UKH

  There seem to be lots of scientist on here. Where would you recommend a bright young man to study physics at undergraduate level (except for Oxbridge.)

  Imperial is the obvious one and comments welcome on that, but  which others provide high quality courses and teaching, a good undergraduate experience (he's quite sporty), and enough credibility to help with career opportunities in whatever he wants to do afterwards?

In reply to Postmanpat:

Manchester always got a good write up and has some world renowned names and discoveries in it’s history. I didn’t end up doing physics so can’t comment on how it was in the mid 00s unfortunately! Good sports facilities and opportunities at the uni and around the city in general. 

In reply to Postmanpat:

The Netherlands

In reply to HansStuttgart:

Which university?

In reply to Postmanpat:

Edinburgh is worth considering - my (very bright) nephew is in his final year of physics there and it's worked well for him. Seems a well structured course with a lot of final year options, it's nominally four years but his A levels were good enough to jump in at the second. He's been heavily involved in their student hyperloop design project besides his actual degree studies. Obviously plenty else going on in the city as well.

(Having been through the Cambridge mill myself I'm actually quite jealous...)

In reply to mrphilipoldham:

My youngest son embarked on Physics at Manchester. It didn't go well, no-one noticed that he stopped turning up. I'm not sure how great the pastoral care side is.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I think there's quite a lot of choice of credible courses, so it depends on what he wants from the wider university experience.  Outside Oxbridge (one half of which is, of course, much better than the other for physics), there are three very large departments in the UK, all roughly equally strong in research - Imperial, UCL and Manchester.  All three have excellent courses and will cover the whole breadth of the subject, but they're big and perhaps some might think them impersonal.  

There are then quite a few medium size departments which have good courses and external credibility, but which have a particular emphasis (e.g. different balances between astrophysics, particle physics, solid state) and particular specialisms, so a bit of research may be needed to match those to the prospective student's interests.  A non-exclusive list of departments like this that I know reasonably well and would be happy to recommend would include Nottingham, Warwick & Sheffield.  

Then there are departments that are small, and perhaps offer a more personal student experience, yet which are still highly regarded for research; I'd put Lancaster high in this category.  

As I said, a non-exclusive list so other perfectly good possibilities that I haven't mentioned (I haven't mentioned Scotland, which has a number of excellent physics departments, for example).

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Does any university take attendance at lectures (as distinct from tutorials etc)?  That's kind of not the point.

I went to Manchester (OK, 20 odd years ago) to do Computer Science and it was great.  Great city too - arguably more so now than back then.  If you want a big city uni you can do far worse, though I don't know about the Physics Dept in and of itself.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I enjoyed Sheffield! Great Astronomy department... some famous climbers there too.

In reply to Postmanpat:

A friend went to York and did physics, he's been enjoying himself working as an EMC engineer for a few years. From what I saw at the time my ex went round the freshers' fair and conversations with my friend I get the impression that York has a good extra curricular side for less conventional sports (my friend did a lot of Kendo) and more general hobbyist type clubs. The importance of this side of university is easy to underestimate, looking back I would happily opt for a slightly less prestigious uni for one with better social opportunities. 

In reply to Postmanpat:

I think the wider setting is at least as important as the department - assuming it's a good one, of which there is no shortage.

I'd encourage the BYM to visit half a dozen universities or so, to talk with existing students and with staff, to get a feel for the department and the wider city, and absolutely look at typical accommodation - especially if the institution expect them to stay in "their" halls in the first year as part of their hotel business.  (Some are effectively franchised out to commercial landlords under nomination agreements)

One example -  I'd have loved to do a degree at Imperial but I'd have detested living in London (and did, when I ended up doing so many years later).

In terms of career opportunities - it's well worth looking at which departments do an industrial placement year as part of their degree.  York for example are embedding options for industrial placements at multiple points in their degree program.

Beware top level teams which will try and recruit people who fit their model; it can lead to a lot of coach and peer pressure against time demands that just aren't compatible with the later years of a science degree unless they're a robot.   More than a few kids end up exhausted to breaking point and either having a bad time or suffering a bad injury and then having a bad time.  Plenty of sport at all other levels to enjoy.  I know a few people who joined local sports clubs as an alternative to the university ones for a lower pressure, more fun environment.

Also, beware university hill walking societies...  Some of them seem to go through low points of sheer incompetence on the fell, our local one is on a riser at the moment but I've heard some howlers about another recently...

