My daughter is a junior in astrophysics. She knew it was right because she fell in love with astronomy and all the learning that is coming out about the formation of stars, galaxies, and matter from the data from Hubble and other sources. She did several years at NASA Space Camp and loved it; especially the math and science aspects. It’s a 1 week program and your son ought to consider going. If he can do something this summer around astrophysics, especially research, it will help on the college application. He will almost surely go on to grad school, if he stays in the field. It is heavy on math, so difficult to do typical liberal arts and then move into it for grad school. However, my daughter is getting a 2nd major in French, so you can combine it with liberal arts. The heavy math helps tremendously on the job front. Astrophysicists typically go into research in academia, think tanks, government/military/NASA and some corporate (as others have said). But quantitative, programming, and problem solving skills are in high demand throughout the job market. She is at an astronomy conference in Dallas and 2 of the companies recruiting there are Capital One and Chicago Trading Company. With strong enough quantitative, you can also go to grad school in engineering. There has been a good list of schools. Our research indicated the Ivy’s and Johns Hopkins, a number in California and Arizona, Michigan, Northwestern and Chicago in the Midwest. Getting into a good school will be important and helps tremendously with grad school and job prospects.
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