Cognitive Science at MIT?

<p>I haven't heard too much about this department and I was just wondering how it is. I'm extremely interested in cognitive science and psychophysics, so can anyone offer any insight?</p>

<p>Both jessiehl and I were majors in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department (classes of '07 and '06, respectively), and cellardweller's daughter is a current student in the department.</p>

<p>I can't offer much insight into the cog sci classes, as I took almost all cellular and molecular neuroscience classes, but the department is definitely top-notch, classes are small and usually heavily rely on teaching you to read the primary scientific literature, and virtually everyone does undergraduate research with one of the great professors in the department.</p>

<p>Is there anything specific you'd like to know about the department?</p>

<p>so can we major both in brain and cognitive sciences, comp and elec engg (minor in Computational Math)??</p>

<p>Yes, that would be 6-2 and 9, and a minor in 18...but you might die. Just sayin'.</p>

<p>Gosh! I was thinking maybe astrophysics too ..... I seriously need to cut down my interests!!</p>

<p>Don't worry too much - a lot of people come in with interest in more than one major. You take some classes, realize what you like more, and major in that =).</p>

<p>Also, like every frosh ever is a double major until they realize what that actually means. The upperclassmen all think its very cute. =)</p>

<p>You can also take a few classes in a bunch of different departments without having to major or minor. Personally, I double-majored myself, and I don't actually think double-majoring is all that useful.</p>

<p>I took some cog sci/psychophysics stuff (notably 9.35).</p>

<p>It's really neat, and the curriculum in that area for undergrads is growing a lot. There are relatively few non-linguistics undergrad classes where no neural basis is covered, though (which I personally think is as it should be), but there are some exceptions (I never took 9.34 or 9.37, but I'd expect them to be exceptions). 9.63 (the visual cognition lab) didn't exist when I was an undergrad, and looks neat - I totally would have taken it if it had been around when I was a junior or something.</p>