Physics

Harvard is so generally considered a good education school that outsiders are often surprised to find a student here whose sole interest is science.

Actually the College offers one of the finest preparations in the country to a man who wants to go on to advanced, particularly theoretical, work or research in this field. Many graduate students in Physics claim that, while technical colleges are fine for specialization along the way, the non-specialist professor--or research-aspirant can do no better than Harvard.

But look before you leap.

It cannot be repeated too often that Physics is no field for a person who is "interested in science." A fairly large number of men drop out of the department every year--men who got an "A" in high school algebra and concluded that they had been chosen to be the developer of the Oxygen-Bomb.

But a man who has a pretty clear idea of what he wants will probably do all right. The Graduate School gives a firm basis of Nuclear Physics and Quantum Mechanics, the two fields into which most concentrators eventually branch.

The concentration requirements actually are quite flexible. One needs only the basic Math course (although 105 is to be strongly recommended), two courses in a Physics more advanced than 10 or 11, and a course in a related field. Honors means an extra course and a half. Competition for graduate school is rugged, but it's all on grades--no generals or theses.

Elementary courses are usually exhaustive and fairly dull. As the student rises in the field, he finds the courses far more interesting, and, despite any rumor to the contrary, a good deal harder. It is usually better to get a firm foundation in the basic courses of the 100 series than to leap unprepared at Bainbridge or Bridgeman.

And the real theoretician will be interested to know that a couple of Scientific-Philosophy courses, Natural Sciences 112 and 113, can be counted for concentration.