I want to study Astronomy...what's a good U.S. based college?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I finally finished my associates degree in Business Administration this summer. Took me forever, since I kept changing my mind. Now I have it. Yay for me! The problem is, I don’t want to study that anymore. Never again. I can’t stand it any longer.

So I tried to decide what I should study. I definately want a bachelors degree, if only to feel better about myself. I eventually decided that the only thing I can remember being interested in for my entire life is astronomy.

Now I want to go to college for it. What’s a good place to go? I’m serious enough about this that I would be willing to move if I had to. Anyone here have any suggestions?

Psst…paging Chronos…

2

Astronomy grad students and grad-students-to-be often talk about the “northeast-southwest axis” of good schools. Most of the good astronomy schools are either in the Northeast (Harvard, etc) or the Southwest (Arizona, California, etc).

I was interested in planetary science and extrasolar planets. Here’s the list of schools I applied to for grad school, in no particular order:
MIT
UC Berkeley
UC Santa Cruz
Caltech
Cornell
University of Arizona
University of Colorado Boulder

Mr Neville, who is in extragalactic astronomy, applied to the following for grad school:
Princeton
UC Berkeley
University of Chicago
Harvard

We both went to University of Maryland for our undergraduate degrees.

3

The University of Texas at Austin (my alma mater). Here’s a link to the Astronomy Dept’s web page. UT is a great school, and Austin is a wonderful city.

4

Well, whatever you do, don’t try to get into the Electoral College. :cool:

5

Are there many undergraduate astronomy programs at all? I thought one usually took an BS in physics, and then began the study of actual astronomy at the graduate level.

It does seem quite a stretch from business admin.

6

Some people do. There are also BS degrees in astronomy, usually at larger research universities. It’s common for astronomy majors to have a double major in astronomy and physics, especially if they are planning to go on to graduate school.

7

You can definitely major in astronomy as an undergrad here at Cornell. Space science is quite big here, having been home to Carl Sagan. The current Mars rover missions are being directed out of Cornell. We also run the gigantic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

8

Paging Angua.

9

I’m sure it is. I somehow got it in my head when I was 18 that I had to get a degree in something that would “make me money” (whatever that meant). Now that I have a decent job, I’d rather study to improve myself and enrich my life (whatever that means).

10

If I were to get a BS in astronomy and not go on to the graduate level, what sort of job would you think I could get?

11

You won’t get a job doing research in astronomy- you would need a Ph.D. for that. You almost certainly won’t get a job teaching astronomy at a college level- you would need a Master’s at a bare minimum for that (and would have a much easier time with a Ph.D.).

You could also get a teaching credential and teach science. You could possibly become a science writer, if you’re good at writing. If you got some training in running a planetarium, you might be able to get a job doing that. You could get a job with the government, though probably not doing anything related to astronomy- they sometimes look for degrees in hard sciences, which astronomy qualifies as.

I think most of us who leave astronomy without a Ph.D. end up doing some sort of computer-related job (tech support, programming, etc).

12

Good for you! IMNSHO, the world needs more people like you. Astronomy is far from an easy major, and far from guaranteeing a lucrative job when you graduate. But life-enriching and interesting, that it definitely is.

13

I took up space in school for many years. Don’t remember nothin’ about astronomy, though.

14

If you’re willing to work outside the field of astronomy, there are lots of jobs that will be open to you just because you have a bachelor’s degree.

15

such as assistant manager at McDonald’s.(and you get to wear a real shirt with a collar while you supersize that order).

16

I’m not good enough at math to be an actual astronomer, but I am an amateur and I took a few astronomy classes in college, enough to know that my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz, has one of the top programs in the country. And it’s not that hard to get into as an undergrad, either. This is the sort of place UCSC is: Frank Drake (if you’re an astrogeek, you know who he is) teaches Intro to Astronomy.

17

Oh, and I don’t know if they let undergrads play with this sort of thing, but UCSC also runs the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in San Jose, both of which are Fancy Schmancy.

18

Thanks to all for the replies. I’m going to look into the University of Maryland for sure since I live in Northern Virginia, but I’m going to look at Cornell also.

19

They barely let us postgrads play with the things!

Well, what do you expect when we end up doing silly things like mispointing the VLA…

20

You probably aren’t going to get far in astronomy without some very serious, high level math chops, and it does not sound, from the overall context of your situation, like you possess those.

Finish your business admin degree, and lard it with as much extra-credit astro-science etc. as you want. Even if you aren’t interested in buss admin it will open more doors than almost any other degree to a variety of jobs that have nothing to do with day to day number crunching .