How to get good in Physics

Veeky Forums-science.wikia.com/wiki/Physics_Textbook_Recommendations

>good books beyond a QM book like Shankar would be the Kittel
No, Kittel sucks major dick.
Its a nice reference book but not a good textbook.

>What is the best way to get a "leg up" on my peers once I arrive?
By not being a fucking idiot like most of your peers
No matter how "prestigious" the institution, undergrad attracts a ton of people who have no desire to learn of their own volition. Prepare at all, and you'll find the complacency and ineptitude of your classmates unbearable, to where it outweighs the benefits you actually gain by being "ahead."
>building a strong math base
Not important at all. You won't be required to, and probably wont even have the opportunity to take tensor analysis on manifolds or functional analysis as an undergraduate. Of course, if you mean "lower division math," and you're shaky enough to worry about your foundation, it might not hurt to study it. Then again, you'll be in classes filled with inept people who think calc 2 is the major hill to cross, and everything from there on is smooth sailing. So who knows

tl;dr top university doesn't mean it will appropriately challenge you or that your fellow students wont be mouthbreathing idiots

Which top university have you been selected to? Just curios.

been mentioned in this thread

thanks man

Indeed. I prefer Ashcroft-Mermin for a baseline condensed matter physics reference.

"Harvard or MIT"?

bingo

Good luck senpai