Parents Won't Pay for Physics Major

[Jorriss]

As a math major, I feel the math in undergraduate physics can be learned by a decent math major in one semester.

Considering a math major takes all of calculus, linear algebra and differential equations already, I'm sure they could learn much of the remainder in a semester. But that does not mean in one semester the math major would be as apt at using the new math in physics.

 

[R.P.F.]

Considering a math major takes all of calculus, linear algebra and differential equations already, I'm sure they could learn much of the remainder in a semester. But that does not mean in one semester the math major would be as apt at using the new math in physics.

what do you mean by 'new math in physics'? Do you mean using math in a physical context?

What I was trying to say was once you learned the hard stuff, it is very easy to come back and pick up the easier stuff you missed. I never took DEs, but I never had a problem with Euler-Lagrange or the schrodingers equation. The math was pretty ad hoc and I was able to learn it quickly. At that time I was already taking analysis and algebra. I essentially get annoyed when physics majors kept talking about how weird the Dirac function was, because it is really not that weird if you know that it is a functional, not a function.
But of course mathematical muscles do not guarantee you a good understanding of the physics. I was the top student in my quantum class but there is this physics major who had great physical intuition that I could never have.

 

[Jorriss]

what do you mean by 'new math in physics'? Do you mean using math in a physical context?

I was just referring to mathematical techniques not covered in an intro calculus/diffeq/LA course. Could be calculus of variations, complex analysis, greens functions, integral transforms, whatever.

Anyways, I'd respond to the rest of your post but I don't want to derail this thread =/

 

[Vanadium 50]

If you want to go to grad school, it's not a good idea to be skipping classes. While I am sure there were people who learned differential equations "on the street", I wouldn't want to try and deal with filling the gaps in my mathematics at the same time I was learning the physics. Considering there are filler courses in there anyway, I'd add Math 250B and drop one of them.

Fundamentally the problem is that by the end of Term 5, you are roughly at the stage of a typical sophomore in June. It's possible that you can complete the degree in one more year, but not zero more years. And since you want to go to grad school, you can't easily decide not to take certain classes.

 

[MrsNemisis]

If you want to go to grad school, it's not a good idea to be skipping classes. While I am sure there were people who learned differential equations "on the street", I wouldn't want to try and deal with filling the gaps in my mathematics at the same time I was learning the physics. Considering there are filler courses in there anyway, I'd add Math 250B and drop one of them.

Fundamentally the problem is that by the end of Term 5, you are roughly at the stage of a typical sophomore in June. It's possible that you can complete the degree in one more year, but not zero more years. And since you want to go to grad school, you can't easily decide not to take certain classes.

I'll definitely consider Math 250B over one of the language courses once the time comes.

I wish I'd started taking more math and physics classes in community college, but I basically just took whatever my dad told me I should, which was primarily English and communications. The only upside is that I have all of my lower division general ed out of the way.

 

[Jorriss]

I'll definitely consider Math 250B over one of the language courses once the time comes.

I wish I'd started taking more math and physics classes in community college, but I basically just took whatever my dad told me I should, which was primarily English and communications. The only upside is that I have all of my lower division general ed out of the way.

Maybe I missed this but why does your dad want you to be taking english courses so badly?

 

[MrsNemisis]

Maybe I missed this but why does your dad want you to be taking english courses so badly?

I've always enjoyed creative writing, so he just assumes that a career in English is the best decision for me, but I hate all the literature involved (I'm a fan of genre fiction like sci-fi and urban fantasy).

 

[Angry Citizen]

New advice: Run far, far away from anything your dad tells you to do, academically speaking. Careers in English are even rarer than careers in physics.

 

[MrsNemisis]

I had another discussion with my dad about it and he explained that he just wants me to get in and out with a bachelor's degree as quickly as possible because he doesn't think that the subject your bachelor's degree is in matters. I can see why he thinks this, because his BA is in Linguistics, his MA is in Education, and he teaches high school computers. For me, though, I want to pursue a PhD in physics, which is impossible without doing my undergrad in physics or a closely related field.

 

[GregJ]

...I want to pursue a PhD in physics, which is impossible without doing my undergrad in physics or a closely related field.

Did you mention this fact to him? If so, what was his reply?

In my experience, people who go to university studying a subject that they do not wish to study usually drop out before finishing or change subject (at a far greater end cost than if they started on a course that they wanted).

 

[MrsNemisis]

Did you mention this fact to him? If so, what was his reply?

In my experience, people who go to university studying a subject that they do not wish to study usually drop out before finishing or change subject (at a far greater end cost than if they started on a course that they wanted).

I told him, but he just keeps saying that he doesn't thing physics is "my thing" and that I should just give it up and do something else =(

 

[xdrgnh]

Well how about go to college anyway and if you are excelling in then he might change his mind. 5 semester is a long time. His mind can change by then.

