Best LACs for Physics...

College Search & Lists
1

Which of the following LACs is the best for majoring in Physics: Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Bucknell, Grinnell, Wesleyan. Any specific advantages and disadvantages would be helpful…

2

Bucknell is sort of an outlier socially. It is very preppy, very Greek and very much the classic work hard, party hard school. It is also a Division 1 school. It is a boisterous school.

I don’t think any have much of an edge academic ally over the others, but Swarthmore fans would certainly disagree.

It depends what type of environment you want.

3

Here’s how the USNWR top 40 LACs stack up in PhD production in physics and astronomy since 1980:

238 Harvey Mudd
170 Carleton
125 Swarthmore
116 Reed*
95 Oberlin
90 Williams
72 Wesleyan
68 Haverford
67 Amherst
62 USAFA
59 Grinnell
51 Vassar
47 Pomona
46 Bucknell
44 Bryn Mawr / Whitman
41 Kenyon / Wellesley
40 USMA
38 Middlebury
37 Colorado College / Franklin & Marshall
35 Bates / Colgate
34 Macalester / USNA
31 Bowdoin
30 Mount Holyoke
26 Dickinson
24 Colby / Union
23 Davidson
22 Lafayette
17 Smith
15 Hamilton
14 Barnard
5 Claremont McKenna / Washington & Lee
3 Pitzer
1 Holy Cross / Scripps / Skidmore

*Notable outlier not in the USNWR top 40

4

Bucknell has never been ranked in the top 20.

5

I don’t think anyone on this forum can answer this question.
For one thing, there won’t be a clear consensus on what we mean by “best”.

A few things you might want to consider:

  • course offerings
  • requirements for the major
  • faculty bios (look at the number of professors, the specialties they cover, where they received their doctorates, and their publication histories
  • facilities
  • research opportunities
  • student outcomes
  • personal “fit” with respect to whatever is important to you (location, weather, Greek & sports scene, etc. etc.)

With respect to outcomes, the list below shows the number of physics PhDs earned by alumni of those colleges from 2008-2012:
20 Swarthmore
11 Amherst, Grinnell
7 Wesleyan
6 Bowdoin, Bucknell

That isn’t the only academic outcome in which Swarthmore would top the list.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/swarthmore-among-best-schools-forging-advancements-science-study-shows

6

Of your listed colleges, Bucknell, Swarthmore and Wesleyan have produced Apker Award recipients (for undergraduate research in physics). This is an indirect – and very rough – indicator that these colleges have supported the research efforts of their undergraduates majoring in physics. Other LACs that have had at least one winner:

Colgate
Franklin & Marshall
Hamilton
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Middlebury
Mt. Holyoke
Oberlin
Williams

Of all of the above, the following have had graduates who have won a Nobel Prize in a science field:

Hamilton
Haverford
Oberlin
Swarthmore

(Source for AA information: The American Physical Society.)

7

@tk21769 has hit the nail on the head: it really doesn’t matter whether Swarthmore has more grads get physics PhDs than Bowdoin: they are such different universities that you are unlikely to be happy at both. I can’t imagine somebody who is happy at Bucknell being equally happy at Grinnell. And none of them are so much better than the others at physics that it would be worth being in a place that didn’t fit.

One of the things we learned in our college tours with D2 (now a physics major) was that the major requirements for physics are harmonised: pretty much any college you go to to will have all of the courses you need for grad school covered in the major. The differences will be in elective courses and research opportunities. All of the schools you list pride themselves on supporting their students and on making research opportunities available.

So, imo, your best bet is to short list the schools that appeal to you most, and go meet the people in the physics department: they will be the biggest variable. Smaller schools means smaller departments, which means fewer professors, which means that the fit matters more than it would in a bigger school

8

This is not necessarily true, since physics tends to be a smaller major, so some schools with very few physics majors may not offer some of the core physics majors frequently enough (the physics department may be busy offering service courses for pre-meds and biology majors). But it should be easy enough to check for the following advanced physics courses and the frequency of offering in the catalogs and schedules on each school’s web site:

intermediate/advanced mechanics
electromagnetism and optics (often 2 semesters)
quantum mechanics (often 2 semesters)
statistical and thermal physics
intermediate/advanced lab (often 2 semesters)

9

@ucbalumnus, we were told this by the physics departments at several LACs and universities, and a survey of some of the leading PhD programs in physics would seem to confirm it- they mostly just look for a physics major. Very few of the ones that we checked list specific courses, and the ones that do are pretty broad. For example, CalTech:

Cornell just says that

It is true that the frequency of the offerings can be a challenge in smaller colleges (hence D2 is taking 3 physics classes this term, as one that is important for the physics GRE is only offered every other year), but a physics major at any of the usual suspects of selective LACs (notably, those listed above) will certainly be sufficient for applying to grad school.