<p>Snivellus, my d is a neuroscience major, so I will try to give you an overview of her experiences/impressions to date.</p>
<p>First, she came into Barnard as an undecided major, leaning towards something in literature or english and possibly a dance double major. She never considered a science major...she had always done well in science but never had a passion or particular interest. </p>
<p>She chose to take Intro to Psych her first semester because she felt that Psychology as her required science would be the most interesting and, well, the least "sciency". She almost immediately fell in love with, as she would say, BRAINS and decided pretty early on in that first semester to major in neuroscience.</p>
<p>She has found ALL of her science classes to be challenging and stimulating. She has even chosen to take extra organic chemistry because she really liked her first semester of it last spring. She also plans to take a physics class, even though it is not required, because some grad schools she has looked into "like" to see that. I cannot tell you how strange it feels to say that about my daughter, but there it is! She has found that Barnard's science classes are actually more challenging than Columbia's and Barnard's require more lab work. She is still dancing, though decided not to double major. She has been in at least one performance and taken anywhere from one to three technique classes per semester. This is stress relief for her.</p>
<p>Her involvement in the neuroscience program led to her applying for the Columbia Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program last year and to being named a Columbia Amgen Scholar last summer. She was able to do research at the New York Psychiatric Institute, received great housing in a brownstone there on campus with the other Amgen scholars (27 in all...and about half were from Columbia...others were from all over the country), got a nice stipend, and Amgen had them all come out to a weekend-long seminar at Lake Tahoe, which was cool. All that is to say that this was a very competitive position, and her experience at Barnard (even without previous extensive science experience in HS) made her a good candidate. She was thrilled!</p>
<p>Her advisor is very helpful and supportive and has said they will find her a lab position next semester (she does not have time to work in a lab this semester). The opportunities for lab work around Barnard, Columbia and the medical center (and even other NYC hospitals) are incredibly good. She also feels that she will be in a good position to get great recs when applying to grad schools because of the opportunities to develop good relationships with her profs. </p>
<p>I can't really think of anything negative other than the work, of course, is tough. She is probably in her most difficult semester now (at least I hope so) as she is taking Organic Chem (second semester), Neurobiology, Cell biology, Cell bio lab, neuroethics, and a dance class (though not for credit). She was also asked by the chemistry dept. to grade lab books for first years. And she works in the CAO.</p>
<p>Hope that helps some.</p>