<p>PMed you her school.</p>
<p>You could call various schools, but you might get better responses and more detailed answers if you emailed various physics depts with specific questions. Look at the dept page for the undergrad advisor’s name–and contact him/her.</p>
<p>DH was PhD research physicist and he either knew someone at all the U’s D1 applied or or knew someone who knew someone. (The profession isn’t all that big when you’ve been active in it for a couple for decades.) He researched the dept offerings and contacted individuals he knew to get their personal assessment of the dept’s strength.</p>
<p>If I were you, I’d draw up a list of potential schools, then check the physics offerings at those schools. See how often key courses are offered. At smaller schools, upper level electives/requirements (stat mech, quantum, thermo) may be only offered every second or third year. (Every other year is OK so long as you plan carefully; other 3rd year is not.)</p>
<p>I’d also look for things like student research opportunities. (DH had trouble finding a research lab for physics at his LAC and ended up doing his senior thesis in chemistry. His only other choice was to drive 80 mile several time each week to work in a lab at different school. D2’s has a friend who was a physics major at SLAC, and he couldn’t find any research opportunities at the school and spent his summers doing REUs OOS to get any research opportunities at all.) The reason physics major have problems finding research at small schools is because state-of-the-art physics labs are very expensive to build, run and staff. Physics is also usually a small dept.</p>
<p>I would also check to see what research areas various profs are working in and if they have published anything (and anything recently). You can find this out by looking at the name of physics dept faculty on the physics dept page and then checking out their individual pages.</p>
<p>You might also see how many physics students there are at the school. It’s helpful to have a critical mass of students. If a school only averages 3-4 physics majors a year–it might be tough to find a compatible peer group to study with. (You can find out the number of physics majors by looking at graduation stats to see how many physics degrees have been awarded in the last year or two.) Also with that small of a cohort–key classes can get unexpectedly cancelled. (A number of smaller colleges are actually closing their physics dept because they cannot get a sufficient number of majors enrolling. It’s a terrible thing!)</p>
<p>Hope this advice heps!</p>