Physicists and STEM types - help my son make a final college choice

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, the dust has basically settled and while there were some painful rejections and frustrating waitlistings, my son can now move forward and decide where he wants to go to college.

For him, one factor surpasses all others: will the college prepare him to get admitted into a first-rate physics Ph.D. program? Below are the schools that CairoSon is choosing among. Comments from knowledgeable Dopers on the pros and cons of any of them are most welcome. He has to pick a school by 1 May.

[ul]
[li]UC Santa Barbara [/li][li]U Texas Austin (offered a slot in the Jefferson Scholars program, which would probably be great for him, but NOT the honors program)[/li][li]U Colorado (honors program)[/li][li]U Rochester[/li][/ul]
Specifically, I have two questions:

  1. If you had a kid whose dream since 2nd grade has been to study theoretical physics, which school would you recommend? (Other thoughts: he’s nerdy, non-athletic, and doesn’t make friends easily, but all he needs is a few close buddies and he is content. His best friend since 6th grade is now at Rochester and fairly happy there.)

  2. We’re visiting Texas and Colorado this week (thank you, frequent flyer miles) as he has never seen either campus - anything you would specifically recommend he try to do/see while he is there?

2

Santa Barbara, Colorado, and Rochester have fine experimental physics programs, I assume Texas Austin does too, and thus all probably have fine theoretical physics programs as well.

Note that one doesn’t generally study “theoretical physics” until graduate school. In undergraduate school, you study “physics”.

3

You are right, of course…it’s just that he already knows exactly what he is interested in. I know that theoretically (heh) that could change, but it seems unlikely as he has had a burning, burning passion for as long as he’s been able to articulate it. So for him college will be all about preparing himself for graduate school where he can finally expand his knowledge of quantum mechanics, relativity, whatever is the “good stuff”…(I’m no physicist myself so language fails me).

Thank you for your comments - it’s good to hear them.

4

I’m going to assume that UT-Austin can prepare you to get into a top-notch grad program in physics, since one of my friends in astronomy or astrophysics won a Marshall or a Rhodes (forget at this point which one). There won’t be anyone looking out for you, and you’ll have to take the initiative to seek out professors and research experiences, but the opportunities are certainly there.

5

Those are all good schools, but if I had to pick, I’d narrow it down to UCSB and UT-Austin. I’d personally prefer UC-Boulder for the location, but I don’t think its physics department is outstandingly renowned. However, realize that the programs are going to be about the same at any of those schools, and the quality of actual education will largely depend on the interest and enthusiasms of the professors. What is most important in terms of getting into a good graduate school and getting a firm grasp for what area of physics he’d like to get into are undergraduate research opportunities; meet with his advisors and the department chair, if possible, and ask about what research opportunities are open to undergraduates. The more opportunties the better, and especially if it is a project affiliated with a national laboratory or across schools (especially international) as he’ll get more opportunities to meet people working in different areas, make contacts, and see what kind of tools and methods are in regular use so he can have familiarity with them once he gets to the graduate level. (Do not rely on just what any school offers as being the standard across all research; they often select tools that have an academic discount, or because some particular professor likes them.).

A few other comments which you may take or leave as you like:

Although your son may think he knows what he is interested in doing, it’s never really a certainty until you spend time doing it. Theoretical physics can seem really interesting and esoteric from the outside, but there is actually a lot of plugging away at things and doing a lot of tedious calculations where a single mistake can negate hours of solving and rearranging equations. Modern computer algebra tools are a real godsend for this, allowing you to revise a mistake and have it fixed through the subsequent work (to a certain extent) but it can be very frustrating and not at all sexy once you get into it. You can’t just like the end result or expect that you’re going to have some physics-altering “Eureka!” moment; you really have to enjoy the process of solving problems. I highly recommend going through Jearl Walker’s The Flying Circus of Physics and try coming up with solutions to the often surprisingly complicated issues arrising from seemingly simple problems to see if he really enjoys the theorectical side of physics.

Mathematics and numerical methods: early, often, and as hard as he can stand. Whatever analysis and visualization tools he ends up using, understanding the fundamentals behind how the operate, and how the basic mathematics works is so critical to getting past concepts that are not innately intuitive (e.g. all of modern physics). Statistics is particularly important; a good theoretical physicist today needs to be as conversant in data science methodology as a dedicated data scientist, and at least friendly if not intimate with statistics, as well as grasping all of the vector and tensor and Hamiltonian methods. He should graduate with a mathematics minor by default.

