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Liberal Arts College then advanced degree in physics
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Thread starter marshallmeyer1
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I do not know what I desire to do. It may be neuroscience, it may be philosophy, it may exist physics.
I want to have an eclectic college feel, and study a niggling scrap of everything. Nonetheless I'chiliad worried that all of the HYP, MIT, and CalTech kids will be miles ahead of me in grad schoolhouse if I go to a liberal arts college, perchance major in something other than physics, so attempt to get a masters/PhD in physics
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It's definitely possible to go to a liberal-arts college and then go to grad school in physics and get a Ph.D. I did it.
Major in physics, take at least the basic "core" upper-sectionalization courses (classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics / statistical mechanics, and exercise well in them. Get some inquiry experience. Take some initiative and practice some projects on the side. (For me, information technology was messing around with computers, back in the days before personal computers.) At a small school, your profs will become to know you well and be able to write potent letters of recommendation for you lot (assuming you deserve them, of grade).
If y'all want to combine physics with something else, get a stiff minor in information technology, or peradventure even a double major.
(1) Information technology's certainly possible to get to a liberal arts college, major in something other than physics, and and so get an advanced degree in physics. I know people who have done this.
(2) If yous do this, the folks at Caltech, MIT, etc. who focused exclusively on physics
volition be miles alee of you. Don't await otherwise.
Y'all demand to deal with this trade-off.
Many people with a PhD in physics, even some Nobel Prize winners in physics, started at liberal arts colleges. But your undergraduate caste needs to be in physics. You can't go into a physics graduate program with a philosophy caste.
Practise you lot have the selection of HYP? If so, I'd seriously consider going there. You Accept to study a bit of everything there to fulfill the distribution requirements, and you have access to small classes and neat professors. In addition, you'll have a lot of physics classes that you can accept and there's a lot of inquiry happening on campus.
Aye, definitely major in physics if you desire to do grad school in physics. Actually, engineering would probably also work, if you tin also take the "core" courses I mentioned in the physics section. When I mentioned a pocket-sized, I was referring to your "other" field, philosophy or any.
lasymphonie, I probably do accept the option of HYP. Meridian of the class, peak-notch test scores, national achievements, tri-athlete, family unit connections, all that yadda-yadda. But I did all of that stuff for the intrinsic value, not to get surround myself with kids whose lives are their accolades. If y'all met me, yous'd be able to tell that I am the blazon of kid who would thrive in a very LIBERAL, liberal arts higher. Practice you lot guys think St. John'southward Higher is out of the question, then? It's a schoolhouse without tests or anything, it'southward all about word, no GPA's, and all you do is read a bunch of books and talk about them. Patently when they take the GMAT'south, GRE'southward, LSAT'due south, etc... they are one of the peak scoring schools in the land, simply I feel as though with physics information technology is necessary to get as much background knowledge as possible and there y'all all accept the same classes.
I would notwithstanding become to HYP if you had the option because if you are looking to become into them for grad school it would assistance given how incestual they are with each other.
There's a lot of differences between liberal arts colleges. Superlative 5 liberal arts colleges similar Williams regularly place students into summit physics PhD programs. Nonetheless, many liberal arts colleges like St. John's probably do not offer a sufficient groundwork in physics. You can discover where Harvard physics PhDs got their undergraduate degrees hither http://www.physics.harvard.edu/academics/phds.html#y2012. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT have the most in absolute numbers but top liberal arts colleges do very well too when you control for the size of graduating classes. Non elite liberal arts colleges aren't well represented though.
To the OP, if you're worried about people at HYP just doing things for the sake of it, please give some of these schools some other thought as the research opportunities you get here are incomparable (except potentially at schools with like endowments and large calibration research). In that location are *some* people here who do things simply for the sake of it, but those people exist everywhere - including at liberal arts colleges. I'1000 at 1 of those institutions and had the skillful fortune to be admitted to all 3, and given that I didn't fifty-fifty consider applying to American colleges until I was a senior, everything I did was out of interest and for its own benefit. Most people I know here are the aforementioned and cringe whenever they see people doing things for their resumes. And people here are very quirky (and brilliant!) - actually, you'd probably observe that a lot of people here as well applied to liberal arts colleges and were faced with a difficult decision, but ultimately came here because of the resources for inquiry and other programs.
I'm not saying that you should choose a liberal arts college over one of HYP. But definitely requite HYP some more than thought - these institutions have a *lot* in common with liberal arts colleges, have phenomenal resources, and are filled with fascinating people who aren't every bit competitive/pretentious/preprofessional as you lot may retrieve. I'd be happy to reply questions most this offline if you take any.
So, I am non sure why a physics degree from a Liberal Arts college would be an issue here. I don't have a expert fix of noesis about Liberal Arts school. However, one of my first undergraduate Summertime Intern came from Williams College. He was a physics major, and i of the smartest and brightest student I've had.
He spent a summer studying accelerator physics, and under my guidance, learned virtually the physics of Faraday Cup, and then designed 1! I assisted him in his interaction with a machinist so that he could come up upward with a technical drawing to requite to the machinist to build this device. We then tested it, and it became one of the fastest fourth dimension-response Faraday Loving cup that nosotros accept.
He went on to Oxford to pursue his PhD in experimental high energy physics (damn!!).
:)
Zz.
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