Physics B.S.
Overview
The Bachelor of Science program provides you with broad and rigorous physics education, preparing you for graduate study and for the many career options open to professional physicists in industry and government.
The B.S. program offers several unique opportunities:
- Enroll in honors sections of physics courses in which you can explore course materials in greater depth and with more advanced applications.
- Become a teaching assistant in introductory physics courses.
- In your junior lab, you’ll learn the intricacies of planning and designing an experiment, and of collecting and analyzing data with the most modern tools.
- The special focus on quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics in your senior year enhances your knowledge and skills in critical research areas, including nanotechnology.
- The two-semester research experience (senior project) prepares you for dissertation work in graduate school, as well as for research and development work in government or industrial laboratories.
- Qualified students can choose to take one or two physics graduate courses in areas they are specially interested in or wish to focus on later in graduate school.
Careers
Among the many options for physics majors are careers in
- teaching high school physics,
- research and development in private industry,
- research in government labs,
- medical imaging,
- scientific book publishing, and
- scientific reporting.
A bachelor’s degree in physics is also an excellent preparation for admission to many different graduate and professional schools. If you choose to go on to graduate study, career options include teaching college or university level physics, higher-level positions in basic and applied research in private industry or in government labs, and biomedical research. There are even careers in the financial industry that require modeling skills that are a natural part of graduate study in physics.
For more information, see the Physics Education and Employment Data for Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees compiled by the American Institute of Physics.