 

[MrsNemisis]

Well how about go to college anyway and if you are excelling in then he might change his mind. 5 semester is a long time. His mind can change by then.

The problem with that is that he pays every time I register, so he sees the classes I pick before I have the opportunity to get good grades in them.

 

[deRham]

This is tough. I think you'll have to spend extra time getting physics background up to snuff if you're going to succeed in graduate school.

If your dad just wants you to get a degree by 5 semesters, sign up for an easy major - the easiest you can, perhaps, and see if you can persuade him to minor in physics or so, and study physics in all the time you aren't working to pass your major's classes (which should be quite easy, and not suck your time hopefully). You should be earning A's in physics and math classes in all likelihood if a physics PhD is what you want, but a mixture of many A's and a few B's should be OK.

You probably won't be done at the end of 5 terms, might need to wait a year or two before applying to graduate programs, perhaps take some physics courses as non-degree-seeking-student, and get letters from the professors you learn from.

It's crucial to get past the stage of earning B's in math classes though. You have to be very, very solid on your fundamentals if you're going to hope to contribute to research.

Given that you are 18, I think you have a lot of time before I'd consider you getting too old. Even if you continued studying physics for 4 more years, you'd still be only 22 by the time you'd attend graduate school, and even at a slow pace, a lot can happen in 4 years.

 

[marly]

Like others have mentioned I think you should drop your foreign language classes and concentrate on your math/physics studies.

When I started reading the beginning of your thread I wondered why your Dad was pushing you in a different direction than physics. Later in the thread you said that he said physics isn’t “your thing”. My question, is it your thing?

I don’t want to discourage you, but is physics your passion? What I mean by this is, when you were taking your College Algebra class were you fascinated with the math you were being taught? Did you sit outside of class studying math topics on your own and trying to learn more?

I’ll use myself as an example. I barely finished High School and I got my HS diploma even though I barely passed my HS Algebra class. While I have no proof, I think my Math teacher gave me a passing grade in it just because she felt sorry for me and wanted me to get my HS diploma. Once I finished HS I didn’t start college until 13 years later.

When I tested for my math at my college they put me in the remedial math courses. My first semester was basically 2 + 2 = 4, fractions, etc. Then I moved up each step for each semester. I don’t consider myself some super smart person, but I got an A in College Algebra, an A in Pre-Calculus, and an A in Calculus (Calculus II for me next fall).

When I was taking my math/physics classes what made get through them was my passion. I would sit two hours every night seven days a week working math problems. I worked math problems until my hand hurt. I would sit in meetings and instead of doodling I would work math problems that I took with me. My College Algebra professor mentioned Euler and I started reading everything I could about Euler (and others). I would spend hours and hours on my math studies. When I was between semesters I would take online math courses to try and get ahead. I took the MIT OpenCourseWare Single Variable Calculus (18.01) class. I bought the textbook and the study guide. I watched every video and I worked every problem. Then I took the calculus class at my college for credit and I got an A. I worked just as hard in my physics classes too and I was able to pull an A out of them as well. – Don’t be fooled, I studied for hours to get those grades.

So my question is this: do you love math and physics that much? Do you love it enough to study for hours every night? Do you love it so much that you want to get an A in all your math and physics classes?

You don’t have to sleep, eat, and breathe math/physics classes, but you should at least love them enough to the point where even if you aren’t any good at them (like me), you can still get an A simply based on the passion of learning more.

If you haven’t expressed any passion for math or physics in the past, then your Dad might be confused about the sudden shift from English to Physics. (It’s a pretty big shift). If you do love math/physics that much, then prove it! To hell with your Dad and get your PhD in Physics. It’s going to be a lot of work, but if you have the passion, you can do it.

 

[MrsNemisis]

I think that I do have a lot of the passion, but I've been shoved toward English my entire life because that's what my grandma is into, and because my dad doesn't think that I'm very intelligent and he thinks that English is an easy degree that is more at the level he perceives me to be at than Physics. Naturally, I would have to disagree.

A little background for the one class I've ever failed in my entire education: When I took College Algebra the first time, it was my second semester as a full time college student (I took one class each semester of my sophomore year of high school before testing out and going to college full time). I was also taking American Politics, Composition and Critical Thinking, Abnormal Psychology, Contemporary Topics in Biology, and Physical Geology along with the lab course that went with it. This added up to 19 units. I was 16 years old. It was a bit much for me at the time, and I really dropped the ball with math.

It isn't that I don't like math; quite to the contrary, other than that first time I took College Algebra, I'd always been pretty good at it and enjoyed it, too. My dad was understandably pretty upset over that math grade, and he yelled at me for a LONG TIME afterwards, and still hasn't dropped it years later, and a lot of the things he said to me and continues to say discouraged me up until a few months ago when a friend in my Japanese class asked me for some help studying for a math test he had coming up, and I realized that, before my family had convinced me that I would never be any good at math, I had really enjoyed it, and I also really enjoyed helping the friend study.

