I’m not near to being in grad school yet, but I want to think ahead. I ultimately want my career to include engineering new psychiatric medications, and possibly doing research on brain activity involved in mental disorders if there isn’t enough information as I would like to have to engineer the drug at the time. My bachelor’s degree will be for chemical engineering. The college I’m going to doesn’t have an undergrad degree for neuroscience; there is psychology, but they don’t let you minor in it, and I don’t want to double major in psychology and have to do all the “non-science” part of it if you know what I mean.
The Internet wasn’t very direct on informing me the details of a master’s degree vs a PhD. Can you skip doing a master’s degree and go straight to pursuing a PhD after undergrad? If so, would it be recommended to get a master’s degree before pursuing a PhD in my position? I know PhDs focus more on research than masters degrees do, but is there a large difference in terms of the additional material learned between the two degrees?
I’ve seen that people with PhDs sometimes do work in fields other than the program they got the doctorate from. That being said, how customizable are PhD programs, in general? If I were to enter a PhD program for chemical engineering, would they allow me to also work with aspects from neuroscience?
Thank you for reading this, and for any responses.
I can’t give you any answers to your questions, but as the mother of a young man with schizophrenia, I want to thank you for your interest in helping people with serious mental illness! My son is doing OK, but I still hold out hope that eventually there will be a med that will make it possible for him to function at a high level as he did before he fell ill at 18.
This is certainly an area where more research is needed, and there is a potential to help a LOT of people. There is a significant relationship between mental disorders and genetics. Another thing to think about: There are currently quite a few psychiatric medications, but figuring out which ones will work best in any one case is sort of based on guessing. If there was a better way to match medications to specific patients more quickly that could help a lot of people also.
I tried to go straight from a Bachelor’s to a PhD (in a different area), and got accepted to a Master’s program instead. This turned out to be the right thing for me in any case. On the most part the people that I know with PhD’s got a Master’s degree first.
I would recommend that you try to take some courses in psychology and neuroscience if possible. If you can’t do it where you are, you might be able to take one semester at another university to do so.
You certainly should be able to find a good university where you can focus a PhD on neurological aspects of chemical engineering. It might take some effort to find the right place.
And good luck with this. This is a very worthwhile area to aim for.
It is theoretically possible to skip a master’s degree and go straight to a PhD - by which I mean most PhD programs don’t actually require you to have a master’s degree. Some do, and they will tell you when they do. Others don’t require it but prefer students with master’s degrees, and you will see that the majority of the admitted cohort has one. In your case, it’s a grey area. I went to graduate school in a medical center with research like this going on, and PhD students were a mix: some had master’s degrees and some did not. I think what’ll probably happen is that as you get closer to your senior year of college, you’ll figure out what you need to do next.
Yes.
Very customizable. How flexible they are and how much work you can do across fields depends a lot on the department and university you go to, and the expertise and level of interest of the faculty in that department. But generally speaking, yes, at a PhD program in chemical engineering you could do some research and take classes in neuroscience; you could have someone from the neuroscience department (or a department with neuroscience research) on your dissertation committee and/or as a secondary advisor. You want to look for programs in which those kinds of relationships are already in place.
I don’t think you have to double major in psychology at all. But I am curious what you mean by the “non-science” part of psychology. If you are developing drugs for human beings to take, you may find it useful to understand how those human beings think and behave - both with and without the influence of certain kinds of drugs. And you may want to understand clinical aspects of abnormal psychology particularly since you are interested in psychiatric medication specifically. There are lots of factors that affect whether or not people take medications, for example, and you may find that influences your research.
But if you can’t minor, why can’t you just create your own “minor” or concentration by taking 4-7 classes in psychology? That way you can take exactly what you want without being in a formalized program.
