A List of The Best Colleges For Astronomy?

Question

I'm a Sophomore in High School and I want to be an astronomer. What are the best colleges and their requirements.

Answer 1

The top ten astronomy and astrophysics programs in the US are:

Cal Tech
Princeton
UC Berkeley
UC Santa Cruz
Cornell
MIT
U of Arizona
Harvard
U Chicago
U Texas at Austin

However, these are ranked in terms of their graduate programs.

If I were a young person looking to major in astronomy at the undergraduate level, I would strongly consider Cal Tech, MIT, Princeton, and Vassar College. The first three choices are obvious, but Vassar has a history and reputation of close collaborations between students and professors, a new state-of-the-art observatory, and an extremely strong reputation, so it places its graduates into top-tier graduate programs. Finally, Vassar has a superb summer scholar program, in which undergraduates can apply to work one-on-one with professors on real scientific projects, the results of which are often published in academic journals.

As to college requirements, most top colleges will require a superb SAT score, very high grades, a record of taking the most difficult classes offered at your high school and excelling in them, a consistent record of leadership in an extracurricular activity, evidence of regular volunteer work, and outstanding letters of recommendation from your high school teachers.

If you want specifics about each college, visit each college's website, and also go to http://www.princetonreview.com or http://www.collegeboard.com and start doing your research.

Best wishes to you!

Answer 2

I agree with the guy above for the most part. Many undergrad schools have strong astro and physics programs, but if you want to get into a good grad school for astro, you probably will want to attend one of the listed schools for undergrad and then go to another for grad school. Many colleges support REUs (research experiences for undergraduates) which will pay you to do research during your summers. Try to get one every summer you're in college - you might get a few publications out of it, or get to attend a professional meeting - both great things to put on your resume.

As an undergrad, you'll want to major in physics with a double major or minor in math and astronomy. Believe it or not, the math and physics will help you get into grad school more than an astronomy background, though it would definitely help. Learn a few programing languages as well - IDL, C, Fortran, Perl are always useful. Good luck!

Some more up-and-coming programs:

Ohio State
Clemson University
UMass Amherst
UCLA
UC Boulder