict undergrad requirements, but are also generally less likely to be interested in humanities.
I’m admittedly not a physicist, but I don’t see an issue with a student pursuing more than one academic interest. I double majored in Classics and Earth & Ocean Sciences and had plenty of time to take the classes I needed, do some research projects (including a stint at the marine lab), write a senior thesis, etc. I got into virtually all of the PhD programs I applied to.
17% pursuing grad school is not especially large compared to most other colleges. The colleges with the highest percentage pursuing grad school often have a large portion of students who are unsatisfied with job opportunities, with only a bachelor’s. I mentioned U Kentucky earlier. Percent pursuing grad degrees by major is below. Note how much larger the percent pursuing grad school is the referenced 17% for Princeton, in spite of U Kentucky having a 94% admit rate. More relevant to this thread, also note how low the % employed is for most humanities majors.
History – 39% Pursuing Grad Degrees, 32% Seeking Employment, 22% Employed
Philosophy* – 33% Pursuing Grad Degrees, 43% Seeking Employment, 15% Employed
English – 30% Pursuing Grad Degrees, 39% Seeking Employment, 26% Employed
All Majors – 28% Pursuing Grad Degrees, 32% Seeking Employment, 38% Employed
*Small Sample
I am assuming this is from a survey they give around graduation time. I would hope that many of the seeking employment end up being employed in a reasonable time frame.
Thinking some more about this - if 1/3 of your graduating class in all majors (including STEM and Business) - are still looking for employment 6 months after graduation - this would be a red flag to me to not attend that college. (I know this is completely off the thread topic).
I looked at my daughter’s high school 4 year English curriculum very carefully. Nobody had noticed before, that not one single book in the curriculum was happy. They even only read Shakespeare tragedies. No wonder those HS kids didn’t enjoy their English classes.
My kids complained that English is depressing and very dark. My wife looked through the reading and said this is really dark stuff – even at young ages – 7th or 8th grade.
Reminds me of a passage from Gordon Korman’s No More Dead Dogs.
“Old Shep, My Pal is a timeless classic!” roared the teacher. “It won the Gunhold Award! It was my favorite book growing up. Everybody loves it.” He turned to the rest of the class. “Right?”
The reaction was a murmur of mixed reviews.
“It was okay, I guess.”
“Not too bad.”
“Why did it have to be so sad?”
“Exactly!” Fogelman pounced on the comment. “It was sad. What a heartbreaking surprise ending!”
“I wasn’t surprised,” I said. “I knew Old Shep was going to die before I started page one.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the teacher snapped. “How?”
I shrugged. “Because the dog always dies. Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down.”
“Not true!” stormed Mr. Fogelman.
“Well,” I challenged, “what happened to Old Yeller?”
“Oh, all right,” the teacher admitted. “So Old Yeller died.”
“What about Sounder?” piped up Joey Quick.
“And Bristle Face,” added Mike “Feather” Wrigley, one of my football teammates.
“Don’t forget Where the Red Fern Grows,” I put in. “The double whammy-two dogs die in that one.”
