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[quote=Anonymous]I'm an academic whose kid applied widely this past year with this very aim: physics major, then physics PhD, then research career in physics.

Posters have already made most of the necessary points:

(1) Undergrad really doesn't matter at all if you can get into a good PhD program, which students from middling schools often do. My own middling university sends some of its physics majors to top physics graduate programs nearly every year.

(2) LACs can be great. Judging by Apker awardees over the past three decades (including recently), the best undergrad physicists in the US are at Mudd and Williams (more Apker awardees there than at MIT, Caltech, and other research universities).

(3) CU Boulder is an easy admit but looks excellent for physics. Based on our experiences, the school seems serious about recruiting good students. CU is also very strong in my own field (in the humanities). We don't know what to make of the CU's general non-exclusivity; it probably wouldn't actually matter at all.

(4) Egad, don't use the CVs of junior faculty at Princeton as a measure of anything! Anyway, as I think someone already pointed out, academics usually don't even list their undergraduate degree on their webpage: you're probably looking at their graduate degrees.

(5) Our kid is going abroad. Future scientists in general will be going abroad. As we visited US schools this past spring and considered our kid's acceptances and offers, every one of these physics departments was seeing its research funding cut -- even the LACs. The brain drain is happening, even at the level of undergrad admissions.[/quote]

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