Best Schools for CogSci/Linguistics majors?

College Search & Selection
1

Hello! I am a CC student that plans on transferring to a 4 year as a Cogsci or Linguistics major.
Is there an official list of what schools offer the best programs for these majors? More specifically for schools in California? I don’t plan on going out of state.

Also I wanted to learn more about careers for students majoring in Cognitive Science and/or Linguistics but I didn’t know where to post on the forum :frowning: How big is the pool of opportunity for people who receive a degree in those two majors?

2

UCLA and Berkeley would seem to be the obvious choices.
USC too, or (as a long, long shot) Stanford.

Cognitive Science and/or Linguistics (including computational linguistics) can be rather marketable majors, especially if you go on to earn a graduate degree or have solid computing skills (or foreign language skills).The federal government (including the intelligence community) employs many linguists, either directly or as contractors. Microsoft Research has employed computational linguists in the past (but I don’t have any numbers). So have many small firms that develop natural language (speech/text) processing software. The faculty of any major linguistics (or CS, or CogSci) department are likely to have connections to major employers and to other RDTE centers. After you transfer, ask about major national/international conferences that attract leading researchers and employers in related fields. Start attending some of them; better yet, try to get onto a participating team from your university; try to get your name attached as co-author (/ team member) of published findings.

1 Like
3

The notion of “best” is subjective, especially for a highly interdisciplinary subject like Cognitive Science. It is probably best to think in terms of which is best for you, given your particular interests, personality and learning style.

Here is a list of the 20 largest cognitive science programs in the country (sorted by number of graduates) including the percentage of total graduates and list price (i.e. before financial aid). There are seven California schools listed. I would not take this as a “goodness” ranking, but rather use it as a list of schools to do further research to determine which school is the best fit for you.

In general, the most lucrative (if that is important to you) careers associated with Cognitive Science are in the area of Artificial Intelligence, which is a sub field within Computer Science. Machine Learning (a sub field within Artificial Intelligence) where the computer emulates human learning processes is particularly hot right now. Natural Language Processing (another sub field within Artificial Intelligence that may use some of the methods developed in Machine Learning) where the computer is taught to understand human language is also reasonably hot.

Note that these specialties may require advanced degrees/experience to get related job assignments, but general programming skills open up a huge range of opportunities.

1 University of California-San Diego…163 2% $30,470
2 University of California-Berkeley… 96 1% $33,319
3 University of Delaware… 50 1% $25,612
4 The University of Texas at Dallas… 48 1% $24,784
5 Stanford University… 42 1% $60,749
6 University of California-Santa Cruz …34 1% $33,153
7 University of Pennsylvania… 32 0% $61,800
8 University of California-Merced… 32 4% $33,499
9 University of California-Los Angeles 28 0% $32,416
10 United States Military Academy…26 2% N/A
11 Vanderbilt University…20 1% $61,112
12 Rice University…19 1% $54,291
13 Yale University…19 1% $61,620
14 Johns Hopkins University…15 0% $61,502
15 Tufts University…14 1% $61,000
16 Case Western Reserve University…14 1% $57,798
17 Massachusetts Institute of Technology…13 0% $59,020
18 Vassar College… 13 2% $61,320
19 Brown University…12 1% $60,460
20 Occidental College…11 2% $63,363

Read more: Most Popular Schools for Cognitive Science Major & Degree Program - StateUniversity.com http://www.stateuniversity.com/program/30-2501/Cognitive-Science#ixzz5RSwpdCml

1 Like