You have come to the right place! Join our award-winning undergraduate program to receive modern and interactive physics instruction from researchers at the top of their fields. Your training as a scientist and problem solver, your technical expertise with equipment and your computer programming knowledge will make you a very desirable employee.
Transfer students are strongly encouraged to contact the head advisor at the e-mail address below before coming to OSU. We can discuss which classes need to be taken ahead of time at your college, which can be taken here, and how to transfer credits from a semester to a quarter system.
PH 315, Physics of Contemporary Challenges, is a sophomore-level OSU course introducing quantum mechanics and thermal physics ideas. PH 335, Techniques of Theoretical Mechanics, is our first higher level course introducing higher level thinking about physics problems. These two courses are often taken in the sophomore year, but transfer students will simply take them in the junior year.
MTH 255, the second vector calculus term, can also be taken in the junior year. Physics content depending on this content is taught in Spring term.
Contact the head advisor (phys-advising@science.oregonstate.edu) before coming to Oregon State.
A typical route through our major is listed below. The program in the first two years can vary depending on background.
If your course doesn't articulate the way you think it should, you can submit a Transfer Course Equivalency Form. Complete instructions can be found with the form.
If your credits are from an unaccredited institution or are professional credit, you can submit an Unaccredited College or Professional Technical Credit Petition form.
In many cases, a course may not articulate as a specific OSU course, but the course still will serve as a prerequisite for other physics courses. This situation requires that you contact the OSU Physics department for an override to be able to register for a course.
OSU requires official transcripts for admission and credit, but if you need help from our head advisor, sending an unofficial copy of your transcript is sufficient for planning purposes. To help you know which courses will transfer to OSU, viewing the articulation tables might be useful.
Before starting classes at Oregon State you will have to attend a START session. During that session you will meet with the head advisor to discuss your program for the next term. The most important issue to resolve is the mathematics course appropriate for you to begin at OSU. Not all information might be available to the head advisor, so please bring copies of AP exam results and similar data to the START session. Feel free to contact the head advisor with all questions you might have.
