Does columbia make sense for an aspring physicist?

xraymancs
Sun, 23 Aug 2015 02:58:27 +0000

Since you clearly are talking about an undergraduate degree, then you need to know that it is almost all theoretical and, more importantly, the undergraduate physics degree in the U.S. is almost identical in content at any U.S. university. I have been a physics professor for over 30 years and I see a lot of graduate applications. All students take the same courses with mostly the same books. Furthermore, as others have pointed out, U.S. universities all require some general education courses. This is not the same in Europe, for example, but there is an extra year of high school in most European countries and a national examination that needs to be passed to complete high school. This is not so in the U.S. and so there is a long tradition of general education making up a significant part of the curriculum.

Finally, you say that you want to be a theoretical physicist. You should understand that you will only reach that goal after 5 to 6 years as a Ph.D. student taking advanced physics classes (all theory) and learning the trade of a theoretical physicist through your research for 3-4 of those years. Speaking about studying theoretical physics as an undergraduate is just simply not correct, no undergraduate has the tools to be doing real theoretical physics.

What does this mean for the question of whether Columbia is a good place to study physics as an undergraduate? The answer is that it is a fine place, as are many, many other universities. It Columbia gives you what you want in your overall undergraduate education then it is the place for you. If you find a university which better matches your ideas of an undergraduate education, then I am pretty sure their physics program will be more than fine too.