<p>Can anyone tell me how Michigan Tech’s and Illinois Institute of Technology’s undergraduate physics programs are? I saw that U.S. News ranks their graduate programs both at 123. Michigan Tech is a very viable option for me price wise too.</p>
<p>I can tell you about the Illinois Tech physics program, I will let someone more knowledgeable tell you about Michigan Tech.</p>
<p>Having been a physics professor at IIT for the past 31 years, I have seen a lot of undergraduate and graduate students and advised many of them. The USNWR graduate school rankings in physics are merely popularity contests, there is little or no quantitative data involved. The survey is taken by Department Chairs and Graduate Program Directors and they are asked to rank all the graduate programs. When they have to assign a rating to a smaller program like that at IIT (16 faculty), they just don’t know what to say and at best a neutral score is given. When you know someone personally at a school, your opinion of the program will go up. Just human nature… </p>
<p>For this reason, these rankings are relatively useless because they tell you only about the schools you already know about because they are the ones everyone always mentions. Furthermore, the graduate rankings have little to do with how good an undergraduate education you can get at a particular university.</p>
<p>Now for the information. Illinois Tech has a relatively small undergraduate program with about 50 students total. Students who are interested in research can get involved quite early and our best students get into highly selective programs for graduate school and usually perform above average in their coursework and qualifying examinations (this is information obtained from students themselves who have come back to IIT and discussed their first years in a Ph.D. program). Our physics B.S. degree includes a rigorous upper division (Junior & Senior) preparation in Classical Mechanics (2 semesters), Electrodynamics (2 semesters), Quantum Mechanics (2 semesters), Statistical Physics (1 semester), Computational Physics (2 semesters). advanced undergraduates often take graduate courses as electives and do quite well with the plus that they are then even better prepared for a Ph.D. program.</p>
<p>If you have other questions, just ask.</p>
<p>I’ve been looking into IIT a bit and it looks like a place that I might be able to enjoy myself at and I love the city of Chicago, but a big factor will be how much aid I receive. How generous is IIT’s financial aid?
Also, since Fermilab and Argonne are both nearby is there any ever collaboration between the school and the two? Do students ever participate in research or internships at either places or do schools generally not collaborate with laboratories outside of their school?</p>
<p>Like many smaller private universities, IIT offers a good amount of merit aid. In addition, there are the [url="<a href=“http://admissions.iit.edu/undergraduate/finances/camras-scholars-program"]Camras[/url">http://admissions.iit.edu/undergraduate/finances/camras-scholars-program"]Camras[/url</a>] and [url=”<a href=“http://admissions.iit.edu/undergraduate/finances/duchossois-leadership-scholars-program]Duchossois[/url”>Duchossois Leadership Scholars Program | Illinois Institute of Technology]Duchossois[/url</a>] Scholarships which are very selective but also provide full tuition at least. The Camras Scholarship interviewees are selected by the admissions office from the top 25% of the applicant pool while applicants have to fill out the Duchossois application themselves.</p>
<p>There is plenty of collaboration with Argonne. I have been working closely with Argonne scientists for my entire 31 years in the physics department. IIT runs three beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source, we have one joint faculty position in chemistry and we have a lot of graduate students and undergraduates who do research at Argonne. As far as FemiLab goes, the physics department has 1 joint faculty position and lots of our faculty and students do research there.</p>