Hardest to easiest

[MortalNuts]

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having seen some of the work the kids do around here, i'd be very suprised if getting an undergrad degree in physics weren't completely unachievable for a gigantic proportion of the population. i was good at math/physics in high school and consider myself fairly intelligent, and i have serious doubts as to whether or not i'd be able to pass any of the higher-level physics courses here on my first try.

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Unless you're going to a pretty difficult school, I submit to you that this is probably not the case. If your program actually is quite tough, then I agree with you, but the point is that the original question didn't exclude people who went to very easy schools and got mediocre PhDs and then mediocre physics jobs afterwards. There are lots of people like this. Put another way, I've met plenty of people who are "professional physicists" (have a PhD, and work in physics now) but who probably wouldn't have been able to hack the undergrad physics curriculum at one of the 5 or so most difficult places. I'm not going to name names here or anything, but there are institutions (not necessarily universities) that have hired some awfully average people; there is simply no way some of these people could have survived my undergrad coursework, or that at a few other places.

It's also possible that I'm completely underestimating how difficult physics is for the average person. Pretty much by definition (i.e., since I work in the field), I'm one of the people who found it straightforward; maybe a pro football player would also find it unfathomable that the average person couldn't be trained to compete at a professional level. I sort of doubt it, though.

later,

mn