In reply to Postmanpat:

This is probably the first BIG decision they need to make themselves, make sure they have a lot of visits and read the background but sorry, but it's their decision/mistake now on... 

That said I'm agreeing with posts that the social side is of great importance

In reply to Neil Williams:

In physics, you can't complete the course unless you turn up all the time - you step off the bus and it leaves without you.

The pastoral care was not what was promised at the Open Day.

In reply to Postmanpat:

depends on whether the interest is in general physics or engineering/applied physics. The former I'd suggest Leiden, the latter Twente.

Disclaimer: I studied applied physics in Twente, so I might be biased.

Hans

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Hmmmmm. “All the time “ you say ? Hmmmm . 
edit : sorry completely forgot to reply to the OP: . Sheffield . Obviously . 

In reply to wintertree:

To further comment on this: I think the typical monthly rent and commuting time should be considered carefully. It is very easy to waste a lot of quality of life over the years the course will take.

In reply to HansStuttgart:

Not TU Delft? I have long thought this looks like a great place to study Applied Physics.

In reply to mike123:

OK ... 90% of the time. The OP asked for asked for some advice/experience and I gave ours.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

rob , I didn’t read your first  post and now I have I think with that context my flippant comment was silly and uncalled for . Sorry . 

In reply to Postmanpat:

Nottingham was good when I did my degree - although that was a good few years ago now!

In reply to Postmanpat:

Utrecht

In reply to mike123:

Appreciate that, no problem.

In reply to Postmanpat:

A little disappointed nobody has said space.

The guy I knew who did physics at Uni had no fun, work work work

In reply to Forest Dump:

With that slant:-

Theoretical side, inside your head ?

In reply to elliptic:

I did physics at Edinburgh, skipping the 1st year and wouldn't recommend this. You end up on a course that is orders of magnitude more difficult than all your mates, particularly if you're not a nerd and you want to go out partying with all the humanities students who have got basically nothing to do except go out and party. Plus, you go from being the top in your class at school to being at the bottom - you're more or less a year behind and you haven't got the same skills as your class mates. Obviously most people doing this will catch up - I did and graduated with a good degree - but the experience is much more stressful than just going into a first year undergrad like anyone else. Wasn't worth it for me. As it happens I hated the course and a lot of the teaching was really poor, but that's a long time ago so hopefully not relevant. I wish I'd studied something else entirely.

That said, Edinburgh is a great city, or at least it was when I studied there 20-odd years ago. Fantastic night life at the time which was right up my street - I remember some really good bars with live music and DJs, the club scene was excellent, nice pubs. No wonder I had a hard time at the start of the course...

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

What did they promise you Rob? 

In reply to Neil Williams:

Other activities such as tutorials and labs should have monitored attendance.  In my role as an academic advisor on a science course I watched the attendance of my advisees like a hawk - I could check if they'd put in a notification or just not turned up, and I'd get automated notifications of a no-show.  

The office were proactive about chasing this as well.  As Rob alluded, missing a few weeks can be catastrophic on some courses.  Miss the key concepts part of a course and the rest is going to make you feel like a dunce sat there not following the developments on the board.  Catching up is hard in the middle of a term that can be choc-a-block with timetabled activities. 

A funny thing happens at a good university with high entrance grades on science courses - take the top-achieving part of the cohort a hundred sixth forms and put them together, and a new distribution emerges, one in which half the previous top-achievers are now below average and a few form the absolute low end of the distribution.  Some of them really aren't ready for this - they're no longer a better achiever than most of their peers, and it takes a toll; if that leads to disengagement from the course, an awful feedback loop forms with sudden ferocity.  Plenty of other factors can disengage them in the first term - homesickness, getting too pissed too much, difficulty adapting to the radically different style of teaching and learning, a realisation they maybe shouldn't have let their parents nudge them in to a hard science course when they really wanted to do archeology, all sorts of things.  

Sometimes I'd invite a student in for an unscheduled chat:
Me - How's it going then?
Them - bluster bluster great bluster bluster.
Me - Is that really how it's going?
Them - [...]
Me - Okay.  What would you like to do about this?

It's perhaps 5% of the students where that level of pastoral support can make a critical difference between bombing out with a crushing (and normally undeserved) blow to their self esteem, a wasted year and a pile of debt, and moving forwards productively.  

