Georgia Tech and Rice for Physics / Applied Physics

NiceUnparticularMan
Sat, 21 Sep 2024 13:20:33 +0000

kiasuamma:

did you mean in terms of number of faculty / research opptys? Or did you mean the number of students majoring in Physics / Applied Physics?

With “bigger undergrad Physics program” I was referring to the typical number of undergrads majoring in Physics (through graduation).

That is easy to check with NCES College Navigator, although it is important to know it can vary year to year.

Rice in this cohort had 10 Physics majors, and no Applied Physics since that department at Rice does not have an undergrad program:

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=rice&s=all&id=227757#programs

Georgia Tech had 52 Physics majors:

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=georgia+tech&s=all&id=139755#programs

It looks like they didn’t report Applied Physics separately, but I know they have it, through their Physics Department:

School of Physics – 25 Oct 22

Undergraduate Program

A Physics undergraduate degree is a window to an incredible world of exploration and application.The School of Physics offers bachelor of science degrees in physics and applied physics. The undergraduate degrees are broad based with an initial...

In contrast, counting faculty is a lot trickier, because those lists are often broken up into different categories, joint faculty can play an important role, and so on.

And then research opportunities–that is extremely complicated because more students means more competition for research opportunities, but if there are more such opportunities, it might be OK, but then what about grad students . . . just very hard to sort out.