<p>Yeah, Harvard’s Applied Physics welcomes people with undergraduate engineering backgrounds more than the Applied Physics programs at Stanford and Caltech. But most people who apply to the program still did physics in undergraduate. Some students did Electrical Engineering and Material Science and Engineering and Chemical Physics in undergraduate. But most of them also did a minor in Physics. Which programs did you apply to?</p>
<p>There are rumors that Harvard’s Applied Physics are going to combine with Harvard Physics department. Of course, this degree remains the same. But it seems that in the future, Applied Physics and Physics will be administered in the same department. But this doesn’t change anything, all the currently active research topics in Applied Physics will remain the same. I think it is only a change in administration. I heard that it is because Applied Physics is a very active area at Harvard and Harvard is putting much commitment in further expanding and strengthening Applied Physics even though they are already well established. Therefore they need efforts and this is why they need committment from Physics department to do some administrative and planning work, including expanding, hiring, tenure tracking mentoring, qualifying mentoring, and research direction planning. And Physics department also want this because Applied Physics at Harvard has so much funding.</p>
<p>Strictly speaking, I am not sure if they will really combine. This is definitely just rumor now. This won’t affect anything anyways. Anything in Applied Physics remains the same. They will still welcome engineering major students.</p>
The current quality of research and its cutting edge nature may be more important than reputation from a historical perspective. Physics and Applied Physics & Applied Maths at Columbia University seems underestimated in the write up above .
@swiftsword09 - Please don’t post in a 6 year old thread!