Looking for any information on The cogntive science major at USC. I am applying as a transfer from a cc. How competetive is this major? Does anyone have any first-hand experience with this major at USC? What are each of the “tracks” like that this major offers?
Hey there, I’ve not heard much about cognitive science necessarily being more competitive than other Dornsife majors, so as long as you have a decent GPA and some requirements done (whatever you can complete at your school; most likely stats at a minimum as I’m not sure what else might transfer), you should be fine.
I’m not a cognitive science major, but I’ve had a few of them in my classes. The major is actually quite flexible because of those tracks. I believe they are language, computational mind, and reasoning. For language, you’d take courses such as those in linguistics (intro to linguistics, intro to syntax and semantics, child language acquisition, etc). I’m a computational linguistics major, so intro to linguistics is how I actually met a couple of cognitive science majors. For computational mind, you have the option of taking programming courses (with artificial intelligence being one of the available options, but it seems like a pretty hard class and is actually an upper division elective for computer science majors as well). Lastly, for reasoning, there are a ton of philosophy and psychology courses that you can take. The major actually seems really cool in that you can tailor it to your liking. If you have absolutely no interest in languages, then forget about all of the linguistics courses.
Good luck 
@zettasyntax Thanks! Yeah im super excited to start studying it! Im transferring from an out of state cc(wi) with a 4.0. Hoping to follow the reasoning track but have had a hard time finding an articulation agreement with my school. My current cc also doesnt offer any cogsci classes per se. However, Im taking my best guess and taking the basic philosophy and psych classes (intro, stats, logic, ect.).
@peace4allpeeps Yeah, it’s a bit hard for out of state CC’s since USC doesn’t seem to have a website for you to check what transfers over (it really seems limited to California community colleges and universities). However, most of the time, I see that intro to psychology courses usually transfer over as an equivalent, so hopefully you’re fine there. I understand what you’re saying; the same thing happened with me and linguistics. It is extremely rare to find many community colleges with a linguistics department, let alone a sizable collection of courses. Ooh, good luck with the reasoning track. I took one philosophy course (symbolic logic) and it was so difficult for me, that I couldn’t even imagine university/upper-level courses in the same subject matter 
@zettasyntax do you still thing i have a chance considering my gpa and the few courses that transfer? Or how strict are they with completeing GEs prior to transfering? I could assume that for my situation (junior transfer), getting GEs out of the way sooner than later is essential. Hahaha hopefully if i enjoy the class the rigor wont bother me
It’s a bit difficult to tell. I remember a student who had only completed like 1 GE (he was also trying to transfer to UCLA, so a lot of the other GE classes he had didn’t match up for USC). However, he completed business calc which is the essential course for Marshall students. He was also a junior, but he still got accepted. I think it’s mainly bad when you have no GEs at all, but as long as you have some of them completed, it shouldn’t hurt your chances too much since you do have such a high GPA.