The Department of Physics offers a program leading to a Master of Science. Over the course of the past twenty years, NIU's MS program has been highly ranked by the AIP and about half our current graduate students are masters students. We offer a a teaching emphasis and two different research emphases(described below) which allow work in the following areas:
The Department of Physics makes special efforts to accommodate the needs of students such as employees of nearby industrial or government laboratories and teachers employed in the region who wish to gain M.S. degrees in physics on either a part-time or a full-time basis. The department also tries to meet the needs of students whose undergraduate degree is not physics or who are returning to school after a prolonged absence. Thesis may be written in absentia.
Starting in Fall 2008, all courses taken by grad students for credit have their course number increased by 100. So senior level classes (like 460) would be labeled by 5xx (560 in this case). Former PHYS 500 is now PHYS 600. Not all physics web pages and university catalogs are updated.
The course requirements in the link below are for the current catalog. In 2007 the Department approved a change to the Applied Phyics program which should be in the next catalog. It will then be: choose 3 of (430, 463, 474, 475, 480, 580, 690) and 2 of (500, 560, 563, 566, 573). (Which starting in Fall 2008 are 530,563,674,575,680,790,600,660,663,666,673). A student can use either this list or the list in the 2007-08 catalog.