Undergraduate Physics Programs - are there differences?

[foofighter]

Hello, I currently attend Queens College in NYC. Part of me wants to major in physics. I am not afraid to work hard - however I hear that the physics major at my school is insanely difficult (perhaps even unnecessarily difficult) compared to other colleges. My questions/concerns are as follows:

 

1. Does the standard physics undergrad program (i.e. non engineering, rather just pure physics) vary in difficulty from college to college considerably, or is it generally the same everywhere, and rather these people i am hearing things from are either lazy, not interested, not smart enough, or a combination of those three?

 

2. Granted a professor can make or break a course at times, but the truth is that everywhere there will be good and bad professors, and i'll just have to suck it up and deal with it. However, should the answer to Question One be that there is a difference in colleges, can anyone please give me advice as to how I can go about assessing which college would be best for me in terms of giving me a solid foundation in physics that I need - while at the same time not needlessly destroying my GPA no matter how hard I work lol. That is why I am concerned to begin with - again it's not the hard work, it's that I want to leave an open door for grad school, and if I make it out alive I want to be a contender for grad school (and I need a strong GPA in that subject I'm majoring in) - thus if it is possible that a physics program at college XYZ is crazily unfairly hard (and it isn't just the subject itself everywhere) then I'd like to avoid that.

 

thanks in advance for any help you can provide

[swansont]

Yes, the difficulty will vary from school to school. There is a threshold, below which it will not get any easier, but some schools throw more material at you, at a faster pace, than others. You might want to consider, though, what fraction of students go on to grad school at places that have easier programs. It's probably lower. Grad schools are likely going to take this into account, and demand higher grades from students at schools that have easier programs.