Compuational tools and methods: learn how to build purpose-made tools from scratch, ideally using several languages or environments. The day that physicists stood at a chalkboard and filled it with equations and diagrams is coming to an end; the solutions for modern problems are just too complicated and too difficult to visualizate and solve by hand. The ability to build simulations and manipulate complex equations with the aid of a computer is crucial, even for someone who works in a purely theoretical area. He doesn’t need to be an expert programmer per se, or write beautiful code, but he should be able to write a program in Python or Julia that can take a particular solution to the Einstein field equations (as an example) and simulate what it actually does.

Networking: you say that your son is happy with just a few friends, but making and maintaining connections with a wide array of people, inside the field and out, is crucial to succeeding in academia and in research. No successful scientists today operate in a vacuum (nor have they really ever, with rare exceptions) and it is important to have people to call upon, both for their technical expertise and constructive criticism, and to cast a wider net when looking for reserach opportunities, especially because it is likely those opportunities will not be in the United States, thanks to a goverment that has made it a priority in the last twenty five years to consistently defund pure science research, from the SSC tand controlled nuclear fusion to stem cell research. (I’m not bitter…I’m not bitter…I’m not bitter…)

Outside interests: It’s college; it’s his first opportunity to meet people outside of the narrow confines of high school, and do things that he has not had the opportunity to do before. Take advanage of both the social and extracurricular opportunities of going to college. Join a club or two; take a trip to Europe for holiday break, get out of his shell and find out what else he might like to do. I personally regret not doing more (although I was working full time while going to school) and in particular not taking more courses outside of the technical curriculum. Take a psyche class to meet girls, join the newspaper staff and write a column on science research, anything to expand his horizons.

Final note: Your son is likely familar with being “the smartest kid in the room” and able to get by in normal classes with only a moderate amount of effort. (I never studied outside of class for any subject thoughout junior high and high school. I literally wrote essays in class, studied physics during English lectures about books I’d read two or three years preivoulsy, and memorized lists of facts for history and geography five minutes before tests. It wasn’t until I took two semesters of university-level calclus my senior year of high school that I actually found any schoolwork challenging, and it was a painful shock of getting the first ‘C’ grade that wasn’t due to just not giving a fuck about the class.) The odds are that he is going to be disabused of that notion in the first difficult class he takes; he may not even be on the upside of the mean. I don’t think there is any way to prepare for this other than to experience it, but he’s going to have to recognize that he’s probably not going to be the genius-kid in that environment, and that’s okay, because learning to put in the hard work to learn difficult subjects is part of the growing up he’ll have to do to be successful in a highly competitive field like theorectical physics.

Good luck to him, and I hope he enjoys whichever school he selects and does well.

Stranger

6

Disclaimer: I’ve been out of physics for over 20 years, and I was an experimentalist not a theoretician. Those schools all has good reputations. One consideration is would he want to go to grad school at any of them? It’s rare to go to grad school at the same place you went undergrad. I did, but it was not a good career move.

Some questions for you both to ponder, and research during your visits: Are there professors at any of them he wants to study with? People working in areas of research he’d like to join? He can work with a research group as an undergrad, and get co-authorships, present talks at conferences, get references for grad schools. How active is undergrad research in the physics departments at each school? How active is the chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) and their honor society Sigma Pi Sigma?

If he already knows where he’d like to go to grad school, or what area of physics he’d like to study, how well does each schools’ undergrad curriculum fit with the requirements of those grad schools?

When I was looking at grad schools I found it very helpful to talk with grad students and hear their experiences. When I was looking at a New England school in the early 80s, none of the grad students I spoke with wanted to be there or enjoyed going there. I did not go there.

I think the same thing applies to undergrad - see what he thinks of the campus, his potential fellow students, the atmosphere. He’ll be there four years, a larger fraction of his life so far! And very important years.

Also check out libraries, and related departments - chem, math, stat, engineerings (plural!), comp sci, materials science, bio, etc. A great school will be strong in multiple related areas, and have potential for interdisciplinary studies.

A harder thing to convince him is that he may not be able to get a job in physics after grad school. That’s why I’m out of the field. I’m an IT consultant now. I’ve worked with people who were refugees from biotech. Yes, there are plenty of biotech jobs, but there are many more people looking for those jobs. Even that info is out of date. IME you don’t know a labor market unless you’re in it. There are only so many openings for theoretical physicists, and every years a bunch more people earn doctorates in the field. He could be the next Einstein and he might have trouble getting a job.

