Course placement
Placing Out of Core Courses
During orientation week, you will be able to present to several faculty members proof that you have taken an equivalent course to any of the four core courses (classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and classical electrodynamics). They will expect as much of the following as you can bring:
- Syllabus
- Course materials (lecture notes, textbook)
- Your own notes
If they deem you ineligible to place out of these courses based on your coursework, but you're confident you know the material, you may be able to place out by taking the corresponding comprehensive exam at the placement level. These exams are very difficult, and typically no more than one or two students in any year are able to place out via a comprehensive exam.
It is possible to transfer up to 6 credits that are graduate classes from a previous school, but they can't have been used to obtain a previous degree (i.e. no transferring of Master's degree requirements). This is different from Ph.D. students being able to get the Ph.D. class requirement waived for core classes if they have taken them in the past.
Note: Even if you are not an incoming student, you can still ask for an interview with the evaluation committee. There are students who have been waived from core courses (that they of course had not yet taken) in the second year.
Placing Out of Graduate Laboratory
Similarly, you might be able to place out of the graduate laboratory requirement if:
- You have taken a graduate or advanced undergraduate lab similar to the ones offered here;
- The experiments you did cover the 3 subfields of graduate lab: nuclear/particle, AMO, and condensed matter;
- You have saved the lab reports you did there;
- Said lab reports are well written (you received a good grade for a particular lab report) for graduate level standards.
It is important to note that, even if you covered only a few of the areas of graduate laboratory in the course you took, you might still be able to be excused from at least this part of the class (say, you won't have to do a condensed matter experiment if you already did one).
