<p>Does anyone know what the best liberal arts college for physics are? Thanks</p>
<p>Carleton, Reed, Swarthmore, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Haverford, Grinnell, Williams, Whitman, Amherst, Goshen, Marlboro, Rose-Hulman, Stevens Institute of Technology, Oberlin, Wabash, Gustavus Adolphus, Colorado School of Mines, Bryn Mawr College, Lawrence U, Wesleyan U, Bethel, Pomona, William and Mary, St. Olaf College, Beloit, Bates, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Kalamazoo, Earlham, Hastings, Kenyon, Rhodes, Macalester, Franklin and Marshall, Bowdoin, Clarkson</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd (~750 students) and Caltech (~900 students) are small and extremely strong in physics. Rice and Case Western (to a lesser extent) could also be considered LAC-like in terms of size.</p>
<p>I don't know specifically what the top LACs in physics are, but I think that Harvey Mudd College is a good option for you. If you haven't heard of it, this LAC specializes in technical fields (math, sciences, engineering, comp sci) and is a good alternative to MIT/Caltech. It's located in Claremont, CA alongside the other Claremont Colleges. Take a look at it.</p>
<p>How do Wesleyan U's and Amherst College's physics programs compare to Harvey Mudd's, Carleton's, and Williams' programs?</p>
<p>bballvas,</p>
<p>the problem is that nobody on this site is going to have significant experience with more than one of those schools... how would they compare?</p>
<p>i can tell you that I got my PhD from Berkeley in astrophysics, and knew fellow grad students who got their undergrad degrees from all 5 of those LACs... any one them will give you an outstanding undergrad education in physics, so you should make a choice based on other factors.</p>
<p>LACs for Physics from Rugg's
Barnard
Bates
Bryn Mawr
carleton
Centre
Dickinson
Franklin and Marshall
Grinnell
Gustavus Adolphus
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
kalamazoo
Lawrence
Macalester
Occidental
Reed
Rhodes
St Olaf
Smith
Swarthmore
Wellesley
Wheaton
Whitman
**From somebody else's post</p>
<p>"How do Wesleyan U's and Amherst College's physics programs compare to Harvey Mudd's, Carleton's, and Williams' programs?"</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd as one of the best physics programs in the nation...even when put up against MIT, Caltech, Stanford, or Harvard.</p>
<p>HMC is the sciences LAC. Perhaps it should not be in this comparison.</p>
<p>check out:</p>
<p>In particular, the Apker awards are a great indication. Physics, and particularly Astrophysics, is very strong at Williams.</p>
<p>I think the distinction at Wesleyan is that with the help of only a few Ph.D students they are able to keep research projects going full-time, 365 days a year, not just during summer vacation; this helps pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of grants over the space of many years, resulting in a significant body of work. The best thing, of course, is that undergraduates get to experience all of this up close, often resulting in co-authored, peer reviewed papers of their own:
<a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/newsletter/campus/0806morgan.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.wesleyan.edu/newsletter/campus/0806morgan.html</a></p>