One of the most successful ways of helping I found was too encourage them to use the joint-honours structure to move away from the subject they chose aged 17 to what they really enjoy and want to be doing.  I got more and more fed up with advising people doing the degree because they'd been told it was a path to a well paid job in finance or whatever; I have always been a firm believer that success (however you wish to define it - financial, personal development, happiness, sense of achievement) lies in doing what you enjoy.

In reply to wintertree:

That's a really interesting account and chimes exactly with our experience - except the provision of any kind of support, which was conspicuous by its' absence. That's  Manchester 5 years ago PP - make of that what you will.

In reply to wintertree:

That's exactly what happened to me, 25 years ago.  I was head and shoulders above the rest of my cohort in my bog standard state secondary and breezed through my A levels with almost zero effort.  I left the pre-course work that I'd been sent until the week before I left to go to Oxford, and barely got half of it done.  I very quickly realised I was now distinctly average, and I had absolutely no idea of how to work.  

The support from my tutors was middling; they clearly knew I was in trouble but had little idea of how to help.  I only got through my end-of-first-year exams with the help of a friend in second year and was still struggling all the way to part A finals in my third year. 

The way the course worked then, everyone took part A halfway through the third year, and you either took an 18 month project for part B to get a Master's or a six month part B for a Bachelor's.  I took a low 2:2 in part A, and switched to the three year course.  My tutors more or less washed their hands of me at this point.  I had finally figured out how to learn by this point, and took a high first in my part B... which added up to the highest 2:2 in the year.  That still annoys me!  So does the fact that Oxford does not recognise the BSc, so I have a BA in Physics...

I'm not quite sure what the moral is.  I'm sure I could have thrived at Oxford but perhaps I needed to have been pushed harder at A level.  But I also wonder if I'd have been better off in Imperial or Warwick.  I don't regret Oxford for a second - I maintain that it made me a much better thinker, just because when you are surrounded by brilliant people for every minute of the day you have no choice but to be better yourself.  But despite the tutorial system the support was pretty rudimentary.

OP - one thought - does your son have friends in the year above him?  A few weekends spent visiting them in their halls (if covid allows...) would tell him a lot about what his priorities might be, far more than open days will.  Like Wintertree, I very quickly realised (by visiting a mate) that London was not for me.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Many do now, but that's got more to do with immigration regulations than pastoral care. We are required to record attendance for students on tier 4 visas (or whatever they are called now) - it's simpler and less discriminatory to just record attendance for everyone. 

Of course, that wasn't always the case, and I don't know when Rob's son was at Manchester - even so there should have been mechanisms in place to prevent students from falling through the cracks - I'm sorry that happened Rob.

In reply to wintertree:

Very similar experience doing physics at one of the Uk's very prestigious institutions. Turned out I wasn't really prepared for what the course contained and rather out of my depth. I did waste a year as no one really pointed this out. It did however allow me to identify what I did like which was the practical application, coding and labs. I did move institutions to one that had a more flexible attitude to joint honours and was much happier there. I even when on to get a PhD so couldn't have been a complete dunder head.

If I was to offer advice it would be similar to others in look at the broader environment and support. It is also worth looking at the flexibility in the course and possibilities for moving to joint honours etc as what we want at 17 doesn't always prove to be the case. I was certainly lured in by the name of a very prestigious university when I should have listened to my gut feeling from the interviews of not being that keen on the place.

In reply to Postmanpat: I went to Manchester to study Physics and my son recently graduated from Durham (Physics).  Durham seemed to be a great all round experience especially belonging to college from a sport and social experience the whole way through.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I went to Imperial many years ago and can't say I liked the place. Not doing physics though. A university's reputation is based on its research but that's really irrelevant to undergraduates. I'd look into the quality of the teaching and how they look after their students. 

In reply to Postmanpat:

I'd have to say Imperial (biased as went there and studied Physics) in terms of teaching- but having read a lot of the comments there are two things that I would totally agree with....

1) Unless you are in the top 10%, which I certainly wasn't, there is no pastoral care and quite frankly they didn't really care if you were there or not. One of the examples of this was the phone call from my personal tutor, six months after I graduated, asking why I hadn't attended anything that academic year.

2) When I went over 20 years ago, the lectures were full on 9 - 6 with a humanities option over lunch and if you missed something, there was no catch-up. I would hope it's changed, but lectures in the main hall were done on three endless loop chalk boards and if you hadn't managed to write everything down in time it got erased and you had to hope you could grab it from someone else as there were never any lecture notes. Having said that - I've since gone back and done a Masters elsewhere and found it very strange to just be given all of the lecture notes. Felt this didn't really make you learn anything. Maybe you just can't win!

