Best Colleges for Physics: Guide for Ohio Residents

[Enceph]

I'm Spencer..

Enough introductions anyway. I hope you guys can tell me what colleges are the best for physics, and sciences for that matter. I know it will probably be an obvious first few, but I need to know more colleges-I am not sure I have the grades-so post any you know. Uhm, and you'd better tell me what I'd need to go there too I guess.

I live in Ohio, but I'd gladly go out of state; far, far out of state. Thanks, of course. Speedy replies are nice, and from post-college people. I need to apply this week if I'm to afford it, or so I'm told.

 

[Enceph]

Also can you guys tell me what you all got on your IOWA tests in grade school, if they had them when you were a kid? I did really well I guess, but I don't know if everyone really takes that test.

 

[dav2008]

I'm not sure what an IOWA test is but colleges look at ACT and/or SAT-I/II scores.

A typical rule of thumb is that west and east coast schools want to see SAT-I (and since you want to study physics I think they usually require an SAT-II score, too) and midwest schools look at ACT. However, make sure to check with any college you're applying to what exactly they require.

I don't think you can just pick a college in a week. You need to do your research and figure out which schools are more selective and where you have a shot at getting in. There are plenty of websites that let you compare colleges and universities, but one I like is www.princetonreview.com . You can take a little test that can fit you to a college but obviously that's just a computer-generated answer based on database information and isn't always accurate.

It's very hard to give this kind of advice because there are literally 1,000's of colleges offering 100's of different majors and it just varies from person to person. If you have good grades you can probably do a search for "Top undergraduate schools physics" or so on.

 

[dav2008]

Also, taken from another thread

Actually, at the undergraduate level, it doesn't!

There have been similar threads such as this. What you want out of an undergraduate institution are (i) good instructions (ii) number of available courses each semester/quarter (iii) wide selection of classes that you can optionally take by the time you're a senior and (iv) possible research/individual study opportunities.

All of the above are not restricted to only "brand-name" schools. In fact, some of the lesser well-known schools can excel or even surpass those popular schools. Smaller schools, because they don't have that large of a range of research projects, concentrate more on instruction qualities. At the undergraduate level, you want a place that can give you the best instruction on the fundamentals of physics. These fundamentals are the same no matter where you study physics, and chances are, you would be using the same text as those kids in Harvard, Princeton, etc., but with smaller classes and more one-on-one interactions with your instructors.

Don't be fooled by schools touting all the big research projects, bit research grants, etc. Chances are, as an undergraduate, these things would not have any effect on you. You have plenty of opportunity to get involved with those when you start considering for graduate schools.

I hate to continue being tacky and advertise my journal, but I'm in the middle of writing a series of articles titled "So You Want To Be A Physicist". We are at Part 6 now. You may wan to give those a read...

Zz.