Is MIT a good place to study theoretical physics?

[That was mine]

I'm a high school senior at the moment and am interested in knowing MIT's stance in the theoretical physics community. I've heard it's a bad place for particle theory, but I'm not sure I want to go into that anymore. Recently I've been intrigued by SUSY and (less so) String Theory, but I'm not really sure if MIT would be the right place to go for those areas.

Any help?

 

[Vanadium 50]

As an undergrad, you won't be studying theoretical physics anyway. You'll be studying physics. Specialization comes later.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

Agree with what Vanadium 50 has said.

Don't worry about specialisation in particle physics, string theory or anything else: both for what you're aiming for and which institution you want to attend. The things that matter for your choice of university is that which applies to undergraduate, and research activity does not necessarily correlate. Even then, you can't possibly know enough as a high school student to have a set research aim.

Stick to thinking about the quality of undergraduate programmes and whether or not they will work for you. Learning is the most important thing: then, when you finish, should you decide to go to graduate school - that is when you will worry about research quality.

 

[twofish-quant]

I'm not really sure if MIT would be the right place to go for those areas.

As far as undergraduate curriculum goes, the most important thing is that the school is good at teaching the fundamentals.

As an undergraduate physics school, it's excellent for a number of reasons. There's not much effort to "weed out" physics undergraduates, the UROP program makes it pretty easy for undergraduates to get involved into research, and there are always lots of interesting people and things happening on campus.