Undergraduate students at Princeton benefit from the extraordinary resources of a world-class research institution dedicated to undergraduate teaching. Princeton faculty have an unparalleled reputation for balancing excellence in their fields with a dedication to their students, through both classroom instruction and independent study advising.

Concentrating in physics at Princeton will not only teach you about the structure of physical law, but it will allow you to take part in its discovery. Along the way you will learn to "think like a physicist" -- a hard-to-describe skill combining practiced intuition, the scientific method, and a knack for approximation -- and you will develop powerful, broadly-applicable problem-solving skills.

Graduate education in physics at Princeton is based on the premise that the Ph.D. is a research degree. The program has two main goals: the development of a broad background in basic physics, and, through the completion of a thesis, the expansion of research abilities in a more specialized area. The success of the program can be judged by the large number of first-rate theses that our students have written. Our students are prepared for careers in research and teaching at the university level or research in industrial and government laboratories. The skills acquired or extended through intensive graduate work in physics - quantitative reasoning, advanced computational methods, equipment and electronics design, and many others - are also applicable to many other fields.