Quality of Georgia Tech's physics program? (undergrad)

[Fizex]

I live in Georgia and it would be cheaper for me to go there. I can't find much information from searches, so I wonder if there is anyone here in the GT physics program. I know a lot about the engineering side and heard that engineering majors aim for a C in their courses and that it is difficult to get even an A with very hard work. That is not a good prospect if I want to get into graduate school. I also heard that undergraduate physics majors there don't get research opportunities and that professors are too busy in their own affairs to care about the undergrads; I want to know if this is true.

Also, if you have any advice on what classes I should take for sophmore-senior year and electives it would be nice.

 

[fss]

I know a lot about the engineering side and heard that engineering majors aim for a C in their courses and that it is difficult to get even an A with very hard work.

Frankly I think all courses should be curved to a C. It's a good way to separate the average students from the good students. You should not expect to have a curve higher than a C ; anything else is a bonus.

Also, if you have any advice on what classes I should take for sophmore-senior year and electives it would be nice.

GT's outline of the physics major should have recommendations on scheduling. Your electives will depend on your interests. Not sure how much help anyone else can be here, unless they actually went through the program.

 

[Fizex]

Frankly I think all courses should be curved to a C. It's a good way to separate the average students from the good students. You should not expect to have a curve higher than a C ; anything else is a bonus.

I know that averages should be geared towards a C; but what I meant was that it would be practically impossible for someone to get an A in these programs at GT. GT engineers complain so much more about a bad score than almost any other engineering school. For example, one person getting an A in a class of 150 people or something. Don't know about the physics side.

GT's outline of the physics major should have recommendations on scheduling. Your electives will depend on your interests. Not sure how much help anyone else can be here, unless they actually went through the program.

Yea, I will run out of classes junior year and would have taken everything on the schedule leaving Junior and Senior years to be totally up to me. I just want to know what classes to avoid. I read that mathematical physics is just a review of calculus, diff. eq. and linear algebra so that would be a pointless class I might have taken if I had not known any better.

 

[Monocles]

I'm a senior majoring in physics and math at GT. I don't know where you heard that it is difficult to get research opportunities as an undergrad - from my anecdotal experience and everyone else I know, this is completely false. Every professor I've asked about doing research under has said yes without even asking what classes I had taken or GPA (except for the mathematical physicist that I work under now, who I did an REU under last summer). That includes the professor I started working for while taking physics 1!

Average GPAs for different courses are available publicly online at http://www.sga.gatech.edu/critique/ if that worries you. It is true that GT has 'grade deflation' by today's standards, but it is not too bad. I personally like it since it makes me work harder. We still send plenty of grads to top grad schools.

For electives, I really recommend against mathematical physics for precisely the reasons you stated. Take the graduate level sequence instead if you want to learn anything. I had a lot of fun taking Electronics, Solid-State Physics, and Optics though.

I love GT and I wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere else for my undergrad even if I were given the chance!