Are Physics PhD Programs Overloaded With Courses?

[bennington]

Too much physics!

I was reading the physics courses http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm#Physics", and boy, I was shocked. If I were to get a PhD in physics, would I have to take that many courses?

 

[mathwonk]

so much physics, so little time!

 

[quasar987]

definitely not. One usually takes from 3 to 5 courses per semester, for 6 semester, than you get your BA degree. And after that, much less courses per year on average.

 

[Igor_S]

That is a complete list of all courses offered by MIT's Department of Physics. Not all are mandatory, and there isn't enough time to take every single course and to study every single area of physics in great detail. But getting a PhD does require you to know a lot of stuff. By that I mean you will eventually read a lot of stuff on your own and learn a lot outside of your courses.

However, I never thought of physics courses that way, even during my undergrad i was EXCITED to finally take some courses I found interesting (even though I had a lot of required courses).

 

[malawi_glenn]

You can't get TOO much physics ;-)

 

[Poop-Loops]

You'd better do it now, before physicists discover even more physics for you to take.

You think Einstein had to take Modern physics or Quantum Mechanics? Nope. So, the sooner you get it over with, the less you'll have to learn.

EDIT: Looked over the course list. It's not really that bad. Especially since some of them are "repeats" (same title, different year). And like others have said, a lot of those other courses are simply optional depending on what you want to do later in your career. I wouldn't take, for example, statistical physics in biology. I just don't see myself doing biology. It makes me squeemish. :( But instead I would take say the theory of solids classes.

Here is a list of physics classes offered at UW:

http://www.washington.edu/students/crscat/phys.html

A lot of those are graduate level, and a lot of those are total BS classes, like Phys 215 "A Way of Knowing.", so we would't be expected to take them.

The general list of classes you need to take to graduate with a BS degree, though, isn't that bad:

http://www.phys.washington.edu/bsrequirements.htm

 

[Asphodel]

Those catalogs also tend to end up bloated with courses that are offered once in a while, and some of them are annually, and some of them are targeted largely at non-physics majors...it's not really a representative sample of what actually ends up being available for you to choose from. Or of what you're expected to learn.

 

[marlon]

what is the point of this thread ?