<p>I’m planning on majoring in neuroscience next year, but I can’t decide which school to choose. I’m looking for a medium-sized school, with great faculty, a friendly student body, a good (but not overwhelming) curriculum, and moderate weather.</p>
<p>Some schools on my list are:
Dartmouth College
Brown University
Bucknell
Cornell University
Northwestern University
Northeastern University
University of Chicago
Yale
Brown University</p>
<p>The problem with most of these schools is that they’re either extremely difficult or located in the middle of nowhere with bad weather. Please help!</p>
<p>Both are among the first such programs in their fields, and Penn’s neurosciences and psychology are among the best in the nation. I know a bunch of kids in the major who recently graduated to pursure PhDs at Yale, Columbia, Penn, et al.</p>
<p>Brown and Hopkins are probably the two best schools in the country for undergraduate neuro. Brown also has two programs for neuroscience, and the actual one named “neuroscience” is more neuro than BBB at Penn.</p>
<p>We also have a great Cog sci department with cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, and cognitive linguistics as options.</p>
<p>Honestly at the undergrad level much of the difference is negligible- and all three schools have invested heavily in their respective departments. So it won’t matter at all in the long run.</p>
<p>In terms of overall undergraduate teaching/ grants/ spending/ study abroad/ grants/ etc Dartmouth wins followed by Brown and then Penn. All are great schools though, choose the one thats the best fit for you.</p>
<p>IMO, that’s not the case. Research opportunities here - and I’m talking about publishing with world-famous researchers - are yours for the taking. What do you mean by grants and study abroad with regard to neuroscience? </p>
<p>Penn has an entire building that headquarters the office for undergraduate grants and research:
[Center</a> for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships](<a href=“Penn CURF”>Penn CURF)</p>
<p>They also send the most students abroad of any Ivy League school. Maybe I don’t understand what you’re trying to say?</p>
<p>Also, in the last NRC ranking of neurosciences, Penn ranked 10th, followed by Brown at 52nd. And for top Psychology overall, Penn was tied with MIT at 10th… Brown followed at 28th.</p>
<p>This obviously has much less relevance for undergrad than for PhD, and I’m sure Brown’s instruction is excellent, but my point is that Penn’s department and research possibilities are at least as stellar.</p>
<p>You do have a tendency to hijack, don’t you?</p>
<p>That being said, Brown’s undergraduate department in neuroscience is the first undergraduate program to exist in the country and the curricula of many undergraduate offerings nationwide are based on our department’s structure and course choices, straight down to the textbook commonly used in intro to neuro (which at Brown, is still taught by the textbook’s authors).</p>
<p>As for neurosciences graduate programs, you have to look at the focus of the department and larger resources for graduate work across the institution since neuro is currently somewhat interdisciplinary. Not to mention the fact that NRC is fifteen years old and not respective of, in some cases, rapid changes that have occurred in the last 10 years.</p>
<p>I have to laugh at this question. Have you been accepted to any of these schools? You don’t choose one of these schools to go to – you apply to them all and hope that at least one accepts you, but prepare for the real possibility that none of them will. You should focus on making sure you find at least one safety school and a few match schools that you will be happy to attend.</p>
<p>Ok thanks! I’ll be sure to keep Brown on my list. I’m afraid Penn might be too big though…I’m looking for a smaller school around 4,000-15,000 undergrads. Also, I’ve heard that Dartmouth has a lot of really cold weather and that its pretty isolated. But do the pros outway the cons? Any information would be really helpful considering Dartmouth is at the top of my list right now</p>
<p>brown might actually objectively have the best undergraduate neuroscience program in the country. the only neuroscience textbook aimed at undergrad was written by three brown professors and is used all over the world. those same professors teach the intro to neuroscience class, which is the hands down most popular class at brown, even among non-science majors. it is so popular in fact that each year everyone in the class gets a class t-shirt.</p>
<p>the research opportunities for undergrads are also outstanding. all of the faculty members are rock stars. i wrote my thesis under the one-on-one mentorship of nobel prize winner Leon Cooper. other outstanding mentors include John Donaghue, who is now testing a computer chip called BrainGate in human clinic trials that alllows paraplegic patients to control computers and other appliances with their thoughts. </p>
<p>Wow, that sounds great! Do you know anything about life after Brown? Because I’m trying to figure out which schools have the best job opportunities after graduation.</p>
<p>its my humble opinion that brown has the best neuro program in the country, rivaled by JHU. Both are good enough (Brown and Dartmouth) to give you excellent neuro educations. </p>
<p>HOWEVER don’t even think about that. Apply to both, see if you even get into one, and then decide.</p>
I’ve often wondered about that. Brown fares poorly in both of the two major rankings of neuroscience programs (NRC and US News). What is the basis of support, other than Brown’s glossy brochures, for these boasts that it is one of the best programs in the country?</p>
<p>If the textbook claim is supposed to be proof, it’s not. To be blunt, virtually anyone can write a successful textbook. Look at the introductory Greek History textbook used at most colleges (including Brown). It’s written by professors at CSU-LA and UCI, hardly centers of excellence in classics.</p>