He should also find out how the humanities and social science departments are, particularly for undergrad instruction. He may think of these fields are merely for fulfilling requirements, but that’s not a helpful attitude, IME. For example, he needs to learn to write very well. Few things are harder to write than a Physical review Letter - a page-limited scientific publication going to a highly technical audience. Every word has to count. Grammar must be as precise as the physics. And one place he could end up working is something off-the-wall interdisciplinary like Econophysics. He could be the next Black or Scholes or Merton. But he can’t reach that potential if he never studies econ or business. Intellectual Property law is useful for the sciences as well.

Edited to add: Stranger just covered this very well!

7

Your post was excellent as well, and especially the caution that regardless of how well the o.p.'s son may do in school, it is entirely possible that he will not be able to get a job doing research in physics, or at least, not one that he wants. Of all of the people I went to undergrad with, there is only one who is actually working in something relating to the area of his Ph.D. research, and he’s working for a government agency which I suspect he’d rather not be working for, in an area of research that is frankly bullshit. And he did his doctorate at one of the premier public research schools in the nation. I dropped the physics program for engineering (by a fairly circuitous route through various departments) after it was clear that the Superconducting Supercollider was going to be cancelled and the entire future of high energy physics in the US was in doubt. As painful as it was to admit, I knew that I would not be working in the relatively few pure research positions available in high energy physics, and had no interest into going into academia. (A decade and change ago I considered going back to school in an entirely different field–computational molecular biology–and probably would have if it weren’t for warnings from graduate students of the professor I was considering as my thesis advisor; again, probably for the best, although I can’t say I’m particularly thrilled with what I’m doing now, either.) Anyway, just make sure that he’s aware that life doesn’t always work out to plan, and it is good to have wider interests and other competencies in case he’s not able to find work in his preferred field.

Stranger

8

Excellent points, Stranger! When I finished grad school my current field did not exist. Neither did the World-Wide Web.

9

Wow, thank you everyone - this is more detailed and thought-provoking than I could have imagined getting. This will all be food for thought (and keep it coming, it is all great).

This:

deserves a particular nod. He’s already feeling it, actually - since he was old enough to talk people have been praising him for being smart and we’ve been very frustrated by that. We always told him, “a day comes when even smart people have to work very, very hard” but until now I don’t think he’s believed us. However, he just got dinged by UC Berkeley and two of his classmates with lower SATs but better GPAs got in. So life’s lessons are just now beginning to sink in. Those Bs in Health Class, Physical Education, Indonesian Culture, and Spanish - none of which he cared about - are coming back to bite him now, big time.

10

Yeah, I had to learn the same thing, and it was a very bitter pill, especially since I ended up going to my “safety school” (the only one that offered a full merit scholarship, which I needed to have any hope of being able to pay for school). I figured it would be a breeze, and I’d get two years of easy grades and then transfer out to Cornell or Princeton. Instead, for various reasons, I struggled in school, and even when I was in first or second chair in classes I never felt as if I really mastered the material enough to relax. Which, I’ve come to understand, is exactly how it should be; if a course is as easy as a game of Suduku, you’re just playing a mildly interesting game, not mastering useful skills and knowledge.

Ultimately, college is as much about learning how to learn effectively as much as it is learning material, and as a result of struggling and having to work, I’ve been able to pick up skills and apply technical skills in engineering practice that others gave up on or didn’t even try at because they seemed “too hard” even though there were actually trivial once I dug in and formulated the problem in terms of fundamentals. (Example: spherical trigonometry; not hard, just requires attention to detail and a little bit of common sense to make sure you’re getting a sensible answer, and yet many people treat it like black magic.) Being smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard; it means you actually need to work harder to realize your potential instead of just turning the crank on problems someone else has solved for you. The smartest people I know are also (largely) the ones who work the hardest; the frauds make the most noise about their intellect but actually work the least, and their products show it.

And don’t be reflexively dismissive about other fields; when I went to school, I though economics was just label-making, biology was button-sorting, and philosophy was errant noodling. I came to learn that while many economists are waving arms, some biologists are just repeating what someone has told them, and many philosophers are just making random noises that sound like English, there is actual value in understanding the concepts, methods, and theories in these fields. The concepts of markets in economics apply to more than finance; the complexity of biological systems and the cleverness of solutions from natural selection is vastly greater than anything humans have built; and while philosophers may not be much at providing answers, they have a hell of a knack for fomulating fascinating questions that can stimulate interesting lines of inquiry. You son would be well advised to take at least an elective or two in each area or some similarly diverse subject. This is the best chance he will ever have to acquaint himself with other areas of study with the ability to get feedback from (supposed) experts. You never know when that knowedge may come in handy; I once got a job interview for an engineering position by being able to speak in depth about the hydraulic artitulation of arthropods, how and why they vary between subphylum, and how that knowledge could be applied to robotic locomotion systems.