That experience has encouraged me to give math another try without taking into account how bad at it my dad thinks I am, and I think that if I put my heart into it, I'll do really well :)

 

[ParticleGrl]

How is that possible..? I can't even imagine trying to do physics without a firm knowledge of differential equations. Its usefulness is beyond contestation. I sat an exam last semester, and I came across a spring problem. I couldn't remember the formulas, so I re-derived them from the differential equations. No way could I have done that without knowing the subject pretty well.

Its useful, but the thing is by the time you can take a diff eq course (at least where I did undergrad, and many others I talked to) you had been solving diff eqs in physics classes for so long that you knew the parts of diff-eq that were useful very well. We had been solving the Schreodinger equation and Maxwell's equations and studying the solutions for many semesters before I took a formal class in differential equations. I learned names for techniques I was already using (we factored operators like you do for a characteristic equation solving the quantum simple harmonic oscillator, series solution came up for the hydrogen atom, as did spherical harmonics, etc). The techniques I learned in diff eq that I hadn't used previously in a physics class haven't really come up again. I can't remember using a Wronskian in anywhere outside my diff-eq class in college.

If you are limited in time, the thing to do is take the physics courses, and just enough math to get by. The math techniques you need for physics will show up time and time again in the physics classes. Diff eq can be useful, but if you have to make cuts, cut math.

 

[MrsNemisis]

Thanks for all the replies! My dad said that if I take two semesters of the Liberal Studies major with a few lower-division physics classes thrown in and I still want to do physics afterwards then he'll reconsider, but I don't know if it's worth throwing away a year. That leaves me with three semesters to pay off on my own, and I'd really like to avoid student loans until grad school :(

 

[Jorriss]

and I'd really like to avoid student loans until grad school :(

The benefit of graduate school in physics - it's a job too, they pay you to go!

 

[MrsNemisis]

The benefit of graduate school in physics - it's a job too, they pay you to go!

Wow, that's like the icing on the cake :)

 

[Kalidor]

I think that I do have a lot of the passion, but I've been shoved toward English my entire life because that's what my grandma is into, and because my dad doesn't think that I'm very intelligent and he thinks that English is an easy degree that is more at the level he perceives me to be at than Physics.

!

You made me want to cry man. I mostly see parents who are overconfident about their spawn's potential and sometimes to the point of embarassment, but seeing someone your age so disillusioned with his father's opinion of him just doesn't seem right.

 

[deRham]

Diff eq can be useful, but if you have to make cuts, cut math.

For what it's worth, I think this is good advice (despite being a non-specialist in physics). There are always physics books that explain the mathematics better than some of the others, and I think differential equations is the sort of subject that, if you're not exactly a specialist in it, you'll probably pick up as and when you need it. If you are going to specialize in it, obviously an extensive background on the kind of work going on in the field is necessary to make meaningful contributions.

I do recommend attempting to look up the mathematics as you go, though - don't confine yourself to what is presented in a physics book. Supplements can help you feel more confident in what you're working with.

 

[deRham]

I think that I do have a lot of the passion, but I've been shoved toward English my entire life because that's what my grandma is into, and because my dad doesn't think that I'm very intelligent and he thinks that English is an easy degree that is more at the level he perceives me to be at than Physics.

Unfortunately, there is somewhat an element of truth (not about your intelligence, but to the philosophy behind the concern) ... for whatever reason, physics is generally a more difficult major to survive than English. This isn't to say that it's necessarily harder to make it in academia (I just don't know, and I'd hardly begin to think it's easy to make it in English academia), but obviously your father wants you to get a job in something or the other as soon as possible and doesn't trust you to go through the years of difficult schooling.

I think you should plan on taking a bit longer than 4 years of college to prepare for your physics PhD, because all said, no matter how much you can accomplish in the upcoming years taking physics, I think a solid 3 years of really focusing mainly on physics is probably crucial for success in graduate school. That means finishing your major and getting exposed to advanced topics.

If not, you should graduate college and add on some coursework as non-degree-seeking-student or something of that nature. Getting into physics PhD is quite difficult, I can only imagine.

 

[nickbob00]

http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp/

Show your dad that - Physics consistently comes in the top 10 best paying majors/degrees of every list I've seen, both UK and US. That is after averaging the relatively lower pay in academic positions with better remunerated industry or less related (finance, oil) positions.

 

[johnqwertyful]

@OP: can you not pay your own way? I came from a very poor family, and by 1969 when I enrolled in college it was quite obvious that I would have to work my way through college - my parents just couldn't have afforded it. There was precious little financial aid awarded back then, perhaps because the Viet Nam war was in full swing, and lots of guys wanted to get student deferments. Still, I managed to work through college and pay my way. It wasn't easy, but it was do-able. My parents could not have done it. They helped as much as they could, but I carried the load.

