Bachelor's degree requirements:
Bachelor's degree in physics is required.

Minimum undergraduate GPA: 3.0

We invite applications from interested persons who have undergraduate degrees and course backgrounds that emphasize physics. Clearly additional undergraduate course experiences in astronomy, mathematics, computational programming techniques, engineering, and electronics may also provide useful preparation.

For admission to Physics and Astronomy’s graduate program, a B.S. or B.A. degree with a minimum GPA of 3.0 is usually required, ideally with a major in physics or astronomy (or strong physics coursework in a related major). Applicants will be evaluated based on their likelihood of success in our graduate program. As such, students having strong letters of recommendation, a record of research experience and productivity, and good grades, will generally be competitive for admission. We will consider all aspects of each applicant’s file for admission.

As a department, we are committed to fighting conscious and unconscious discrimination within physics and astronomy and in the broader world. We study the Universe both to help solve the world’s problems and to open up new frontiers of understanding for humanity. Our enterprise is inherently global: we rely on the combined efforts of people from all over the world. It is also inherently open-minded: we embrace logical inquiry and empiricism, which unite us regardless of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and religious and political beliefs. We affirm the commitment of the department to maintaining a welcoming and protected space for science and thus for everyone who joins in our shared enterprise.

Creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all is key to the mission of the department. Our community is culturally diverse, with students from all over the world and an international faculty representing North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Our faculty is over 20% female (40-50% at the assistant/associate professor level), representing significant recent improvement over the national norm. Nonetheless, like other physics departments, we still have work to do to improve the representation of women and minorities at all levels. We have committed to a sustained effort to remove barriers to success in our department, through self-education about best practices in admissions, hiring, mentoring, teaching, and review/promotion. After reforming our graduate admissions and mentoring, we were selected as an APS Bridge Program Partnership Institution in 2016, and this year we will further modernize our graduate course and exam structure. At the undergraduate level, we are engaged in a continual effort to improve advising, webpages, and other forms of communication, to equalize access to opportunities, mentoring, and networking. Self-education is important to our continued improvement, and in recent years many of our faculty and students have been exposed to materials on unconscious bias, test anxiety, the impostor syndrome, and microaggressions. So far this year we have held department-wide workshops on sexual harassment and LGBTQ sensitivity, and 22 members of the department are now official Safe Zone allies. Additional events focused on community dialogue are planned.” The Diversity Committee will also continue to work on expanding unconscious bias training and implementation of best practices in the realm of faculty and staff hiring, mentoring, and review/promotion.