Stranger

11

BTW, Steven Weinberg–the chief architect of so-called “Technicolor” theory of electroweak gauge symmetry breaking’ and author of Gravitation and Cosmology as well as the seminal series The Quantum Theory of Fields, among various other accomplishments, as well as having been a professor or lecturer at many of the top flight schools in physics research at one point–is Jack S. Josey-Welch Foundation Regents Chair in Science at UT-Austin. Along with Ed Witten, Gerard 't Hooft, Leonard Susskind, and a select few others, is widely considered to be among the brightest and most accomplished physicists alive today. Although this isn’t a reason for the o.p.'s son to go to that school (Weinberg no longer teaches classes and wouldn’t be teaching or advising undergraduates in any case), it is without question that UT-A is among well regarded scholls in theoretical particle physics.

Stranger

12

Partly because of the networking: more schools automatically means more networking, even if it’s of the “oh yeah I went there too” kind.

13

First of all: congratulations for CairoBoy! WordBoy has heard from a few schools, and gotten into one that he is excited about, but still has to wait on a few. Such a fun process :smack::dubious::frowning:

Second: I went to UCSB decades ago, CompSci major. Great school in terms of all the intangibles - location, overall vibe. Their Engineering departments have always been well regarded, so I will let Dopers like Stranger and Typo comment. I assume CairoBoy, being in Indonesia, “gets” a beach culture vibe. I am sure it has evolved a ton since I was there, but the surfer-dude, let’s go to the sorority beach volleyball tournament part of the culture was very much there

I also know someone who graduated from UT Austin a few years ago and loved it in terms of location and overall culture on campus (she is a native Texan but very liberal - she found the fact that since Austin is the “Blueberry in the Tomato Soup” as the delightful (sigh) Rick Perry described it - she really liked it.

It is interesting you are discussing your son’s mindset, based on your thinking and posts from others. I think all kids who are generally smart and have a achiever mindset go through his transition as they grow. The environment really matters - during HS and of course college, too.

In my son’s case, he is growing up in an environment closer to the way Gunn HS in Silicon Valley was described in that Atlantic article I started a thread about a few months ago. My son has felt he was smart, but really felt like the kids around him were similarly smart over-achievers - our public HS honors classes were big (I think 28 kids in BC Calc his senior year!). I have spent a huge portion of my parenting time making sure he “doesn’t run too hot” while also trying to keep him motivated for the classes he found uninteresting, like you describe. Oy.

So - tons of luck with his decision, and we are about a week behind you!

14

Interesting, I was just at two of the campuses (UT, UCSB) and near to a third (CO) in the last two weeks. And my father taught at Rochester for a little bit.

I went to UCSB. It’s a great school and in a great location. The weather is truly fantastic. I studied mechanical engineering there as an undergrad. There was nothing like walking out of my dorm (Anacapa), crossing the street, going down the stairs, and doing my morning run on the beach out to the Goleta pier and back.

Boulder: I was in Aurora last week. Weather is a concern. Yes there are some beautiful days, but I really hate wind - strong, incessant, annoying wind! To me it is, anyway. YMMV.

Rochester: don’t know much other than the winter weather concerns. I grew up in upstate, near Troy. Rochester, you’re right on the lake. It can be bad at times.

When visiting UT Austin, I recommend taking a short 20-minute drive out to The Salt Lick BBQ, the original one in the town of Driftwood TX. You’ll see a little of the Hill Country countryside, the purdiest parts of Texas (although Alpine is nice too). In Austin, the County Line on The Hill has good BBQ too. Have the ribs there. But the Salt Lick is a much better experience. Bring cash, they don’t take plastic.

My degree is in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, so my suggestions are more social-based and speak more to fit. Fit is huge, and is highly subjective once you’ved pared down the choices as you have. Good luck!

15

True. In fact, I “met” Steve Weinberg when I was an undergraduate-- we were at the same (small!) party at another person’s house, the person I was talking to went to introduce me to him, and as soon as she started he took one look at the both of us and just walked away. I was not impressed.

That doesn’t disprove your overall point, however.

