" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

MSU

wrote:
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in
the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

Doug Miller


uhmmm... caltech?

" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

Doug Miller


Take a math degree first, then physics later.
You are going to need math anyway, no matter what.
Androcles.

" wrote:

I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

Look up American Physical Society or American Institute of Physics
statistics. MIT, Caltech... any major school is good. You need a
good math department, too.

"Good" is not the criterion. Everybody gets at least a B (Not MIT or
caltech) or the school gets sued for discrimination against the
stupid. Your BS won't be worth squat if all it contains is your chair
parade in lectures. You must do undergrad independent research. The
more the better, as in three+ years' worth and some summers. Get down
and push. If you aren't passionate you should not be in a physical
sciences major.

Find faculty whose current work interests you. E-mail them. When you
find interesting and cooperative advisors, go on from there. BTW, if
you want to get admitted to any university you will have a much better
chance against "diversity" if you have somebody pulling for you on the
inside. Otherwise you have no chance at all against a ****** palming
a basketball or a Mex with a couple of ******* kids demanding her
rights.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 11:22:40 -0500, AllYou! wrote:


" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

MSU

I got my physics degree from the University of Illinois,
Champaign/Urbana. They have an excellent program. Let me know if you
have any specific questions, and I can try to answer them.

Chad

"Australopithecus scobis" wrote in message
news
wrote:
US, but I will consider schools abroad.
What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

MIT.

e to the x du dx
e to the x dx
cosine secant tangent sine
3 point 1 4 1 5 9

integral, square root
u dv
slipstick, sliderule
MIT

GO TECH!

Stanford and Princeton are pretty good, too. Oxbridge and Camford, of
course.

--
MIT '79

TinWoodsmn, '56

U.C. Berkeley.

" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live
in the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

I think you're going about this the wrong way (in more ways than one,
but I'll focus on one for now). While it's probably possible to make
a quick top ten list of physics departments based on research output
and reputation, I don't think that's going to tell you much at all
about the quality of the undergraduate education you'd get there. I
used to teach at a public university with 40,000 students, and while
a few of those students certainly got a world-class education, the
masses did not-- it's simply not possible given the size of the
place. Most physics classes at the lower levels there were lectures
with 500+ students and a half-dozen TAs doing all the heavy lifting.

For the last eight years I've taught at a much smaller private
school. Here our largest class of any kind is the fall section of
intro biology, and it's capped at 75 (16 per lab section). There are
no TAs. Sophmore physics majors are rarely in classes with more than
16 students total (our standard lab section size) and the upper
division courses are almost always smaller than 10. We graduate
perhaps 6-8 physic majors each year, but have six full-time
physicists on the faculty. A few students from each class also go
into 3-2 programs with larger public schools, doing three years here
before moving on.

Small schools may not have nuclear reactors or particle accelerators,
but what they do have are faculty who will know you by name. We offer
research opportunities to all of our physics majors (actually, to
almost all of our students in any major). We have a close to 100%
placement rate among physic graduates applying to graduate school.
These majors know each other, know their profs, never meet a TA, and
often have their own labs to work in. I know there's nothing
comparable at any of the universities people will label "the best"
places to study physics.

Just a thought to keep in mind. I chair the environmental studies
department at our school, so have no connection to physics other than
occasionally teaching some of their students taking core classes. But
if my kids were interested in a physics major, I'd send them to a
liberal arts school long before we looked at any research university.

Regards,

Derek

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:47:13 -0600, Australopithecus scobis
wrote:

wrote:
US, but I will consider schools abroad.
What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

MIT.

e to the x du dx
e to the x dx
cosine secant tangent sine
3 point 1 4 1 5 9
GO TECH!

If you had the brains God gave a doorknob you wouldn't be posting this
BS [as close as you'll come to the real thing] here.

wrote:
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in
the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

Doug Miller


Here is my honest opinion, take it or leave it.

Where you get a physics undergraduate degree is not nearly as important
as where you continue as a graduate student. As an undergraduate, it
will be far more important that you get a good spectrum across the
curriculum -- in other words, a good liberal arts background. If you
are going to stop at an undergraduate degree in physics, then choosing
an excellent undergraduate school will not be an advantage in the
marketplace.

I would recommend, in fact, that you go to a good state school (even
one in your home state) that has a physics department of at least 15
faculty and an active research program in at least four different
sub-disciplines (e.g. solid-state, nuclear, particle, cosmology, etc.).
It would be best if you could determine the quality of teaching in the
department. Has anyone won a University teaching award? Are the
classrooms equipped with modern technology? Is there a dedicated lab
coordinator? Finally, because physics is often a feeder curriculum into
other majors (pre-meds, engineering, etc), you should find out the
make-up of the students who take the physics curriculum. For your
graduate future, it will be important to get some summer research
internship opportunities, so you should check for activity in the
department in that regard.

I guarantee that you cannot reliably predict at this point what
subdiscipline you will find yourself interested in. Once you do, then
you will know a lot more about what departments have good reputations
in those subdisciplines, and who the "players" are at those departments
that you will want to try to get in good graces with. You'll also have
a good idea at that point how good you are and what your prospects of
succeeding competitively in that department. At that stage, the rules
are completely different.

PD

Note follow-ups.

AllYou! wrote:
" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in
the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?


Perhaps this should be discussed in sci.physics.

--

FF

" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to study physics at a good college or university. I live in the
US, but I will consider schools abroad. What are some of the top
institutions to consider for an undergrad physics major?

Doug Miller




http://tinyurl.com/4768w points to a search result on amazon that lists
books which answers precisely the question you asked. Your decision about
which university to attend hinges on too many undefined variables. Good
luck on your search.

-Derek.

"PD" wrote in news:1106060905.356723.125020
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

I take it you've heard of the Ivy League...?