Ok, so I’ve decided to attempt at majoring in Physics. It’s a subject that has always interested me, as I’ve read many books on the subject, such as Brian Green’s “The Elegant Universe”, and Neil de Grasse Tyson’s “Death By Black Hole”.
I’ve always been a very strong math student, getting nearly 700 on the SAT without a calculator. Currently I’m attending Community College, due to mistakes I made after high school.
My question is, what can I expect my workload to be when I’m able to transfer to a university? After I get a degree in Physics, what sort of job opportunities will that afford me?
Your workload will depend on how easy or difficult you find the material. You won’t be overloaded with exercises, but you might spend hours trying to solve just one problem. In my experience, most undergraduate physics work is done the night before it is due.
Unless you’re in an astronomy or cosmology program, you probably won’t run into much from the books you’ve read. You’re gonna be working on problems that got solved a hundred years ago. Mechanics, Electrodynamics, and Thermodynamics. It’s more solving problems than pondering the universe. I’d highly recommend getting research experience if at all possible.
Job prospects for a pure physics bachelor’s degree are pretty scant. Most go onto graduate school or do applied or engineering physics to be more attractive to employers. It’s better than a liberal arts degree, but the work you put in won’t really pay off unless you go to grad school. Plus you get to learn that everything you thought you knew was just a simplified case.
Congratulations on your decision. I hope you have fun in school.
As AdmiralCrunch suggests, completing problem sets is going to take up most of your time. On the one hand, I never would have made it through my upper-level physics courses without the help of my fellow students: we worked on problems as a group, which made the process considerably more efficient. On the other hand, I never really developed much in the way of independent skills - problem sets carried me through the courses as I did abysmally on most of the exams.
As it is, I’m very interested in an Astronomy degree, if such a degree exists, I’m not sure. Since right now I’m stuck trying to get my scholarship situation fixed, and am at community college, would it be in my best interest to take as many math classes as possible, as well as the lower level sciences? Would an Associates in Mathematics be a wise choice?
Assuming that I do get a B.S. in Physics, and get into Grad School for that, what sort of experience might I look forward to with that?
I’m also a big fan of physics and am looking forward to my college-level courses in it. I’ve heard that an education in physics combined with health studies can get you into a lucrative field of creating technology for the health care system. I’m planning on heading to medical school in a few years but if I can’t get in (lots want in, but only so many seats are available each year) then I would definitely consider that direction. Sounds pretty cool.
I’m a big fan of physics as well, read a lot of the pop books in the subject, but unfortunately I suck at math. I want to major in a natural science - either physics or astronomy (or the “Earth and Space Exploration” program at ASU that combines several natural sciences) but I just don’t know if I can pull it off at this point. I have 56 credits right now - 8 of them natural sciences and only 5 of them math. So I would have to throw away a lot of time, effort, and money. My eventual goal is to teach college so I can major in anything I want but I really love science.
Some colleges offer an astronomy major, some don’t. It’s not as popular as, say, an English major, but it doesn’t seem to be rare by any means. My advice regarding what to take is to pick a university you want to attend and then sit down with an academic advisor (at your school) and a program requirements checklist from the university. That’s what I plan to do near the end of this semester to see if changing over to a natural science is practical for me.
Congrats!
The other posts pretty well summed up the undergrad experience. Lots of problems to solve whose solutions were worked out 100 years ago. You aren’t really learning how to calculate the coefficient of friction of a block on an inclined plane, you are learning how to think. How to work through a problem and stick to the path that gives the correct answer as opposed to an incorrect answer. Believe me, the difference is rarely obvious when you start!
As to job prospects, the only job a BS in Physics directly prepares you for is grad school. That said, your ability to think is worthwhile in a lot of fields-but it will be up to you to identify those fields and convince them of your talents. Research experience is a plus. Programming is also a required skill.
As my fellow physics majors (and I must admit myself) would tell each other, Physics is the only real science-everything else is just Applied Physics or… Engineering!
We didn’t say that much outside of physics study sessions…
At least one professor is not in favor of undergrad astronomy programs as preparation for grad school in astronomy. I don’t know how widespread that view is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is fairly mainstream. (Read the rest of that article; grad school in physics and astronomy is highly competitive, so knowing what looks good on an application now will help you to prepare.)
For now, I think the math associates is a good plan. Most physics majors find that they can pick up a math major with a few extra classes, so that should give you some idea as to how math-intense the degree is. You’ll definitely be expected to know how to program, so life will be easier for you if you take at least one programming class early on.
