<p>U of Maryland or U of Colorado for Physics and Math?</p>
<p>Can anyone provide insight into things like:</p>
<p>1) percentage of physics, math, and engineering courses taught by TAs/Grad students (teaching skill, language barrier, etc.)
2) Quality of counseling and guidance for major, class selection, etc.
3) Quality of career counseling
4) housing quality, issues,
5) Other quality of life issues like safety, student body attitude, competitiveness vs. cooperativeness, etc.
6) Anything else that affects a student's day-to-day life
7) Anything else I should know that affects the overall experience and eventual education that I didn't think of or ask?</p>
<p>I'm looking for first hand insights that go a bit deeper than rankings or what can be found in the Princeton Review type books.</p>
<p>Don't know anything about Maryland but D is majoring in Physics at CU and having a pretty good time. Just a freshman so not alot of experience but has mixed teaching reports (not necessarily correlating with professor/adjunct/grad student - some of the latter have been quite good.) Advising has been pretty attentive and, since the department is not large (student-wise), class size and school size overall has not been a problem. Its an extremely strong dept with 60 odd faculty, 3 Nobel winners, and alot of strong area-specific programs (e.g. biophysics, aeronautical physics). Tons of research opportunities and undergrads are welcome. Non-resident Honors program is mainly useful for facilitating access to smaller classes, don't know anything about residential Honors program</p>
<p>Pretty easy-going student body, not particularly cerebral, mostly white middle class liberal, moderate greek scene, lots of outdoor recreation, good weather, up-and-coming football team but otherwise not a big-time sports school. Dorm life was fine, everyone moves off campus after freshman year. Between Boulder and College Park, for me there would be no contest.</p>
<p>They are expecting 10,000 at 4/20 this Sunday.</p>