<p>I suggest you read some of the posts in the International Students forum. You will need to focus on those schools that provide FA to international students and that you can get into. That will narrow your choices. From there see which ones have good physics departments.
If possible go to a school that also has engineering so you have more major and career options.</p>
<p>Middlebury is rather liberal, although slightly less so than Reed/Wesleyan.</p>
<p>My impression is somewhat different; I find Reed & Wesleyan to be very liberal, while Middleberry is much more mainstream–which, on a spectrum of colleges, places it right of center. Bates is more liberal than Middlebury, but I haven’t been to either in several years. Certainly, none of these schools are far-right.</p>
<p>The conservative collegeguide.org rates these colleges.
Both Middlebury and Wesleyan get “red light” ratings (although Wesleyan gets the extra distinction of being a top-10 “train wreck college”). Bates gets a yellow light. </p>
<p>Reed (perhaps contrary to expectations) gets a “green light”. The review cites its demanding curriculum, core course in western civilization, and senior thesis requirement. Nevertheless, Reed has a reputation for heavy drug use (deserved or not, I can’t say.)</p>
<p>Different people define “liberal” and “conservative” differently.</p>
<p>To be perfectly frank, the only international students who have indicated that they were successful in finding a permanent job in the US with only a bachelors degree, were computer science or engineering majors. Even then, the numbers are very low because of the complicated and burdensome H-1B (work) visa process. You need to study something that will get you a job in your own country, or in another country after your student visa OPT extensions expire. Ask around in your own country. Find out if there are jobs for physics majors. Find out if employers care where you went to college. If you decide to study engineering, find out if graduates from the US can take any professional licensing exams that are needed. Be sure to plan this all out. You do not want to end up with a degree that is useless back home.</p>
<p>Okay. Btw, physics majors don’t find a lot of work here, irrespective of the country of origin of their degree. Most become teachers in schools or at coaching centres. There are a few research organizations, employers etc but yeah they are rare. And the only colleges most employers would know here would be HYPM. I’m still gathering data on this.
I think the discussion went off in the wrong direction, about the degree of liberalism of a college etc etc. I was asking about these college’s physics departments. Duke’s engineering and Reed physics looks awesome. What about the rest?</p>
<p>To my knowledge, there is no objective, reliable assessment of individual undergraduate department strengths (with a few exceptions, e.g. for engineering, CS, or business programs). Evaluating departments at small LACs is especially hard, for two reasons. First, there are no graduate department ratings (which at least allow you to compare research productivity, if that matters to you). Second, in any given department, relatively few students graduate each year. In the physical sciences (not just physics) at Bates, there seem to be under 30, based on Commmon Data Set figures (5.6% of degrees conferred in physical sciences; ~500 graduates/year). How many of them are hanging around College Confidential?</p>
<p>Probably the best you can do is browse the course listings, look up the faculty bios, and ask questions in the individual college forums. Or, maybe admissions can put you in touch with a current student or two.</p>
<p>Swarthmore, like Reed, has a very strong reputation for giving students good prep for grad school. The undergrad physics curriculum is pretty standard from school to school; you’ll want to look for things like number of undergrads involved in research, percentage who go on to grad school, number of students in the department and number of graduates, willingness of professors to work with undergrads, etc etc. </p>
<p>But this is all secondary. You need to first screen for schools that will give you enough aid to be affordable.</p>
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<p>Here are the numbers of LAC graduates who earned PhDs in physics, per school, in the past 5 years (raw numbers, not adjusted for school size).
(source: <a href=“https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/[/url]”>https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/</a>)</p>
<p>Reed College 18
Swarthmore College 17
Williams College 13
University of Puget Sound 12
Vassar College 12
Carleton College 11
Lawrence University 11
Bryn Mawr College 9
Grinnell College 9
Gustavus Adolphus College 9
Amherst College 8
Colorado College 8
Oberlin College 8
Morehouse College 7
Mount Holyoke College 7
Bucknell University 6
College of Wooster 6
College of the Holy Cross 6
Haverford College 6
Kalamazoo College 6
Luther College 6
Bard College 5
Centre College 5
Drew University 5
Hendrix College 5
Hope College 5
Kenyon College 5
Moravian College 5
University of Dallas 5
Wabash College 5
Wellesley College 5
Alma College 4
Bates College 4
DePauw University 4
Dickinson College 4
Furman University 4
Hamline University 4
Hiram College 4
Middlebury College 4
St Olaf College 4
Wesleyan University 4
Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 4
Allegheny College 3
Bowdoin College 3
Concordia College-Moorhead 3
Denison University 3
Franklin and Marshall College 3
Lewis and Clark College 3
Occidental College 3
Ohio Wesleyan University 3
Rhodes College 3
Smith College 3
Union College (Schenectady, NY) 3
University of North Carolina at Asheville 3
University of the South 3
Whitman College 3
Wofford College 3
Austin College 2
Birmingham Southern College 2
Colgate University 2
Davidson College 2
Eckerd College 2
Gordon College (Wenham, MA) 2
Goshen College 2
Guilford College 2
Hamilton College 2
Houghton College 2
Muhlenberg College 2
Nebraska Wesleyan University 2
Pomona College 2
St John’s University (Collegeville, MN) 2
University of Minnesota - Morris 2
Washington and Jefferson College 2
Westminster College (New Wilmingtn, PA) 2
William Jewell College 2
Augustana College (Rock Island, IL) 1
Beloit College 1
Bennington College 1
Bethany College (Bethany, WV) 1
Coe College 1
Colby College 1
Connecticut College 1
Cornell College 1
Earlham College 1
Erskine College 1
Gettysburg College 1
Goucher College 1
Hampden-Sydney College 1
Hampshire College 1
Hanover College 1
Illinois College 1
Illinois Wesleyan University 1
Juniata College 1
Knox College 1
Lafayette College 1
Lake Forest College 1
Macalester College 1
Millsaps College 1
Monmouth College 1
Pitzer College 1
Randolph-Macon Woman’s College 1
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey 1
Scripps College 1
Southwestern University 1
Spelman College 1
St John’s College (Annapolis, MD) 1
St John’s College (Santa Fe, NM) 1
St Lawrence University 1
St Mary’s College of Maryland 1
Transylvania University 1
Virginia Military Institute 1
Wartburg College 1
Wesleyan College 1
Westmont College 1</p>
<p>How many grads from these places are currently in PhD tracks, and at which universities? Ask those questions as well.</p>
<p>The above numbers are for earned (completed) PhDs.</p>
<p>Some schools publish general information about universities their alumni attend, such as the table at the bottom of the following page:
[REED</a> COLLEGE LIFE AFTER REED](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/success.html]REED”>Life After Reed - Institutional Research - Reed College)
However, I doubt you will find detailed public information about where those 9 Grinnell physics PhDs were earned, and so forth.</p>
<p>The individual departments would be likely to know. If a PhD is the long-range goal, this is worth investigating. PhD programs can take years to complete, so numbers of graduates within the past X years may be deceiving. There may be significantly fewer/more students in grad school now. Also if a student has a specific focus, the undergrad prep and department connections can be critical.</p>