Did anyone go to the University of Arizona?

[Entropee]

I toured the college a week ago (and they are aparrently the top college in the nation for astrophysics) and I loved it. The mirror lab was HUGE and they were working on mirrors for the LSST and the GMT at the time. Just wondering if anyone here has gone there and if they would recommend it.

 

[eri]

I wouldn't say they're the top college, but they're definitely up there. They do have a lot of great facilities and NOAO is right there as well. There's a lot of research going on, but not in every field, so if you have specific interests you'd have to check those out. I didn't attend myself, but I've been there many times for observing, conferences, and to work with collaborators. It's a great environment. However, friends of mine who attended were not impressed with the courses offered or the people teaching them - they said it's worth it for the research, but not the courses.

 

[turbo]

I had a scholarship offer there and would have loved to have attended, but the air-fare would have been ruinous (1960's), effectively stranding me there all year. I have a young friend from Mongolia who was allowed (as a freshman) to join some grad students in the construction of instrumentation for world-class telescopes.

For practical application, research, and collaboration in some premier programs (think NASA), you could do FAR worse than U of A!

 

[Entropee]

That was honestly my exact thinking guys, thanks so much. Yeah they really encourage you to double major in physics and astronomy and to be involved in research while you take courses there. I almost think being involved in real research as an undergrad is just as important as having top notch teachers.

 

[turbo]

That was honestly my exact thinking guys, thanks so much. Yeah they really encourage you to double major in physics and astronomy and to be involved in research while you take courses there. I almost think being involved in real research as an undergrad is just as important as having top notch teachers.

Quite right! Getting dirty and sweating out nights and weekends trying to make projects come out perfect is a good counterpoint to lectures and labs. If you do well, you could end up with a life-time of gainful employment in what I consider the most desirable field of all - building telescopes, probes, and instruments to expand our knowledge of the universe. Cosmology is a theoretical field. Astronomy is the real deal. I'd have given up a lot of things in my life in order to have positioned myself for participation in a project like SDSS (all kids, compared to me!) but things didn't go that way. I stayed in Maine, and only got active in observational astrophysics after a forced retirement due to disability.

Go, have a great time, and prosper. BTW, it's a DRY heat! ;-)

 

[Entropee]

So did you do cosmology at all? Cause that's what I think I really want to do, but working on telescopes is awesome too. Hard choice!