B.S. in Physics - doomed?

ChaseRLewis

For an engineer Internships are EVERYTHING. I'm not shitting you when a 2.5 GPA with good internships / Co-ops will make you more competitive than 3.5GPA+ without them. When I graduated 2010 Chemical Engineering jobs were on the downturn and literally despite having a great GPA and working at a professors company for 2 years doing optimization for Oil refineries I can tell you it meant squat. I thought saying **** like I traveled to foreign companies doing real work and whatnot would mean something but the refining companies at the career fair looked down on it just because if I was so good why didn't I get an internship with Shell or Chevron? You need an internship from a reputable company if you want to do well in engineering out of the gate. Else your going to have to take the slower route of going to a small company getting the 3-5 years experience then moving to a better company and starting out near where you could have been 3 to 5 years ago in your life.

I went into the oil field and only reason they gave me a job was that I got a recommendation from someone really high up in the company that was a family friend. Fact I had been doing research / working with computers most of the time was pretty much universally looked down upon in my job search to be honest (wouldn't be the same for a CS degree, but chemical engineering in the non-academic areas is actually still pretty old school in how they take care of things). Now I'm going back to get my masters in petroleum engineering next year since that's where my work experience is and will make me more competitive in the industry I started working in.

Honestly though it was probably a blessing in disguise because I'm making more money doing this then I ever could as a chemical engineer (without like 20 years experience and a PHD).

G01

Maybe this has been pointed out. I haven't had a chance to read the whole thread:

Does your resume explicitly state the skills that you have received with your degree? A lot of employers just don't know what a physics B.S. means. They are not aware that someone with a B.S. in physics might have programming and electronics experience. Do you have any experience with AutoCAD, MATLAB, LabVIEW, C++ FORTRAN, Java? What equipment did you learn how to use in your Advanced Lab class? Get any machine shop experience along the way? This is important information! List it!

Many people think a Physics degree means you spent four years talking about particles in a square well and twins on spaceships. If your resume doesn't explicitly mention the applicable skills you've acquired in pursuit of a physics degree, of course they are not going to consider your for a job. Tailor your resume to the employer and the job!

ModusPwnd

And you are implying this is not the case? Or rather you are suggesting that one should list marketable skills gained outside the curriculum?

G01

I am implying that it is not necessarily the case that a physics degree is all about twins on spaceships.

Also, The skills I mentioned can most certainly be gained from within a good physics curriculum. I learned MATLAB, Mathematica, and Java in core and cognate courses from my degree. I learned how to use oscilloscopes and lock in amplifiers during advanced lab. I learned circuit analysis from an engineering elective. I learned how to write technical papers from a required writing intensive course. During my undergrad research experience I learned LabVIEW, how to solder, and how to do basic optics alignment, and how to use an AFM and STM. I also did my fair share of twins on spaceships and particles in wells.

It's quite possible that one could go through a different physics program at a different university and not gain these skills. It could be that your university allows students freedom to ignore the courses in which one would gain these skills, or perhaps one could have professors that never considered these things important. It's also possible that students did not get sufficient research experience as an undergrad.

However all of the issues mentioned above are issues with the student, the program, or the educators, NOT the degree itself. A physics B.S. is not a free ticket to a high paying job. However, it's increasingly apparent that no college degree is. Like any other college degree it what you and your program put into it.

ModusPwnd

In my experience nearly all of that is learned outside of the physics curriculum. I see what you mean by explicitly listing your skills rather than the umbrella term of "physics", particularly since most of it has nothing to do with physics but deals with STEM areas in general.

A physics BS is nothing without the student, the program, or the educators behind it so I fail to see why such a distinction should be made. I think the "issue" is with the degree itself. Its an academic degree, not technical training for a job or career. And thats ok, because we have engineering and the like for technical job and career training. One should not expect many marketable skills from any academic degree, what you should expect is to gain an esoteric knowledge base. Marketable skills have to be acquired in addition to the curriculum and in many cases, in spite of it. I know there where many times where I could have been working on my curriculum requirements of twins and particles in a box, but I was instead working on my research or TAing/Tutoring. Each of which are the only places I got marketable skills, neither of which was part of the curriculum and each competed for time and took time away from my curriculum.

pi-r8

I agree with ModusPwnd- one of the major problems with the standard physics degree is that all of the most useful stuff is either packed into one senior lab class, or only taught as part of optional research projects, and even there it's mostly self-taught anyway. The core of what physics classes actually teach you is classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and electrodynamics- basically "twins and infinite square wells". Very important knowledge if you eventually become a physicist, but completely useless in any other job.

chill_factor

classical mechanics is not that useless. EM is not that bad either. parts of both classes can be reasonably applied to real life.

however QM is just totally useless the way it is taught in physics and it is basically inapplicable.

pi-r8

How would you apply classical mechanics or EM to a real job situation? It's hard to think of any realistic situations(referring specifically to junior/senior level physics classes here, not the basic freshman level classes that engineers take).

G01

For whatever it's worth, I have a friend who worked for a defense contractor on satellite related work. (Security clearance meant he really couldn't give details.) They hired him specifically because he had a physics background and through his physics degree learned programming and had knowledge of orbital mechanics, which he learned in an upper level mechanics class.

Locrian

Design of specialized waveguides, modeling of peculiar magnetic materials, applying negative index metamaterials in new industrial applications, designing specialized plasma deposition systems. . .

Are those the kinds of examples you’re looking for?

ModusPwnd

People get hired with a physics BS to do those jobs? I doubt it. Thats EE and MSEE work.

clope023

You're wrong, Northrop Grumman mentions physicists by name when stating the degrees they hire specifically for satellite design work.

G01

See my above post:

pi-r8

None of those topics is taught in an undergrad EM class (or a grad class either, for that matter). You would need a lot of training to get from the basics taught in undergrad EM to the level of being able to design modern devices, and companies these days aren't exactly keen on paying for a new hire to take long training classes.

I searched Northrop Grumman new hires section for the keyword "physics" and couldn't find anything like this. The closest I could find was a job doing software modeling, for which they preferrede engineering degrees but "would consider" math or physics.

I don't know the details of GMs friend of course, but I think he must have been very lucky to get that job.

jesse73

Do engineering degrees teach you the exact topic you will work on in your job?

Locrian

Are you serious?? Jackson alone should get you ready to start with a few on that list, and the others can be found in elective courses.

As for undergrads, if they got a good background in E&M and took some advanced lab courses, they should be able to work in a job in those areas and pick up the specialized knowledge they need, so long as they're working with other people.

Go back and read the post I quoted to be sure you know where I'm coming from. E&M and CM provide great knowledge bases that are useful in many jobs. That's just not enough to get hired. We probably agree about the quality of the typical BS in physics. However, we definitely disagree on why the degree isn't very useful.

And I have no idea what they're teaching at your grad school.

Lavabug

FWIW, I did see some practical stuff like transmission line theory and waveguides/resonant cavities, and antennas in a junior EM course, but it comprised of <10% of the whole syllabus. E. Engineers at my university have entire courses dedicated to these subjects.