<p>Ready.....Set.....Go! ;)</p>
<p>My good friend is very interested in astronomy. She told me some top schools are Stanford U., U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she said that Kenyon C. is a good liberal arts college with that major.</p>
<p>Any up in the Northeast?</p>
<p>Cornell, Arizona, Wisconsin are all good programs.</p>
<p>In the Northeast:</p>
<p>Cornell
Harvard
Wesleyan (surprisingly?)
Princeton
Columbia
MIT</p>
<p>billions and billions of others.</p>
<p>Northeast-
~ Harvard
~ MIT
~ Princeton
~ Columbia
~ Cornell
~ University of Pennsylvania
~ Penn State
~ Haverford, Swarthmore</p>
<p>A good trick in finding a good school in astronomy is take a look to see if the school has good engineering/ physics. DO NOT skimp out on physics, because that's basically what astronomy and cosmology is! Undergrad is for learning physics honestly, the understanding is you can always learn astro/cosmo in grad school but will be lost without a good background.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice! Also what kind of financial opportunity is associated with these majors? I am very interested in Cosmology, but I not so sure there is opportunity for a high paying salary.</p>
<p>Well the thing about cosmology and the like is there really isn't a great financial incentive in the field itself. If you become an astrophysicist of sorts you are going to do it most likely as a professor, so while you'll have a relatively comfortable salary you won't be incredibly wealthy either. On the plus side you won't need to pay for graduate school, unlike if you wanted to go to med school or law school.</p>
<p>I will note, however, that a LOT of people who major in physics and the like do end up going on to becoming engineers or working on Wall Street and the like- only 1 in 20 people with physics degrees actually end up becoming professors, believe it or not! The reason for this is astro/cosmology/physics/whatever gives you a very good ability to solve problems, which really pays off in the world of finance if you're interested in that later on.</p>
<p>Work on Wall Street with a degree in Cosmology??? Wow, interesting.....</p>
<p>My freshman brother is an avid astronomer and very interested in astrophyics. He and my dad determined that Stanford had the most attractive offerings.</p>
<p>^
My friend felt the same way. Stanford is very strong in the astrophysics department. Unfortunately, she was rejected early, even with extremely high stats.</p>
<p>Caltech is amazing for astronomy and astrophysics, but is not in the northeast :)</p>
<p>U of Iowa. Previous home of Prof. Van Allen.</p>
<p>The University of Arizona is hard to beat in Astronomy. From my friends in the field, that's the one place that always drew "oohs" from the crowd. Great facilities, good school, yada, yada, yada. </p>
<p>I'm not sure if that's for undergrad or grad school though.</p>
<p>Take a look at who ran the whole Mars project and you have your answer. Great student involvement and several professors directing various aspects, including overall managment of program, a good deal directly from Ithaca.</p>
<p>University of Arizona is the school to go to for astronomy GRAD school, not undergrad (program's not bad for undergrad, but better elsewhere). I will also note that a degree in "cosmology" pure and simple does not really exist because it's too specialized- heck, I can't even think of a school that offers it as a PhD! Most astronomy/physics departments offer a semester or two of classes on the material however.</p>
<p>For astronomy/cosmology, I'd say UC Berkeley, Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, and MIT.</p>