What is the best college to study astronomy?

[*sumASTRONAUT*]

What is the best college to study astronomy?

[Taranto]

Nearly all colleges teach astronomy. Most have a degree program. If they don't, then they probably have a physics program where you can do a subfield in astronomy.

In general, the better universities ar also the better ones for physics and astronomy. If you look at a list of college rankings, the ones at the top will be best for those majors as well.

That being said -- the ones I would put near the top are the better Tech schools (MIT, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, etc), The Ivy League schools, The "Ivy Equivalents" (Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Emory, Rice, etc), and the better state universities (Berkeley, anything in the Big Ten, Texas, UNC, etc).

If I was forced to pick five, I would pick MIT, Cal Tech, Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley.

Of course, there are good schools outside the US as well. Waterloo or Toronto would be good in Canada, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.

My advice is to go to the best school that you can get into.

[taylor1940]

There are so many colleges that offer the courses of Astronomy nearly all the colleges offer these courses.

[elocin]

First of all, are you talking about undergraduate programs? If so, then I am of the opinion that you look less closely at the Ivy league schools, and search for schools that offer lots of hands-on experience (because you'll need that experience to get into a great graduate program).

I've got a cousin doing her undergraduate degree at the School of Earth and Space Exploration (Arizona State University). She's been able to work at their Mars space facility and help the professor who runs the rovers and now she's at the Lunar center that is operating the instrument taking pictures of the moon. The school also is heavily involved with Hubble and James Webb. Her degree is actually a B.S. in Space Exploration with a concentration in astrophysics. I looked at their site sese.asu.edu/degrees and they've also got some other cool sounding concentrations, depending on what type of career path you're thinking of: astrobiology, systems design, and geology.

Hope this helps! (they have a short movie playing on front page that actually include some of the kids talking about what research they are involved with - wish I could go back in time to do some of this stuff at their age!)

[unicknn]

On alot of the documentaries Ive seen they have people from the university of arizona on them. My physics teacher here (he's an astronomer) also told me that they have a really good program. Id look into them if you cant go somewhere like MIT.

[Pingu]

Hek, I'd settle for the local community college if they had a program. Never mind MIT...

[DaveW]

Wow. The OP is probably done his degree by now.

[neal_mlc]

University of Arizona in Tucson is absolutely, by far, the best Astronomy school in the nation and possibly the world. They have world class facilities, equipment and, even more importantly, professors. These are the guys who work with NASA on a daily basis and have their fingers in just about every probe in space or on other planets. Tucson is surrounded by Telescopes and most of them were made under the footbal stadium, seriously.

My AST101 class was taught by an astronomer who worked with Tombaugh. The class I was in had over 500 people and when she started talking you better shut up and start taking notes. She would actually stop class and ask individuals why they weren't taking notes and the funny thing is no one complained or dropped the class. You were expected to get scope time too. There is a 21 inch refractor on campus in the Stewart Observatory(saw galaxies for the first time there) that is open to the public and a 16 inch refractor next door in Flandrau center (saw the Horse Head Nebula there).

If you want Astronomy, The U of A is the place to go.

[matthewota]

Cornell University in New York has a strong planetary astronomy department. Carl Sagan taught here, and Steve Squires of Mars Exploration Rover fame is there.

[Space Jockey]

We have the best here in Arizona. I am presently working on my Masters in space science.

I strongly recommend you get a Geology degree as well, this is very important, and you will observe and understand planetary features here in Arizona that are in no other state in the country.