What are the best colleges for astronomy career?

[kmachunny]

I'm fifteen and I am about to be sophomore in high school and I am already looking at colleges. I live in Washington State and I need colleges that are relatively cheap or give good scholarships. And how many colleges would I need to go to? Help!

[TychaBrahe]

The University of Washington has a program in astronomy, undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral. Victoria Meadows, of NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory is a professor there.

Washington State University has a program in astronomy and an astrophysics emphasis in the physics program. They obviously offer a BS in astronomy, but it's less clear if you can get a Ph.D there.

Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, and Caltech are exceptional, but they are more expensive and you'd be an "out of state" student.

But here's the thing. It really doesn't matter where you get your BS. You are going to need a Ph.D., and where you go to get that will depend on what part of astronomy you want to study (astrobiology vs. astrophysics vs. cosmology).

Apply locally.