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 ([email protected]) 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.
If your goal is to complete the physics major at OSU in two additional years, you'll want to make sure you take a year of introductory physics and plenty of math before you arrive.
PH 264, Intro to Computing, is a sophomore-level OSU course introducing fundamental statistics for physics and Python programming. It is often taken in the sophomore year. transfer students can take it the junior year, or they can take the equivalent course(s) before transferring.
Our curriculum page has more information about the courses in our major, include sample programs for both a B.S. and a B.A. for transfer students.
The link below provides more information on the physics major.
Course articulations (transfers) are part of the onboarding process for new students. If you'd like to see how your courses will articulate, you can check the OSU articulation tables might be useful. This page can also help with AP and IB credits.
OSU requires official transcripts for admission and credit, but bring an unofficial copy of your transcript when talking to your advisor, in case your courses haven't transferred yet.
Oregon Community College Transfer Planning
For students transferring from Oregon community colleges, the College of Science provides detailed transfer planning guidance, including major requirements and general education information.
College of Science Transfer Guide
Questions
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. Your advisor will help with this.
If you still have questions about articulations, you can contact [email protected].
Before starting classes at Oregon State, you'll need to complete New Student Onboarding. During these sessions 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 your advising session during the Activate phase of your orientation. Feel free to contact the head advisor with all questions you might have.
