Interesting Double Major interest

spdf
Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:14:19 +0000

It’s funny, but my daughter has the exact same interests. Knox College graduated a physics/theater double-major last year. My daughter is going to a different CTCL school.

My recommendation would be not to look for a major in astrophysics at the undergraduate level. Instead get a solid grounding in physics with a few astronomy courses added in, and then go to grad school in astrophysics. I say this because my experience with astronomy grad students at a major university is that their biggest weakness is the lack of a really solid physics background, and your son will also have many more options if he majors in physics instead of limiting himself to schools that have an astrophysics major.

As far as specific schools go, Grinnell has an active theater department, an observatory on campus, and because Grinnell doesn’t have traditional distribution requirements, schedules are freer and a lot of students double-major.