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Many, many physics majors end up with at least a math minor w/o trying, b/c of their major requirements, so physics PhD programs are well used to seeing that.
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PhD programs care about your work in their field. If your son double majored in French and Physics and applied for a Physics Phd program the only time his French background would come into play would be if it was somehow relevant to the work they were doing. A PhD in Math is a very different beast than a PhD in Physics, despite the overlap in their underpinnings. To that end…
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If a PhD is a likely path the sooner he starts doing research the better. He needs to know 1) if he likes doing research and 2) what, in particular, interests him, and there is no way to know that without just doing it.
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Computational physics is a thing- and you either like it or you don’t! The physics collegekid spent a summer at Sandia National Labs in NM doing computational physics. It was an REU through the NSF (she also did one at Argonne), and they were transformational for her.
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