16

Stranger on a Train - you are in SoCal, I believe. Any thoughts on the Claremont Colleges - I suspect you would be more familiar with Harvey Mudd the engineering school vs. Pomona College. Or how about Occidental in Eagle Rock, next to Pasadena? Obama went there his first two years and it has a reciprocal agreement with CalTech close by for harder-core STEM classes.

Ah, the waiting process. Fun times.

17

My son is at Rochester Institute of Technology (which is NOT U of Rochester), and it has been excellent for him. For those worrying about the weather, much of the residential part of the campus is interconnected by tunnels, and on the academic side of the campus the buildings are close together, minimal outside time.

18

Awesome responses already. Just figured I’d toss in my experiences with a couple of kids who studied sciences - Aero Engineering and Microbio. They both went to our in-state Big 10 school - not only because of strong programs, but also cost and location.

Both kids found they had to largely make their own way through college, with little guidance/assistance from counselors, etc. They did fine, but studying science in a big school is not a warm and fuzzy personal experience. Kid 1 had no success with the school placement services, but ended up getting a job at what would have been one of his favorite choices solely through his own efforts. Wish he had realized the benefit of going it on his own earlier, and gotten summer internships as an undergrad.

He is a really smart kid and did really well in HS, but found the engineering curriculum extremely challenging and frustrating. There were only a few to whom it seemed to come easily. For most of the others, it was a ton of long nights, challenging tests, etc., with little free time to socialize. I think less than 50% of his freshman class ended up graduating in his major.

Since he graduated, he completed a master’s thru work at a smaller school. He realizes that he learned more at the impersonal big school than many of his co-workers did at smaller schools. And the majority of the master’s material was duplicative of what he had already learned undergrad. And the work ethic he developed is exceptional - he finds the work itself easier than school, tho the personal/political part is challenging.

In the job market, your school’s ranking will make a difference. So, all other things being equal, seriously consider the school with the higher ranking/reputation. Choosing between #4 and #6 might not matter, but between #2 and #10 likely would.

If he is planning on grad school, he should see what info he can get re: undergrads being accepted to what programs. Or get a list of what employers interview at the various schools.

Kid 2 made a point of getting a research assistantship as a sophomore. She made that happen herself, and it was likely the best part of her undergrad experience. She KNEW that she wanted to be a researcher, and got a full ride in a west coast PhD program. Well, she hated it, mastered out, and is now working in the medical/genetics field but largely doing coding. She likes her job, but part of her considers herself as having failed for not completing her PhD.

Both of those kids didn’t think the honors programs were worth the extra effort involved. Just my recollection of their opinions.

Heck - here’s my 3d kid’s experience - she wanted to study music, and enrolled in music ed. Turns out around her junior year she decided she didn’t want to teach, but wasn’t willing to admit as much to herself and everyone else and switch directions. So she stuck with a degree she knew she did not want to do. She’s doing fine now, but would probably be better positioned and would have been happier if she had cut her losses and switched to something she had reason to think she would love.

Good luck. Sounds like your son (and his parents) have done a good job of getting him to the position where he has several good choices. I am sure any choice will have its plusses and minuses. And you can only predict so much from the outside looking in. While I bet the student body at those 4 schools will be pretty similar, don’t overlook such factors as the school s and it’s community’s “vibe”/atmosphere, ease/cost of travel to and from, and total cost and any available aid.

19

UT’s a great school*. You probably can’t go wrong academically there in anything. I will say that a caveat of that is that UT and Austin in general are very hippy-dippy and almost Berkeley style liberal, and if your son’s not into that kind of thing, they may not be for him. Austin is a very cool town, and I imagine it’s a great place to go to college; it seems to me that the place is about 40% twenty-somethings and younger, most of which are college students, hipsters, or old-school grungy poncho-wearing hippies. The city’s culture skews young as well, with a lot of emphasis on environmentalism, sustainability, social justice, local food, local beer and spirits, craft and artisan everything, etc…

So if your son isn’t into all that, Austin may not be a really fun place to go. Alternatively, if he’s really into that, it may be a distraction.
(*as an Aggie, saying this makes me itch a little bit)

20

I’m a theoretical physicist. I have to admit that I don’t have any particular knowledge of Rochester. The other 3 schools would be great choices. However, as pointed out below by Typo Knig, he should not choose a school that is the same as where he wants to go for graduate school.

I would advise a future theoretical physicist to take a lot of computer science courses. Maybe declare a minor or double-major in CS, even. Not only is programming very helpful for any physicist, but it also would allow him to keep his options open, just in case he decides to go to grad school in computer engineering instead of physics or something.