[luqman15]

Hi, I am currently thinking of choosing physics to go into university, however I don't know the broad range of jobs that you can access after doing a physics degree would anyone be able to help me here;


All help will be greatly appreciated.

[mikeyd85]

Well,
Dara o'Briain became a comdian.
Brian Cox became a TV personality.

[luqman15]

I would like some more realistic career opportunities

[Alex J]

(Original post by luqman15)
Hi, I am currently thinking of choosing physics to go into university, however I don't know the broad range of jobs that you can access after doing a physics degree would anyone be able to help me here;


All help will be greatly appreciated.

Physics of course could lead to many research-based roles like in CERN for example, as well as jobs where physics is more applied, like in nuclear power stations.

But science degrees actually make you quite employable in places like the city, though provided you do well in your degree I'd imagine, because they are quite analytical and have a certain academic rigour to them which would show you to be a highly skilled and hard working individual.

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Well research is usually the road a physics degree aims toward, however the job oportunities are quite varied when comes to a physics degree. One area you should look at is engineering if you don't want to do a phd. Many physics graduates tend to go into the engineering industry either as a technician or engineer of some sort. You'd have to do a MSci in engineering if you wanted to become chartered but that would not be too difficult from a physics degree. Obviously the field of technician/engineering you would go into would depend on what physics subjects you focused on in your final year, but apparently most physics graduates that end up doing a engineering masters end up going into electrical/electronic engineering apparently. There's also the option of going into teaching, finance, patent law, airtraffic control, mangerial roles of some sort, the list is endless.

[05sykesd]

You can do loads of things with a physics degree, many people go into further study and physics related things, (teaching, research, science journalism etc) many people go into finance and banking, and there are a lot of areas which require a broad knowledge of computing, maths and science and general; computer game designers are often physicists and the computing skills allow you to go into computing or admin work. A physics degree gives you great writing and presentation skills so any management jobs are also completely within reach. It isnt uncommon for physicists to transfer their knowledge to other areas of science such as theoretical biology and many other areas (even geology and geography, modeling natural processes) this is because it would be more difficult to teach biologists or geographers the maths and physics skills that they would need for specific areas of research in those subjects than it would be to teach physicists the subject specific stuff they need for that project (the words of a geography professor not mine).

It is worth noticing that there is always a shortage of physics teachers, this is down to the fact that there is so many different and exciting career paths which can follow a degree in physics (which dont necessarily involve physics directly, but just transfer some of the vast set of skills that you learn by doing a physics degree), that not many people end up going into teaching physics.

In a physics careers lecture i was in the other day, the professor said that the computer programming skills you learn are only beaten by computer scientists, the maths you learn can only be beaten by mathematicians, the management and presentation skills you learn are only beaten by management/business degrees and the application of all of these skills is beaten by no one.

All of this means that the wide range of extremely high quality skills you learn is very attractive to employers so you can basically have your pick of any sector (except teaching a subject that isnt physics)

[Mbob]

(Original post by 05sykesd)
In a physics careers lecture i was in the other day, the professor said that the computer programming skills you learn are only beaten by computer scientists, the maths you learn can only be beaten by mathematicians, the management and presentation skills you learn are only beaten by management/business degrees and the application of all of these skills is beaten by no one.

Hmm, I'm a physicists and all, and I don't want to do the subject down (there are a lot of pros in terms of employment), but I think your Professor has been smoking something.

Let's be realistic. The computer programming skills taught in the typical undergraduate physics degree are minimal, most places only teach a bit of Fortran or Matlab, and very few graduates would have any real understanding of OOP. Physicists may well be employed in programming jobs because they have shown intelligence and the ability to think in a logical way, but not because of the actual programming skills they have learnt as part of their degree.

And as for management and presentation skills, I'm not sure why physics would be particularly good for these, other natural and social science degrees would require you to exercise them just as much, if not more. There are plenty of physics students who are terrible at both!