What are the good universities for studying cosmology and astrophysics?

We twins are in 1st year of a high school. We have pre-engineering and a wast knowledge of space. We have studied many books on space and many articles and watched many videos. We always go to the library just to study about space.


Further we want to study astronomy.


We are confused for choosing a right university.


Can you help us?|||First of all, keep in mind there aren't many jobs in astronomy if you don't have a PhD in the subject. It's more important that you go to a top grad school than a top undergrad school, but if you can get into both, great. You'll want to major in physics and take courses in astronomy, math, and computer science. Astronomy is good to have when applying to grad school in astrophysics, but physics is essential. Spend your college summers doing research at your school and others (look up REU programs) to get experience for grad school and to make sure you really want to do research for the rest of your life.





Great schools for astronomy and physics include Harvard, Berkeley, CalTech, UCLA, Columbia, Cornell, Yale, Princeton, U Chicago, U Arizona, UC Santa Cruz, U Washington (state), Purdue, UMass Amherst, U Hawaii, U Virginia, U Wisconsin, UNC Chapel Hill, Ohio State, U Toronto, and others. Also, you can study physics at pretty much any college or university, including liberal arts schools, and still get into a top grad program.





Arizona State is a decent program but definitely not in the top 20, and MIT doesn't actually offer much for astrophysics (but would be a good undergrad physics school).|||As far as I know the best places you'll want to look into are Arizona State University, University of Hawaii, Mass. Institute of Technology, they have a pretty strong physics program at the University of Chicago as well, my alma mater the University of Toledo has a pretty decent astrophysics program but not much in cosmology.|||In the USA, all of the State colleges are aboveaverage in almost all of the sicences, cosmology included.





Arizona State comes to mind as one of the better ones there, but Berkely and many others should be mentioned as well.





If you can afford it, the Ivy League Schools will treat you well also.|||Although it depends slightly on your specific interests, I would recommend: Caltech, Cornell, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Davis, San Diego, or Santa Cruz, U Arizona, U Washington, U British Columbia, U Hawaii as the top tier for astronomy in North America.|||The internet world is the best university to do such staff .|||Try joining the Yahoo! stephenhawking group and posing that question to the whole group.