Loved the rest of my time there though and whilst I'm now happier in the countryside wouldn't have changed the London experience for anything.

In reply to PhilWS:

My uncle who is mid 80's  did one of the very first " new "aircraft engineering degrees at Imperial when he was 17. He tells an amusing story over his first year.

So all the first years are gathered in one lecture theatre and the vice chancellor speaks. "Shake hands with the person next to you on the left and then on the right. At the end of the first year 1/3 of you will have left this course/Uni  and it is likely to be either you or one of the people you have just shaken hands with."

At the end of the 1st year this is exactly what happened.

A bit brutal!

He still laughs about it.

As an aside for those of you now interested in aircraft engineering, it was incredibly exciting times for my Uncle as the designs of planes etc were breathtaking and still being sorted.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Thanks for all the replies. He is the son of  friend. He's lived all his life in West London which is a reason not to go to Imperial. I suggested maybe Durham bit I know nothing about it's reputation for physics.

In reply to Neil Williams:

I'd echo what other have said about visiting the place and getting a feel for it.  As for big cities where I've been a student of some description, my experience was that Birmingham was OK (although that's largely because of the very nice campus, nowhere near the city centre) and Bristol was outstanding (for all sorts of reasons, not just the climbing).  I've just never warmed to Manchester, I'm afraid, and I have tried, but I'm aware I'm in the minority there.  No idea what the physics is like at any of them, although Birmingham was well-regarded for nuclear and reactor physics back then.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Pastoral care looked like it was good at my uni, but in reality was non-existent.  A register went around at lectures but we all used to sign our mates in if we hadn't seen them.

Less easy with tutorials - I learned that if you skipped more than 3 in a row you got a letter, telling that attendance was compulsory.  And that was it.  No calls to meeting, no chats with supervisors.  Just letters that led to nothing.

Thankfully I pulled my finger out in my 3rd year and got the classification I wanted, but that was of my own volition.  A friend of mine (on a different course) cruised, skipped and avoided so much that at the end of the three years he failed his degree, couldn't even muster a pass.  Don't remember him ever being invited in for a chat or being supported in any way.  I doubt anyone even knew who he was.

In reply to wintertree:

Definitely. There's lots of good physics departments..... when it comes to prospects after uni it's more about how well you do in the degree and I firmly believe that the wider setting is the most important factor in that. And it's very 'horses for courses'.

In reply to Iamgregp:

An interesting question is of exactly what level one should expect.  University is expected, quite rightly, to be to some extent self-driven.  Now clearly people need support for mental health issues and the likes (as there are too many suicides of young adults at uni), but if people are just being lazy and bone-idle it is quite right that they should fail their degree, and very wrong that such people should be spoon-fed.  That approach ends at the end of compulsory schooling, and rightly so.

So should someone in that position be ignored?  No, because they might have a mental health issue, have chosen the wrong course and benefit from changing it or whatever.  But if it's clear that the problem is just laziness, while they will go away without a degree at least they might take with them the important lesson that if you don't put the effort in you get nowt.

FWIW, I'd say UK universities offer far more than other European countries in terms of support.  At German ones, for example (which I have personal experience of during my year abroad), you are totally on your own - the timetable is issued, you sign up for courses and you sign up for "finals" when you're ready - much more like an in-person version of how the OU works here.  All up to you, and I see huge benefits in that approach.  It felt very grown up to me compared with a UK uni (not surprising as most Germans don't go to uni until at least age 20 due to the national service), and I really quite liked it.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I think one key attraction of it to me (bar being relatively local) was the attraction of the big, dirty, exciting, slightly dangerous and "dark" city it very much was in the 90s (much less so now, though still to some extent), which was a contrast to the slightly posh Lancashire market town I grew up in (with easy access to Liverpool, but living somewhere is totally different to popping there shopping).

In reply to Neil Williams:

Yes very true!

I agree that gaining a degree should be proof that you are able to work and achieve something off your own back but then also having a student enrolled for three years come to the end of it with nothing at all is probably not in the best interests of the student or the university (especially now fees are a thing).  A gentle word in my mate's ear wouldn't have gone amiss...

