Physics

[appianway]

What sort of reputation does physics at ANU have? I know that a lot of the ex physics olympians seem to flock there for the PhB program, so is it significantly better than USyd, Melbourne or Monash?

[EvangelionZeta]

By nature PhB should be better than anything else in Australia in terms of Undegrad - it's like comparing a piece of pie with sprinkles, icing and mint on top with a piece of normal pie.  Whilst the normal pie might potentially have better pastry, the minty pie will always be better.

...or something.

[polky]

By nature PhB should be better than anything else in Australia in terms of Undegrad - it's like comparing a piece of piece of pie with sprinkles, icing and mint on top with a piece of normal pie.  Whilst the normal pie might potentially have better pastry, the minty pie will always be better.

...or something.

Are you trying to say that the PhB is just all looks and fancy decorations, while other Undergrad degrees actually have substance?

Who the hell eats minty pie anyway.

[humph]

Hmmm. Minty? 

As far as standard goes, yeah, it's pretty good. Of course, the main thing that PhB has to offer is ASCs (Advanced Studies Courses) - I assume you've read up about that. The good thing for ANU kids is that the Research School of Physics (RSPhys) is full of people doing cutting edge research in physics, so you can easily do an ASC with a person from there, whereas a normal student wouldn't see RSPhys until Honours or more likely postgraduate studies. I had a friend do an ASC with a guy from there on nonlinear optics something something, and he helped come up with some groundbreaking result and so got to travel to Adelaide with his supervisor for a major conference, as well as being a coauthor of a published paper.
As well as that, it's quite possible to do ASCs with someone from CSIRO if you organise it (CSIRO's literally 250m from the Physics department, right behind Bruce Hall - we run up through it when we go for runs up Black Mountain  ).
In terms of general physics courses, I imagine the standard wouldn't be too different from other Group of 8 universities; they'd all teach the content (up to the first two years) pretty similarly. As for third year, well I'm not particularly sure (I haven't done physics since first year...  ) but take a look at the subjects here for a glimpse of what they have. On the whole, I think it would come down to which type of physics you're most interested in, as each of the Group of 8 would probably have a different specialty that shows in their options for undergraduate subjects.

[appianway]

Hahaha, I guess I still have quite a while to decide what University I'll be studying at, but I was just amazed to see the number of ex-Physics Olympians/Scholars doing PhB at ANU in physics.

My interests in specific areas of Chemistry/Physics will probably solidify over the next year or so, but ANU seems to have a really strong research program in general.