I can’t speak specifically about being a physics major, but I was a math major, and there’s some similarity. One major difference that you’ll find between you and your friends in the liberal arts is that their grade on an assignment/project/etc. is going to increase as they spend more time on it, whereas there’s no such relation for you. If you’re lucky and see the trick to solving a problem early on, you’ll be done quickly. If not, you can struggle for a long time and get nowhere. It’s hard, but if you really love it, it’s worth doing.
Your physics curriculum, if you take only what is required, is going to leave you lacking in the credits necessary for med school – specifically, Chem 101 (with lab), Bio (with lab), and Organic Chem (hard, with lab).
Physics beyond the first couple of years is not about big-picture stuff. It’s about a lot (and, I mean a lot) of special-function calculus and wave-state math. Be prepared for that.
When I was at the University of Maryland in 1998, almost all of the astronomy majors who were considering grad school had a double major in physics. We had to take the physics GRE, so those upper-level physics classes were necessary.
Even if you don’t double major in physics, you should take the senior physics major classes in classical mechanics, electricity & magnetism, thermodynamics, and modern physics. You will need to know that stuff for the physics GRE, which you will need to have any real chance at getting into grad school.
I’ll second this. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something that will get you a lucrative career where the workload in college won’t crimp your social life, maybe business or computer science would be a better major for you. At the University of Maryland, being an upper-level physics major and a full-time student on track to graduate in four years was a more than full-time job.
You’ve doubtless heard some variant of “for every credit hour, expect to spend X number of hours outside of class working on it”. This wasn’t true of our upper division physics major classes. Each of the upper-division physics classes took about 20 hours per week of work. You typically took one or two theory classes and one lab (which was a separate class, and took up its own 20 hours per week) per semester. I didn’t know any physics majors who had a lot of time to go out and party, or to be active in any kind of student organizations. It may not be like that everywhere, but that was my experience.
It’s my understanding that a physics degree is also not a terrible degree if you plan to go on to Law or Business school: after all, what they really want to see is that you know how to learn, and a physics degree with a decent GPA will show this. It also stands out a bit among a million poly sci degrees, and there are fields within both business and law where a technical background is a huge advantage.
I also question the idea that there aren’t any job prospects for people with undergrad degrees in physics: honestly, I’d assume that anyone with any kind of programing skills at all and the ability to keep a decent GPA in a physics program would be able to pick up a particular set of programing skills in no time: working physics problems teaches you exactly how to think for that sort of thing: I know it works this way for EE majors, who often end up being pretty decent programers almost by accident, and can always find work that way. Furthermore, I know that defense contractors hire physics majors, and I’d think other engineering type places would as well.
ETA: And if what you want to do is get the undergrad degree and go to work, you should focus less on research opportunities and more on internships in the workforce. Those can be invaluable.
This is something you won’t get a lot of help getting as a physics major. Unless your school’s physics department is very different from Maryland’s ten years ago, the professors and advisors will assume that all of the physics majors are planning on grad school. You won’t hear a lot about internships in the workforce from them- it’ll be more summer research opportunities with faculty members. Those would be just what you want if you were after a letter of recommendation for grad school. You may have to dig a little harder or even go to some other departments (computer science, math, or engineering might be good places to look) for leads and advice on internships.
Thank you all so much, this advice has been incredible thus far. It’s really given me lots to think about also.
Before I had to submit to community college, I was slated to go to U. of Idaho. Does anybody have any input on the school, the physics program there, or anything else that may be of interest to me?
I went on to a good grad school for my space-related area, and my physics degree was valued. Some profs have talked to me about how a physics degree looks better on applications than astronomy or other sciences, not because of the overlap in material, but because “it teaches you how to think.” So they say. (I’m not convinced, but “they” are the ones doing the admissions. . .)
There may be a time when you can choose between a B.S. and a B.A.- don’t do the B.A. unless you want to teach secondary school or go into another field. At my university, the B.S. required more lab work, more quantum, more modern physics & thermo, but it was worth it.
I was a math minor for another degree before I went back for my physics B.S., and that helped to get the math reqs out of the way. Probably the most useful math course I took was from the physics department- a course in mathematical methods for the physical sciences. Some rather easy stuff, but towards the end it was very good (not for the real world, but for later classes and grad school.)