Very true re. other countries being vastly different.  There was an Italian guy in my flat in the first year, he couldn't believe the level of organisation our Uni: 

"A timetable?!?! In Italy, we don't have... We meet in the square and have some coffee and discuss, maybe we have an idea for class then after lunch we go to the professor and see if he will hold class to talk about, but maybe he's busy? [shrugs]"

In reply to Postmanpat:

Any of the Russells will be fine for a mainstream course like Physics.

Bristol and Imperial would be my picks.

In reply to Postmanpat:

As above, any Russell group will be good.  However, there will be significant differences in course content, delivery style, what it's like to live in the city/campus etc etc.  A place that will be ideal for one student won't be for another so it's not really possible to make recommendations as such.  Send the "bright young man" to a few places, to ask lots of questions, to be a little sceptical of the answers, spend time in the city, day and night, to get feel for it.  If parents are there too, make sure they don't dominate and impose their preferences.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Someone who gets to Manchester to read physics already has A*s in hard subjects like maths, additional maths and physics coming out of their ears.

Whatever problems such students may have, laziness isn't likely to be one if them. 

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

You'd be surprised.  Many young people who do very well in a traditional school sixth form, say, are very intelligent but in terms of motivation are very much "pushed along" by the high level of supervision you get in such an establishment, plus also often by supportive and encouraging family.  When they move away to live in halls and enter the much lower-supervision world of university, some of them do "let things go" and not put the effort in, and thus either get a worse grade than they'd be expected to get or end up dropping out completely.  I certainly know of both from my uni time.

That effect was also visible in very intelligent kids who went to a local sixth form college instead of the school sixth form and found to their cost that the lower-supervision environment you get there (which is higher-supervision than a university) didn't work for them either.

Of course there is an element of choice in it too.  A big-city uni like Manchester is probably lower-supervision than a small-city collegiate one like Durham, or even a small-city/market-town campus one like Lancaster or Edge Hill.  I actually wanted that and was very much put off by the collegiate idea, it was one of a number of reasons I chose not to apply to Oxford or Cambridge even though I got grades that would have got me into either.

What this probably highlights is that you need to do a lot of research into which university will suit you as an individual, as it's not always a simple case of "that one's good, that one's bad".

In reply to wintertree:

Well said. A friend of mine at NTU Physics was one of the best I've seen at this.

In STEM they have electronic registers for all classes and the electronic module resources had monitor levels on usage, so any course leader who claims to care, has no excuse anymore for overlooking students who suddenly stop applying themselves. 

I'd happily recommend a number of other post 92s for students who struggle with self motivation and need help in learning. We took many like that who did well despite failing year one is a Russel group institution, including all Richard's third tier recommendations.

We had a silly maxim in my day: don't go to Imperial unless you're an indestructible super hero.... they have improved but pastoral support and plan B routes are still way better in oxbridge.... it's not just about liking London.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I did my Physics degree at Birmingham 25+ years ago. It's a nice campus university within easy reach of the city centre. There was a good mixture of courses you could choose from in the 2nd & 3rd years, though the pastoral support wasn't great. Not much point being assigned a tutor who then disappears abroad doing research!

I went back some years later and hardly recognised the department, where we had corridors to wait for lectures in, they now had lounges and kitchens!

In reply to wintertree:

There is balance though.  If monitoring is done to aid students and ensure they have support as needed, that is one thing.  If it is big-brotherish and coercive, as monitoring systems can be, it's off putting, and I'd question if beneficial long-term. 

There is another possibility too where conversations go, to paraphrase

"If there a reason you aren't turning  up"

"Yes the lectures are crap"

Students know when something isn't worthwhile

In reply to MG:

Totally agree; monitoring attendance at many lectures could be chaotic from a logistic perspective as well as BB overkill.  In reality, the visa issue kathrync mentioned means monitoring of many other components isn't going away any time soon - and most other activities will be mandatory attendance.  If I did have concerns, wandering over to talk to the person leading their tutorial group or lab session was often really helpful - especially as some are pretty junior members of staff or PhDs who don't themselves feel confident raising issues.  

A key part of the shift in teaching and learning style is moving to an "adult" system where the student is in charge of making best use of the resources around them; it's a tricky balance sometimes between not stifling that development and making sure they don't fall off the bus - it can all degenerate so quickly on some courses.

For sure; I've always been clear with mine that lectures are optional and if they don't want to go to them on some subject, that is entirely on them - as is the workload required to pick the material up another way.  Much easier in the last 5-6 years with a strong shift to having full lecture slides online and in more recent years with the infernal lecture capture systems.