I was accepted into the class of 2019 this past Friday, and am wondering about the strength of the Cognitive Science and psychology programs at JHU. Also, how rigorous are some of these majors compared to some of the majors that the campus is more well-known for (Biomed, Chem etc.)? I might also consider the outstanding neuroscience program there, but I am just so unsure about what to study. Are there any alumni or current students who can help me learn more about my tentative majors?
Congratulations! I’ve heard that the CogSci program is very strong, although you may find that interdisciplinary programs, as cool as they are, might not be as strong as programs with all the classes in one or a few departments. IDK exactly where Psychology falls, but the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences is closely affiliated with the Neuroscience program, so there are a lot of good professors who are involved with both. These majors, IMO, are not very rigorous compared to hard science majors, and that’s mostly because Psych classes are more of memorizing terms, while the sciences use more problem-solving. Also, these majors allow you to take a lot of electives, while the science majors do not have as much freedom.
You don’t have to know what you want to do right now. It takes a while to tease through all the brain-related majors and figure out their differences. I came in thinking Cog Sci or Neuro. But then I have a friend who’s majoring in Neuro, and the stuff he was talking about was so boring to me, lol. Then I 1. realized that I didn’t really like computer programming as much as I thought I would (which I was intending on studying as one of the focus areas), and 2. I took a course over Intersession called Intro to Music Cognition. I hated it so much. IDK, CogSci seems like a broad field because it’s very interdisciplinary, but it actually only looks at a very narrow scope of mental processes (language, learning, perception, etc.), which was not as interesting as I thought it would be.
After that, I was considering a Psych major, but I really wasn’t excited to take 3 intro courses (I know it’s only three, but a semester is much longer than I’d like to spend in a class I don’t like). And I wasn’t so much into the Social Science nature of these classes; I wanted something a little more science-based. So I ended up in Behavioral Biology, and I really like it, even though it had never crossed my radar before. It’s nice because I’m premed and it covers a lot of the requirements. And there’s room for Neuroscience and Psychology electives (and CogSci as well). I wasn’t so much into the Animal Behavior side, but Human Origins and Animal Behavior are the only two animal behavior related courses, and they weren’t so bad.
If I were you, I’d take Foundations of Brain, Behavior, and Cognition (BBC) your freshman year. It’s taught by a professor who is in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences but teaches many Neuroscience classes, and is also one of the faculty leaders for the Behavioral Bio department (which is like the baby brother department to Neuro). She gives you a broad introduction to Neuroscience, mostly, but there are units on cognition and also some abnormal psychology, if I remember correctly.
Thanks for your response! And if you don’t mind me asking, what is your current year?
@karmapolizei I’m currently a sophomore