They say that getting a physics degree is only good for one thing: getting more physics degrees, until you can’t get anymore degrees. Then you can only teach people how to get physics degrees. Not entirely true, but a physics B.S. is definitely a grad-school stepping stone. If you want to go to grad school for astronomy or astrophysics, I’d stick with physics and add in at least some basic astronomy in your electives- even a descriptive or survey course can introduce you to a lot of the terminology and concepts in astrophysics.
I wouldn’t rely on that. At the UK University I was at there were 4 streams for the physics degree; straight physics, astrophysics, space science and medical science. Medical Science was dropped the year I graduated (2001) as few people did it. Plus it did not lead into as many jobs as was promised by the course tutors. Someone I know wanted to work in radiography and basically had to do another degree from scratch.
Although there aren’t as many job options available as promised, at least here in the UK, I would still do a physics degree again over any other. Just because I’m a bit of a geek and enjoy the subject.
I did the astrophysics option and although it only amounted for about 10-20% of my credits overall it did make the whole thing worthwhile and did cover topics like cosmology, solar physics and planet formation.
As a mature student I struggled a bit with the maths in the first year as I had been out of education for a large number of years. However, I stuck with it and got through and am now doing a PhD in solar cells.
Basically if you enjoy physics I recommend you do it, but don’t necessarily rely on it leading into a good job unless you want to go into research. A degree in physics may open some doors, but in certain areas specialist degrees will always top a physics degree (engineering, radiography etc).
Seriously…I think it is great you (and the others who have posted here) are entering a field that is sorely lacking for students in the US! The topic interests me greatly, but only as one who appreciates the value but has no real concept of the how and why. My hearty congratulations and hope you advance in this field!
I’ve got two physics degrees and an engineering degree. Unless you work at a university or a research lab, you’ll probably be doing some sort of engineering. Some people I know with physics and chemistry degrees actually spend all their time programming. You can end up in odd places, depending upon circumstances and what you like to do. I myself have work at two Research Labs, but I’ve spent more time being an engineer at other places.
If you do go into research (or to cutting-edge engineering), you’ll find that all those problems yyou solved in school and the historical examples you see are the cases of classic solvable problems and clear-cut cases of a phenomenon. What you’ll be doing is the gritty forging ahead or application of these principles in situations where things aren’t as clear-cut, and you have to do many calculations, modelling, and approximations. This is where things get interesting and fun. In many of the interesting cases, the guys in the textbooks were really doing the same thing, and discovered the laws and simplificatiomns in the process of ferreting out how things really worked. That;'s how Planck came up weith the Blackbody law. Sometimes you stumble across such simplifications even in simple applications that look as if they’re going to be messy little numerical calculations (It’s happened to me). A lot of the time, things don’t simpligfy, and you’re left having to solve for your result using a computer simulation that’s half rigorous theory and half Kentucky Windage with guessed coefficients.
I majored in physics with computational physics from a UK university in 94, work load was much as people have described, problem solving is the bulk of the work. The first two years were painfully dull, basically learning a lot of proofs and generally not really seeing practical applications of them. The final year was when things finally fell into place and the subject really started to come alive. It would not be possible without the dull trudge of the prior two years. A year out on industrial placement with the uk atomic energy authority helped get things in perspective as well.The fact that you like maths is a good thing. It is of course the language of the subject.
Job prospect wise I started on a phd in underwater acoustics and a life of research, but after a short period it became pretty obvious that was not for me. There were plenty of jobs in the nuclear industry and with aerospace companies (although they tended to want software engineers at the time). I ended up joining an oil and gas service company involved in logging oil wells. The company insisted it was an engineers job, but in reality it was a perfect job for an applied physicist. Anyway there are plenty of jobs in the oil patch that an applied physicist could jump into either straight away or after a years master in petro engineering or petrophysics or some of the seismic geophysics type things. I have ended up as a drilling engineer and I continue to draw on concepts learned in my course on a daily basis, as Rutherford so aptly pointed out
Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting.
Something to keep in mind in your community college now: Don’t bother with a physics class if it doesn’t have calculus as a prerequisite. A non-calculus-based physics class almost certainly won’t count toward your major requirements when you transfer. Take calculus as soon as you possibly can- your community college should offer it.
There’s a big difference in the level of difficulty and amount of work required for lower-division (freshman and sophomore level) and upper-division physics classes, or at least there was in Maryland’s physics major classes. I’ve heard that this is especially true for someone who takes their lower-division classes at a community college. Be ready for a huge jump in the difficulty of your classes and the time you spend working on problem sets and the like when you get into the junior and senior level physics classes.
