Physics

• ·Classical mechanics and electromagnetism, rebuilt properly with the calculus school left out.
• ·Quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics — the two courses that most change how you think, and the two most students find hardest.
• ·Mathematical methods: differential equations, complex analysis, linear algebra. This degree is half mathematics and pretends otherwise.
• ·Laboratory work and computational physics, including the experimental discipline of estimating what you do not know.
• ·A specialism in the final years — condensed matter, astrophysics, particle physics, optics — and a research project.

• Physicist

  The direct destination in research, medical physics or industry — usually requiring a doctorate.

• Quantitative Analyst

  Finance actively recruits physics graduates for modelling ability; among the best-paid destinations from this degree.

• Data Scientist

  Modelling and inference, which is what a physics degree trains without calling it that.

• Aerospace Engineer

  Reachable with an engineering master's, and physics graduates are common in the sector.

• Radiologist

  Not directly — but medical physics sits alongside radiology and is one of the largest applied physics employers.

• Defence Systems Engineer

  Sensors, radar and optics, where physics graduates are directly employed.

• Software Engineer

  A very common destination, and employers read the degree as evidence of reasoning ability.

• Secondary School Teacher

  Physics teachers are in shortage almost everywhere, which makes this route unusually reliable.

• —That it leads to being a physicist. Most physics graduates work in finance, technology, engineering or teaching, and only a minority stay in physics.
• —That astrophysics is a career plan. It is a small, competitive academic field; the degree is the same either way, so choose the specialism because it interests you, not because it is a job.
• —That it is less employable than engineering. It is less directly employable and more broadly employable, which are different things — engineering gets you a first job faster, physics keeps more later options open.

Domestic physics employment is concentrated in academia, KAUST and KACST research, medical physics in the hospital sector, and the technical functions of the energy industry. It is a smaller market than engineering by a wide margin, and the degree's real strength here is as a foundation for postgraduate study abroad or for the quantitative roles in banking and technology that recruit on reasoning ability rather than on subject. Teaching is a genuine and under-supplied destination.

• MathematicsThe abstraction without the laboratory, and an even broader quantitative fan-out.
• Mechanical EngineeringThe same physics with design constraints and far more direct employment.
• Electrical and Electronic EngineeringElectromagnetism and electronics, with an accredited professional qualification attached.
• Earth Sciences and GeologyGeophysics — the same methods applied to the planet, with a large energy-sector employer base.

• ~Whether Further Mathematics is required varies by department.
• ~Oxford and Cambridge admissions test arrangements for physics have changed recently with the ESAT.

Admission patterns stated by physics departments in the UK, the Gulf and the US, all of which name mathematics and physics. Destination patterns reasoned from consistently reported physics graduate outcomes.

Last checked 2026-09-06. The requirements above describe the pattern across universities, not any one of them — the course page for the year you apply is the only thing that is ever authoritative.