Applied Physics or Physics of Materials?

[Noman Rasheed]

Hello,

My university is offering a couple of programs in Physics: Applied, Astro, Computational, and Material. So far, I liked Material and Applied in terms of getting early job opportunities.

What advise do you guys have for me, before I make my mind for any of them?

Thank you!

 

[Choppy]

Unfortunately it's pretty difficult to offer advice based on the name of a program alone. The devil is often in the details. In my experience, it's best not to specialize too much too early as far as academia goes. This tends to close more doors than it opens.

One way to figure this out might be to go through your course catalogue and decide, in the absence of any program constraints, what are the courses you most want to take, and then look for the program that matches up the best with those courses. You can also weight in favour of a particular stream if that stream is translating into jobs for others that you find appealing.

 

[Noman Rasheed]

Unfortunately it's pretty difficult to offer advice based on the name of a program alone. The devil is often in the details. In my experience, it's best not to specialize too much too early as far as academia goes. This tends to close more doors than it opens.

One way to figure this out might be to go through your course catalogue and decide, in the absence of any program constraints, what are the courses you most want to take, and then look for the program that matches up the best with those courses. You can also weight in favour of a particular stream if that stream is translating into jobs for others that you find appealing.

Makes sense. Thank you so much!