Ahaha, are you serious?

http://www.fullerton.edu/financialaid/appinfo/cost.htm

Undergraduate Living in Dorm
$24,742
divided by $8/hour
3093 hours
divided by 365 days/year
That's 8.5 hours a day, every day, no breaks, BEFORE taxes. That's working MORE than full time. If you take home 65%, that's $5.20/hour

24742/5.2=4758 hours, or 13 hours a day, every day.

Granted, there IS financial aid out there, but that only helps so much...

 

[johnqwertyful]

If you look at it the other way around, let's say he works a reasonable amount a week, like 15 hours/week. 15*8*52=$6240 a year, just short of the "fees" section. Plus books, room, food, board. Then minus taxes.

 

[Choppy]

Ahaha, are you serious?

http://www.fullerton.edu/financialaid/appinfo/cost.htm

Undergraduate Living in Dorm
$24,742
divided by $8/hour
3093 hours
divided by 365 days/year
That's 8.5 hours a day, every day, no breaks, BEFORE taxes. That's working MORE than full time. If you take home 65%, that's $5.20/hour

24742/5.2=4758 hours, or 13 hours a day, every day.

Granted, there IS financial aid out there, but that only helps so much...

Well, here's my take on how it works, if you're interested.

First off, you should be able to cut those costs down. If money is tight, shop around for the right undergraduate bang for your buck. Many students will do their first 2 years at a community college. Factor in cost of living in the particular city too. $12000 a year for room and board seems pretty steep to me. If that's for an 8 month academic year I could make my mortgage payments and have $200 a month left over for food!

Second, ideally you should be working full-time over the summers. Don't start looking in April/May. Try to set something up as early as the previous September. And only accept minimum wage as a last resort or as a stepping stone position (such as research position, or something that's going to lead to a much better wage the following year, or experience that's going to get your foot in the door for a full-time career position).

Third, balance that out with part-time work over the year. About 6-12 hours per week is reasonable with a full course load.

That's probably not going to get you into the black, but it's a heck of a lot less red than people often complain about.

On top of that I recommend looking for scholarships where ever you can find them. In my experience, you are NOT automatically considered for everything you are eligible for just by enrolling in a school and even those $500 bursaries can add up.

Depending on where you're at, I also recommend starting to save early. I had a job when I was 15 years old and a substantial part of what I made went into the bank for university. I'm always surprised at the number of students who don't do this. Another option along these lines is just working full-time for a year after high school.

Finally be very conscious of the amount of money you borrow and make sure you understand the rules for paying it back. Some students look at those figures you've listed and feel they need that full $24k on the first day of school. Don't borrow until you've exhausted all other avenues.

 

[johnqwertyful]

Well, here's my take on how it works, if you're interested.

First off, you should be able to cut those costs down. If money is tight, shop around for the right undergraduate bang for your buck. Many students will do their first 2 years at a community college. Factor in cost of living in the particular city too. $12000 a year for room and board seems pretty steep to me. If that's for an 8 month academic year I could make my mortgage payments and have $200 a month left over for food!

Second, ideally you should be working full-time over the summers. Don't start looking in April/May. Try to set something up as early as the previous September. And only accept minimum wage as a last resort or as a stepping stone position (such as research position, or something that's going to lead to a much better wage the following year, or experience that's going to get your foot in the door for a full-time career position).

Third, balance that out with part-time work over the year. About 6-12 hours per week is reasonable with a full course load.

That's probably not going to get you into the black, but it's a heck of a lot less red than people often complain about.

On top of that I recommend looking for scholarships where ever you can find them. In my experience, you are NOT automatically considered for everything you are eligible for just by enrolling in a school and even those $500 bursaries can add up.

Depending on where you're at, I also recommend starting to save early. I had a job when I was 15 years old and a substantial part of what I made went into the bank for university. I'm always surprised at the number of students who don't do this. Another option along these lines is just working full-time for a year after high school.

Finally be very conscious of the amount of money you borrow and make sure you understand the rules for paying it back. Some students look at those figures you've listed and feel they need that full $24k on the first day of school. Don't borrow until you've exhausted all other avenues.

Of course there's way to keep costs down, I'm just saying that you can't just "work your way through it".

I went to community college (transferring in Fall), I'm living off campus with no meal plan (cooking my own meals, WAY cheaper), I plan on getting a job when I move up there (maybe not first quarter, but second one).

There ARE ways to keep costs down, for sure. I agree there. I'm just saying that it's not as simple as "work your way through it", like it was in the 60s. You're going to have to have some help from mommy and daddy, or take out loans, or both. It's nothing to be ashamed of, just the truth.