<p>Which school has the better undegraduate neuroscience program? Although Brown is an Ivy, UPitt is a top 7 public research university. When it comes to undergraduate neuroscience, which school is better?</p>
<p>I personally know tons of people doing neuro here at Brown, and program is apparently very good. Pitt’s research likely has nothing to do with how good undergrad academics are.</p>
<p>Pitt’s research has a lot to do with how good their undergrad program is since doing undergrad research is a big (and important) component of the experience, especially in a research discipline such as neuroscience. Pitt also has one of the two or three oldest undergraduate neuroscience departments in the country. It has been training undergrads for decades and is very experienced in doing so. I have experience working with neuroscience undergrads in a variety of settings, including at Pitt and in the Ivy League. In my opinion, I would choose Pitt, overall, as the better, more robust place for both undergraduate and graduate neuroscience compared to Brown. However, if you are looking at neuroscience, you might want to examine the individual labs and see if any particular research being done really sticks out to you at one place versus another. Also worth noting, if the anecdotal reports on this site are correct, if you have scores to get into Brown, you’ll be in the honors college and likely be in line for full tuition at Pitt. I myself am a neuroscientist. PM me if you have further questions.</p>
<p>Brown has one of the two or three oldest undergraduate neuroscience departments in the country. The major Neuroscience textbook (Bear, Connors & Paradiso) was written by Brown professors to accompany their undergraduate introductory course, one of the first of its kind in the country. The fact that wgmcp101 lumps Brown in with the rest of the Ivy League when it comes to Neuro suggests that s/he is ignorant of the special place that undergraduate neuroscience teaching has at Brown, as compared with the other Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Uh, no. I am not at all ignorant. I am sure Brown is an excellent place, as it is for most topics. I have to admit, although having taught undergrads neuroscience classes in the Ivy League, although not intro level, I have never even heard of that text book. Intro level classes I’m familiar with are more problem based and are not text-book driven. Even for undergraduate level, I’d recommend Kandel-Schwartz-Jessell, which is the Neuroscience bible and the best reference around. I believe you learn more by doing, not out of a text-book, but that is my philosophy, and the text should serve more as a supplementary reference. Pitt’s undergraduate Neuroscience was founded as a Department in 1983. I don’t know when Brown’s was founded. 1983 is still one of the oldest.</p>
<p>I should qualify to be precise, that my claim of not being ignorant was that of not being ignorant of undergrad neuroscience programs in general, but admittedly, I have not been at Brown. My experience is at Penn, having taught in their Biological Basis of Behavior Program, and I would compare Pitt as superior to it in some aspects, not that Penn’s isn’t an excellent program and, overall, contains one of the best overall neuroscience faculties in the world. However, my point is Pitt is not a step down, and that holds true after looking through Brown’s undergraduate curriculum on its website. They are not dissimilar programs by available and required courses, but Pitt has a larger overall neuroscience training faculty group and a undergrad computational tract in joint with Carnegie Mellon, that yes, in my opinion, makes it more robust in regards to undergrad research choices. Really, in what appears to be relatively equal situations like this, any student should go where they are most comfortable, because that will give them the best chance of success. I can say my experience with neuroscience graduate students matriculating from both Pitt and Brown was good. In any case, as I said, I do recommend perusing the sites of both faculty because the most important aspect of your training will be in the lab, even at the undergrad level, and this is experience is going to be the most important for any aspirations for further training in grad school. If you notice labs or just general themes that strike you as particularly interesting, that could certainly weigh into your decision. Although perhaps premature, you might even considering emailing the faculty member to find out more about their research which would help gage their interest in having undergraduates in their labs. Here are the links to faculty at [url=<a href=“http://cnup.neurobio.pitt.edu/people/faculty.aspx?by=x1]Pitt[/url”>http://cnup.neurobio.pitt.edu/people/faculty.aspx?by=x1]Pitt[/url</a>] and [url=<a href=“http://neuroscience.brown.edu/graduate/faculty/]Brown[/url”>http://neuroscience.brown.edu/graduate/faculty/]Brown[/url</a>].</p>
<p>Given that Brown has a computational bio track (though that’s more genetics/molecular bio focused program right now) and a very strong CS department that has substantial interest in AI and using both machine-learning and neural modeling for that purpose, I would say that the collaboration with CMU is not being compared with none of that work existing at Brown.</p>
<p>That being said, neuro undergrad is very strong and very popular at Brown, as much for the quality of scholarship as it is for the quality of teaching.</p>
<p>The collaboration is the [Center</a> for Neural Basis of Cognition](<a href=“http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/]Center”>http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/), which is a joint Pitt and CMU program, which is not uncommon between those two schools as their campuses overlap and they share a lot of faculty. For instance, off the top of my head, Nathan Urban, a Rhodes Scholar and former Pitt neuroscience undergrad and grad who post-docted at Max Planck, is currently CMU faculty studying olfaction at the Mellon Institute building and adjunct at Pitt, and his lab is in a building about 50 yards from the main facility housing Pitt’s undergrad neuroscience program and is flanked on both sides by Pitt’s music facilities. Pitt and CMU jointly sponsor several programs, including the MD/PhD program at Pitt’s med school and the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center. That I know of, there really isn’t a similar example in the country of two universities that are so collaborative. In fact, the Mellon Institute part of Carnegie Mellon use to be part of Pitt, and Pitt’s School of Information Sciences use to be part of CMU. In any case, the CNBC is regarded as one of the top cognitive neuroscience programs in the country, at least at the graduate/research level. I’m not a computational neuroscientist, so I don’t have direct experience with its undergraduate program, but I am aware of it’s general reputation, which is excellent, and it more than favorably compares to Brown.</p>
<p>I’m not sure people are really aware of Pitt, as seems to be underestimated because admittedly is sort of a nouveau riche university over the last 20-30 years, but Pitt is 5th in total NIH funding, behind only Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn, and UCSF. It has a really large faculty involved in neuroscience research, and is certainly regarded as one of the top 20 neuroscience centers in the world, as evidenced by [this</a> 2007 research output ranking from China.](<a href=“http://rccse.whu.edu.cn/college/sjkyjgxkjzlphb2007/sjkxyxwkx.htm]this”>http://rccse.whu.edu.cn/college/sjkyjgxkjzlphb2007/sjkxyxwkx.htm)</p>